Wafa Hammedi

Technology‐based service proposal screening and decision‐making effectiveness

Purpose – Decision‐making in early stages of technology‐based service (TBS) innovation projects proves to be challenging. Current failure rates in service innovation are high, while the investments in innovation projects are substantial. Research suggests that enhancing decision‐making in the screening stage could substantially increase success rates. By investigating the screening decision process from an information processing perspective, this article aims to identify antecedents of effective TBS screening decision‐making, and could thus help companies to enhance their decision‐making and reduce innovation project failure rates.Design/methodology/approach – Reviewing literature regarding service innovation, new product screening and decision‐making under uncertainty, we identify antecedents of decision‐making effectiveness in the TBS screening stage. Hypotheses are developed and tested with data from 251 TBS innovation projects.Findings – The study demonstrates the importance of decision‐making team co...

Beyond traditional word-of-mouth: An expanded model of customer-driven influence

Purpose – Business and academia alike have become aware of the crucial role of customer‐to‐customer interactions. Facilitated by the increasing customer connectedness through online media possibilities, companies need to understand how customers influence each other and how to manage these customer interactions. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize an expanded model of customer‐driven influence (CDI) that presents an overview of the influence process and its determinants. The model covers important issues, such as deliberate versus unintentional sender actions, verbal and non‐verbal communication, and reflective and impulsive receiver reactions.Design/methodology/approach – This article is the result of the first Thought Leadership Conference on Service Marketing, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, June 2012.Findings – The model shows the importance of considering goal theory in studying customer‐driven influence. Both sender and receiver can act and react in deliberate and unintentional ways. Th...

Online customer engagement

Purpose – The emergence and success of online brand communities in the marketplace have attracted considerable interest; this study seeks to determine the conditions in which people create social environments by investigating the drivers of connections to a focal online brand community and other brand communities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the composition of multi-community networks, focussing on the density and centrality of brand communities. Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of insights from prior literature, the proposed model examines customers’ social relationships with multiple brand communities. A survey of 290 participants spans eight brand communities. The modeling process used structural equation modeling; the analysis of the social relationship among brand communities relied on an ego network approach. Findings – Two drivers prompt connections to other online brand communities. First, personal identification with a core brand community enhances connections to other c...

Ten years of value cocreation: An integrative review:

Since Prahalad and Ramaswamy published their seminal text, vast literature on value cocreation has emerged. Yet value cocreation still suffers from the lack of a clear consensus about its conceptualization. Using a systematic method, this integrative review provides an overview of 10 years of research dealing with this still emerging concept, to clarify insights into its definition, foundations, drivers, related processes, expected consequences, and measurement. The resulting integrative framework summarizes existing knowledge and provides a foundation for further empirical investigations, as well as offering propositions to continue stimulating this dynamic research field.

The Engagement Process During Value Co-Creation: Gamification in New Product-Development Platforms

ABSTRACT Academics and practitioners acknowledge the relevance of integrating customers in the development of new products and recommend the use of new technologies to this end. Although they play an important role, the development of online platforms is not sufficient for effective engagement of customers, and yet it is considered a key predictor of successful co-creation initiatives. Despite the large body of research regarding value co-creation, little is known about how to design interactive platforms to engage consumers. To address this gap, this research investigates the impact of two gamification mechanics: cooperation and competition. Based on an in-depth case study including longitudinal data and rich qualitative material, we highlight the existence of four users’ profiles and then assess their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral engagement with the gamified co-creation platform over time. We also emphasize the issues that may be induced through gamification.

Dix ans de co-création de valeur: une revue intégrative

Depuis l’article fondateur de Prahalad et Ramaswamy (2004a), nous avons assisté à l’émergence d’une vaste littérature dédiée à la co-création de valeur. Cependant, à l’heure actuelle, ce thème souffre toujours d’un manque de consensus en ce qui concerne sa conceptualisation. Adoptant une approche systématique, cet article propose une revue intégrative des recherches menées au cours de la décennie traitant de ce concept émergent, et clarifie les connaissances entourant sa définition, ses fondements, ses moteurs, mais également les processus sous-jacents, ses conséquences et sa mesure. Il en résulte un cadre intégratif résumant les connaissances sur le sujet et posant les fondations théoriques pour les recherches futures. Nous proposons également des pistes d’investigation afin de nourrir la dynamique de ce domaine de recherche.

The use of gamification mechanics to increase employee and user engagement in participative healthcare services: A study of two cases

Purpose Gamification introduces game-like properties into routine service processes to make them more engaging for service employees and users alike. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of gamification mechanics, or game design principles, on user engagement in gamified healthcare services. Design/methodology/approach Through observations, interviews and the study of desk materials, two cases of gamified healthcare services, each using different game mechanics, are analyzed. Findings Gamification mechanics produce four distinct experiential outcomes in patients: challenge, entertainment, social dynamics, and escapism. Patient engagement can be stimulated through these outcomes. However, to fully enjoy the benefits of gamified services, users are often expected to acquire and use new skills. The relative absence of these skills (or difficulties in acquiring them), depending on users’ medical predispositions and age, may defer or negatively moderate the positive effects of gamification on engagement. In the case of progressively decreasing capabilities (e.g. in the case of aging users or users with degenerative diseases, whose physical or mental disabilities may be emphasized by the mechanics), it is recommended that health professionals adapt the mechanics accordingly or search for alternative options to increase patient well-being. Research limitations/implications The study was conducted in healthcare, and caution must be exercised in generalizing the findings to other domains. However, the finding that gamified service users’ disabilities - or the lack of required abilities – may negatively impact the encouraging or engaging effects of the use of gamification appears to be relatively universal. Originality/value This study contributes to service research, specifically in the healthcare domain, by providing insight into employees’ and users’ motivations for using gamified service processes, the experiential impact of gamification mechanics, the individual factors that influence users’ gamified experience and multiple forms of cognitive, emotional and behavioral engagement outcomes. A research agenda is developed.

Exploration of Engagement Mechanics During Value Co-creation Process: The Case of Gamification in a New Product Development Platform (Extended Abstract)

Academics and practitioners acknowledge the relevance to integrate customers in the development of new products or services in terms of innovation and relationship management (Bogers et al. 2010; Nishikawa et al. 2013; Roser et al. 2013). The emergence of online platforms, communities, and social networks has been widely recognized to facilitate the interactions and resource exchanges among actors (Sawhney et al. 2005; Zwass 2010). However, despite their important role, these technologies are not sufficient for an effective customers’ engagement. Engagement is considered as a key predictor of successful co-creation experiences (Brodie et al. 2011; Zheng et al. 2011). Despite the growing body of research on co-creation (Galvagno and Dalli 2014), little is known about mechanisms, practices, or tools that could be used to create and boost individuals’ engagement toward these co-creation platforms (Djelassi and Decoopman 2013; Ostrom et al. 2015). To address this gap, our research, based on complementary qualitative and quantitative methods, attempts to identify multiple users’ profiles and offers a more fine-grained understanding of the role of gamification in engaging these users on co-creation platforms. To this end, we identified multiple profiles and assessed their behavioral and emotional engagement on the platform.

New Product Screening Decision-Making - A Group-Level Absorptive Capacity Perspective

Top management teams, specifically new product proposal screening committees, must make decisions under conditions of information scarcity, complexity, and ambiguity. We investigate the effects of ...