The 10 most-cited articles in Journal of Marketing, 2017

Introducing customers to new ideas lies at the heart of marketing, yet surprisingly little is known about customers’ state of inspiration within this domain. This article reviews prior conceptualizations of general inspiration in psychology and introduces the concept of customer inspiration as a customer's temporary motivational state that facilitates the transition from the reception of a marketing-induced idea to the intrinsic pursuit of a consumption-related goal. The authors develop and validate a two-state, ten-item customer inspiration scale that consists of inspired-by and inspired-to states. The scale development process begins with item generation, followed by five studies: (1) scale purification and initial validation, (2) exploration of the nomological network, (3) tests for the experimental and predictive validity, (4) replication within a field experiment, and (5) assessments of generalizability and boundary conditions. Empirical results reveal sound psychometric properties of the scale, demonstrate its unique position in relation to established marketing constructs,…

Lateral exchange markets (LEMs) are sites of technologically intermediated exchange between actors occupying equivalent network positions. To develop an enriched understanding of these markets, the authors develop a more broad-based and differentiated understanding of peer-to-peer, sharing, and access-based markets. They focus on two key axes: the extent of (1) consociality and (2) platform intermediation. Drawing on these attributes, the authors theoretically deduce four ideal types—Forums, Enablers, Matchmakers, and Hubs. Each type provides value in a different way: Forums connect actors, Enablers equip actors, Matchmakers pair actors, and Hubs centralize exchange. Twenty organizational cases reveal insights into the failure, adaptation, and success of LEMs. Lateral exchange markets shift responsibility for personal and exchange security to relevant personal actors, to institutions, or to the governing algorithms of technology platforms. Extending the general proposition that sociality increasingly infuses market logics, the findings suggest a new frontier in which social…

Although research has examined the social media–shareholder value link, the role of consumer mindset metrics in this relationship remains unexplored. To this end, drawing on the elaboration likelihood model and accessibility/diagnosticity perspective, the authors hypothesize varying effects of owned and earned social media (OSM and ESM) on brand awareness, purchase intent, and customer satisfaction and link these consumer mindset metrics to shareholder value (abnormal returns and idiosyncratic risk). Analyzing daily data for 45 brands in 21 sectors using vector autoregression models, they find that brand fan following improves all three mindset metrics. ESM engagement volume affects brand awareness and purchase intent but not customer satisfaction, while ESM positive and negative valence have the largest effects on customer satisfaction. OSM increases brand awareness and customer satisfaction but not purchase intent, highlighting a nonlinear effect of OSM. Interestingly, OSM is more likely to increase purchase intent for high involvement utilitarian brands and for brands with higher…

This article demonstrates that the sales literature is converging on a systemic and institutional perspective that recognizes that selling and value creation unfold over time and are embedded in broader social systems. This convergence illustrates that selling needs a more robust theoretical foundation. To contribute to this foundation, the authors draw on institutional theory and service-dominant logic to advance a service ecosystems perspective. This perspective leads them to redefine selling in terms of the interaction between actors aimed at creating and maintaining thin crossing points—the locations at which service can be efficiently exchanged for service—through the ongoing alignment of institutional arrangements and the optimization of relationships. This definition underscores how broad sets of human actors engage in selling processes, regardless of the roles that characterize them (e.g., firm, customer, stakeholder). A service ecosystems perspective reveals (1) that selling continues to be an essential activity, (2) how broader sets of actors participate in selling…

Although a large body of research has investigated how consumers use goods to signal their status, little is known about how brands manage status. The very few studies that have examined this topic are grounded in the traditional conception of status and focus on the possession and display of status signals. The authors offer an alternative understanding of status management by investigating the role of interactions in the service encounter. Drawing from extensive ethnographic work in luxury stores, they investigate how brands (re)configure the status games that surface in the service encounter. They show that through the material and social cues of the servicescape, brands shape consumers’ class subjectivities—that is, they make consumers behave as class subjects who have a specific understanding of their position in the social hierarchy. Thus, managing status requires the active creation and management of consumers as class subjects. There is a shift from managing branded goods that signal status to managing customer experiences that make consumers enact status positions. This…

This study examines the relative effectiveness of traditional advertising, impressions generated through firm-to-consumer (F2C) messages on Facebook, and the volume and valence of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) messages on Twitter and web forums for brand-building and customer acquisition efforts. The authors apply vector autoregressive modeling to a unique data set from a European telecom firm. This modeling approach allows them to consider the interrelations among traditional advertising, F2C impressions, and volume and valence of C2C social messages. The results show that traditional advertising is most effective for both brand building and customer acquisition. Impressions generated through F2C social messages complement traditional advertising efforts. Thus, thoroughly orchestrating traditional advertising and a firm's social media activities may improve a firm's performance with respect to building the brand and encouraging customer acquisition. Moreover, firms can stimulate the volume and valence of C2C messages through traditional advertising that in turn influences brand…

In this study, the authors assess the effects of a data breach announcement (DBA) by a multichannel retailer on customer behavior. They exploit a natural experiment and use individual customer transaction data from the retailer to conduct a detailed and systematic empirical examination of the effects of a DBA on customer spending and channel migration behavior. To identify the effects, the authors compare the change in customer behavior before and after the DBA between a treatment group (customers whose information is breached) and a control group (customers whose information is not breached) using the difference-in-differences modeling framework. They find that although the data breach results in a significant decrease in customer spending, customers of the firm migrate from the breached to the unbreached channels of the retailer. The findings further reflect that customers with a higher retailer patronage are more forgiving because the negative effects of the DBA are lower for customers with a higher level of patronage. The authors propose and empirically test for the role of…

Companies increasingly face product harm crises resulting in product recalls, which often have a negative impact on firm value. Whereas prior research has studied the short-term effects of product recalls on firm value, the authors of this article focus on the long-term effects. They develop a conceptual framework and hypotheses about the main effect of recall volume and the moderating effects of crisis management strategies on the relationship between recall volume and long-term firm value. They empirically test the hypotheses in the auto industry context using both short-term abnormal returns analysis and long-term calendar-time portfolio analysis of 280 product recalls during 2005–2015. The findings reveal that the negative impact of product recall volume lingers over time. Brand (promotion) advertising has a significant positive (negative) effect on the relationship between recall volume and long-term abnormal returns. Furthermore, both voluntary recall initiation and postrecall remedial efforts positively moderate the impact of recall volume on long-term returns. These…

Using the notion of customer concentration, the authors argue that firms should evenly spread their revenues across their customers, rather than focusing on a few major customer relationships. Prior literature suggests that major customers improve efficiency and provide access to resources, thereby producing positive performance outcomes. However, building on industrial organizational literature and modern portfolio theory, the authors argue that concentration of revenues reduces the supplier firm's bargaining power relative to its customers and hurts the ability of the supplier firm to appropriate value, which, in turn, hurts profits. Using a sample of 1,023 initial public offerings (IPOs) and robust econometric methods, they find that customer concentration reduces investor uncertainty and positively impacts IPO outcomes, but significantly hurts balance sheet–based outcomes (e.g., profitability). The results suggest that a 10% increase in customer concentration reduces profitability by 3.35% (or about $7 million) in the subsequent year, or 9.4% cumulatively over the next four…

Firms are increasingly offering engagement initiatives to facilitate firm–customer interactions or interactions among customers, with the primary goal of fostering emotional and psychological bonds between customers and the firm. Unlike traditional marketing interventions, which are designed to prompt sales, assessing returns on engagement initiatives (RoEI) is more complex because sales are not the primary goal and, often, direct sales are not associated with such initiatives. To assess RoEI across varying institutional contexts, the authors propose and empirically implement a methodological framework to investigate a business-to-business mobile app that a tool manufacturer provides for free to engage its buyers. The data include sales by buyer firms that adopted the app over 15 months, as well as a control group of buyers that did not adopt. The results from a difference-in-differences specification, together with selection on observables and unobservables, show that the app increased the manufacturer's annual sales revenues by 19.11%–22.79%; even after accounting for development…