Consequences of Multigenerational Services Adoption Behavior: Global Client Engagement

Abstract

We use adoption and usage data on the client, and firm-client interactions across 4 technology generations of new-age products/services from 13 developed and emerging markets over an 8-year period to describe how the multigenerational services ( MGS) adoption behavior influences direct (purchases) and indirect (references and feedback) global client engagement, and how this relationship is moderated by product/service failures and cultural factors. We propose metrics to measure the number of generations adopted ( MGD), the number of products and features within a generation ( MGF) and the adoption time between generations ( MGT). We find that client usage revenue ( CUR) is enhanced by higher multigenerational depth and features combined with lower adoption timing. However, CUR varies due to differences in the needs of the client’s own customers, failures, and culture. A higher direct engagement affects the reference and feedback behavior that is moderated by cultural differences in individualism, power distance and masculinism. For a typical client in the US and Canada, a one-unit improvement in MGD and MGF, and a one-year improvement in MGT enhances client usage revenue by $8.15K, $5.20K, and $2.31K per client, respectively, versus a corresponding enhancement of $4.82K, $3.64K, and $1.62K, respectively per client for Columbia and Mexico. We provide several implications for executives who manage multigenerational innovations across countries regarding client engagement, launching MGS, market-entry, and failure recovery.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Theory and Practice in Global Marketing (TPGM)

“…Sood, Gupta, and Kumar (2023, “Consequences of Multigenerational Services Adoption Behavior: Global Client Engagement”) investigate how firms’ adoption behavior across multiple subsequent generations of a new software product drives sales and customer engagement. They show that different aspects of culture moderate these relationships in different ways across 13 developed and emerging markets, while controlling for firmographics and economic country factors.…”

The Effect of Multicultural Marketing on International Product Placement

“…Cultural appropriateness and sensitivity are becoming more important when organizations expand into new global markets. Businesses may increase their worldwide success by adopting multicultural marketing strategies that help them connect with consumers of different backgrounds (Sood, et al 2023). Multicultural marketing and the role it plays in strategic product placement will remain essential in the global marketplace of the future.…”