If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Given the dramatic technology-led changes that continue to take place in the marketplace, researchers and practitioners alike are keen to understand the emergence and implications of online brand communities (OBCs). The purpose of this paper is to explore OBCs from both consumer and company perspectives. Design/methodology/approach -The study provides a synthesis of the extant OBC literature to further our understanding of OBCs, and also puts forth future priorities for OBC research. Findings -A conceptual framework is provided that extends our understanding of OBCs and consumer engagement. Four key OBC dimensions (brand orientation, internet-use, funding and governance) are identified and three antecedents (brand-related, social and functional) are proposed of consumer-OBC engagement. Originality/value -This study is the first to explore key dimensions of OBCs, and the differing but related perspectives of the consumers and organizations involved.

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AND KEYWORDS AbstractThe authors put forward a sales response model to explain the differences in immediate and dynamic effects of promotional prices and regular prices on sales. The model consists of a vector autoregression rewritten in error-correction format which allows to disentangle the immediate effects from the dynamic effects. In a second level of the model, the immediate price elasticities, the cumulative promotional price elasticity and the long-run regular price elasticity are correlated with various brand-speciffic and category-speciffic characteristics. The model is applied to seven years of data on weekly sales of 100 different brands in 25 product categories.We find many significant moderating effects on the elasticity of price promotions. Brands in categories that are characterized by high price differentiation and that constitute a lower share of budget are less sensitive to price discounts. Deep price discounts turn out to increase the immediate price sensitivity of customers. We also find significant effects for the cumulative elasticity. The immediate effect of a regular price change is often close to zero. The long-run effect of such a decrease usually amounts to an increase in sales. This is especially true in categories characterized by a large price dispersion, frequent price promotions and hedonic, A Hierarchical Bayes Error Correction Model to Explain Dynamic Effects of Price Changes AbstractThe authors put forward a sales response model to explain the differences in immediate and dynamic effects of promotional prices and regular prices on sales.The model consists of a vector autoregression rewritten in error-correction format which allows to disentangle the immediate effects from the dynamic effects. In a second level of the model, the immediate price elasticities, the cumulative promotional price elasticity and the long-run regular price elasticity are correlated with various brand-specific and category-specific characteristics. The model is applied to seven years of data on weekly sales of 100 different brands in 25 product categories.We find many significant moderating effects on the elasticity of price promotions.Brands in categories that are characterized by high price differentiation and that constitute a lower share of budget are less sensitive to price discounts. Deep price discounts turn out to increase the immediate price sensitivity of customers. We also find significant effects for the cumulative elasticity. The immediate effect of a regular price change is often close to zero. The long-run effect of such a decrease usually amounts to an increase in sales. This is especially true in categories characterized by a large price dispersion, frequent price promotions and hedonic, non-perishable products.

Purpose – This article investigates the role that brands play in influencing the behavior and purchase decisions of compulsive buyers and whether this role differs for noncompulsive buyers, resulting in four research propositions. Design/methodology/approach – In-depth interviews, conducted with ten compulsive and ten noncompulsive buyers, reveal several interesting differences between the groups. Findings – The findings reveal several interesting differences between compulsive buyers and noncompulsive buyers. Noncompulsive buyers seem to appreciate and focus mainly on functional benefits of branded products and avoid buying unbranded products, whereas compulsive buyers value emotional and social benefits but often decide to buy “more and cheaper” items to achieve variety in their purchases. Noncompulsive buyers develop brand trust in, attachment to and higher willingness to pay for their favorite brand than for other brands, whereas compulsive buyers even struggle to name a favorite brand. Furthermore, compulsive buyers engage in more brand switching than noncompulsive buyers. Research limitations/implications – While this research provides the first, in-depth findings, a large-scale survey research is called for to provide statistically valid tests of the authors ' propositions. Practical implications – The findings indicate that compulsive and noncompulsive buyers seek different benefits of brands. Stressing the good quality should be particularly effective for noncompulsive buyers, whereas compulsive buyers will be triggered more effectively by claims about the emotional benefits. This finding has obvious implications for brand communication strategies but also raises an important ethical dilemma. The findings further indicate that compulsive buyers react to branded products in ways that may hurt brands with high brand equity. These, therefore, have an incentive to help compulsive buyers overcome this problem, rather than encouraging them in their buying behavior. Social implications – Considering the harmful effects of compulsive buying behavior on a person’s well-being, manufacturers and retailers should take corporate social responsibility in this situation and help society deal with it, using both proactive and reactive methods. For example, to facilitate the early identification of this type of behavior, retailers might stimulate customers to think about their purchasing motivations and inform them about the risks of compulsive buying. They could initiate the development, support or sponsorship of a “Shop Responsibly” campaign to help customers avoid such buying behaviors. Not only would these efforts increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, but they could boost the public image of the firm as a responsible organization that cares for societal well-being. Originality/value – This is the first study to investigate how compulsive buyers approach brands and whether they approach brands differently from noncompulsive buyers. It can draw attention to and encourage future research in this important area.

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Although several studies focused on understanding of compulsive buying in developed countries, this phenomenon remains understudied in other parts of the world. This is rather surprising since there is an increasing interest in understanding shopping behavior of consumers in emergent markets due to the growing importance of these markets. The main reason for the limited attention to compulsive buying in emerging countries is the lack of cross-culturally validated scales. In response to these calls, this paper tests measurement invariance of two prominent compulsive buying scales – the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS) and the Compulsive Buying Index (CBI) in Western (Spain and the Netherlands) and emerging (Russia and Turkey) economies. In case of lack of invariance the reasons in terms of socio-cultural factors and country conditions are explained. The results establish the partial measurement invariance of the CBI but not the CBS. So, to study the antecedents and consequences of compulsive buying in cross-cultural contexts, the CBI is sufficient. The varying credit card ownership and usage, and different gender roles of women across countries appear to be the main reasons for lack of measurement invariance of the CBS. The percentages of compulsive buyers in emerging countries are lower than those in developed countries.