Customer prioritization strategies, which focus a firm's efforts on its most important customers, are expected to improve account profitability. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that such strategies may also undermine account profitability by inducing customers to become overly demanding. Building on social exchange theory, this research evaluates these competing perspectives across two field studies and finds that prioritization is best understood as a double-edged sword. Specifically, the results reveal that prioritization efforts initiate both a gratitude-driven process, which enhances sales and profit, and an entitlement-driven process, which increases service costs and reduces profit. Importantly, the findings indicate that prioritization tactics differ in the extent to which they trigger these competing processes and thus in their ability to influence account profitability. Finally, the results also reveal that critical moderators (competitive intensity and prioritization transparency) determine the extent to which the entitlement-driven process undermines the gratitude-driven process. For managers, the findings suggest that both the tactics employed and moderating conditions determine whether prioritization has a positive, negative, or negligible effect on prioritized accounts' profitability.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities enhance firm value via strengthened stakeholder relationships. However, many firms are also involved in corporate social irresponsibility (CSI), which could lead stakeholders to judge CSR actions as insincere, subsequently damaging firm value. This study examines the pivotal role of CSI for CSR's firm value effects. As an initial finding, the results indicate that CSR's positive firm value effect is significantly attenuated by the presence of CSI. Offering a more fine-grained analysis, the authors elaborate on the effectiveness of CSR that relates to the same (SD-CSR) or other domains (OD-CSR) as CSI. All else equal, the results indicate that only OD-CSR enhances firm value. Depending upon the CSI context, however, SD-CSR destroys or benefits firm value and OD-CSR is more or less beneficial. By adding new aspects to the discussion about how to align doing good with doing well, the results speak to both theorists and practitioners.

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Profitability considerations lead service providers to divest from customer service contracts, either by service contract demotion (cutting back services) or by service contract termination (ending service provision). Such initiatives have been associated with customer revenge. The pressing question for practitioners is which divestment approach has a stronger or weaker effect on customer revenge. Drawing on justice and appraisal theories, the authors suggest that the answer depends on customers' predivestment satisfaction and on the provision of financial compensation or apology. Three experiments and a critical incident study reveal that for previously satisfied customers, service termination entails a stronger effect on customer revenge, while for previously dissatisfied customers, service demotion entails a stronger effect. The findings further demonstrate that offering financial compensation or an apology can mitigate or exacerbate the effect, highlighting the need to align these divestment handling instruments with the divestment approach chosen and customers' predivestment satisfaction. The findings also show that the effect can be explained by customer anger. Overall, this article provides guidance on how to divest whom in order to mitigate detrimental effects.

Purpose The proliferation of online brand communities has shifted control over brands from firms to consumers. Demonstrating how marketers can stimulate consumers to use these opportunities and engage with the brand in such communities, the purpose of this paper is to address the effectiveness of normative and utilitarian appeals commonly employed in practice for enhancing engagement intensity and brand equity in turn. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents two studies at an individual user level. The first study builds on matched data on marketing actions, user behavior, and user perceptions from a Facebook brand community. The second study uses an experiment with members of a firm-hosted online brand community. The authors employ seemingly unrelated regressions while controlling for self-selection. Findings Marketer-generated appeals have a positive effect on brand equity that is mediated by engagement intensity. However, the strength of these effects depends highly on community, user, and relationship characteristics. Practical implications Generally speaking, marketer-generated appeals are effective tools for marketers to build brand equity through enhanced user engagement. However, their effectiveness can be improved when managers use a targeted approach. To offer precise managerial guidance, this paper shows how entertainment value, content consumption asymmetry (e.g. whether a user prefers user-generated content over marketer-generated content), and membership duration increase or lower the impact of appeals in building the brand through engagement intensity. Originality/value The authors provide evidence that appeals designed to drive user engagement in online brand communities are effective tools for boosting brand equity.

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Purpose Firms increasingly rely on content marketing to trigger user engagement in social media brand communities. The purpose of this paper is to examine how three generic types of marketer-generated content (affiliative, injunctive and utilitarian content) drive user engagement by considering distinct motivational paths and the role of users’ preference for intimate (vs broad) social networks. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a field survey and a scenario experiment among social media users across different brands from three different product categories. They examine the impact of marketer-generated content on user engagement while considering the moderating role of network intimacy (i.e. the mutual confiding within a user’s social network in terms of small social circles) and the mediating role of user motivations (i.e. autonomous vs controlled motivation for community membership). Findings The findings show that affiliative content (i.e. content that highlights shared values) drives user engagement through autonomous motivation, and utilitarian content (i.e. content that highlights tangible benefits) drives user engagement through controlled motivation. Notably, injunctive content (i.e. content that demands specific user behavior) is not a promising instrument to increase user engagement in social media brand communities when not targeted correctly. Research limitations/implications The authors link three generic content types derived from literature on communal systems to user engagement, demonstrate the motivational underpinnings of their translation into engagement behavior and show that network intimacy can explain why the same content type can impact user engagement through two motivational paths. Practical implications The authors present three types of content that marketers can craft to trigger users to engage with a brand’s social media community and show when this content is most effective and why. By examining the moderating role of network intimacy, this research aims at providing targeting implications to social media marketers. Originality/value This research provides new insights on the effectiveness of marketer-generated content. The authors reveal two motivational paths that compete in explaining the overall effectiveness of different types of marketer-generated content to fuel user engagement. The authors further demonstrate that these relationships depend on the intimacy of a user’s circle of online friends.

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