Customer Advocacy: A Distinctive Form of Word of Mouth

Sweeney, Jill; Payne, Adrian; Frow, Pennie; Liú, Dan

doi:10.1177/1094670519900541

Cited by 77 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…First, we propose evangelical brand-related outcomes of VCC and CBE, such as brand advocacy and defense (Leclercq et al , 2017; Cooper et al , 2018). These help marketers struggling to justify VCC and CBE efforts that may not directly impact the bottom line (Wong and Merrilees, 2015; Sweeney et al , 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do value cocreation and engagement drive brand evangelism?

Harrigan¹,

Chen

2020

MIP

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PurposeDrawing on service logic, the authors investigate how value cocreation leads to evangelical brand-related behaviors (brand defense and brand advocacy). The authors analyze the interplay between value cocreation and customer brand engagement on social media in driving these outcomes. The authors also consider the role of brand love in eliciting evangelical brand-related behaviors.Design/methodology/approachRespondents recruited through Amazon MTurk were surveyed on social media use in tourism-related decisions. The total useable sample size was 397. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research model.FindingsValue cocreation and customer brand engagement are drivers of evangelical brand-related behaviors, emphasizing the importance of these two in marketing and how they drive behavioral outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsService logic highlights the significance of value cocreation which, through customer brand engagement and love, leads to brand defense and advocacy. This explains the mediation in our model, where marketers must undertake efforts to support customer brand engagement and brand love.Practical implicationsValue is created by the user for the user through their experiences over time. Brands are owned by customers, and their defense and advocacy of them must be earned. Marketers facilitate customer value creation by providing the resources to cocreate value and love the brand.Originality/valueMost studies investigate value cocreation from an in-role and/or extra-role perspective as to how it benefits firms. Through service logic, the authors illustrate how it leads to evangelical brand-related behaviors.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do value cocreation and engagement drive brand evangelism?

Harrigan¹,

Chen

2020

MIP

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“…To measure confidence, we used a multi-item scale adapted from measures established by Briñol, Petty, and Tormala (2004). Purchase intentions items were adapted from Hui et al (2004), where participants were asked to indicate the likelihood that they would purchase the itinerary in the scenario with the three scale items including “unlikely/likely,” “definitely no/definitely yes,” and “inclined not to/inclined to.” WOM intentions were measured with four items from Brown et al (2005) and Sweeney et al 2020), where participants rated how frequently they would perform such actions as “Speak positively about the airline to others” and “Recommend this airline to a close personal friend.” Repurchase time was measured by asking participants how many days they would wait before buying another ticket with the airline.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Effects of Service Variability on Consumer Confidence and Behavior

Voorhees

Beck

Randhawa

et al. 2020

Journal of Service Research

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This research examines the effects of service variability on consumer confidence and behavior across multiple transactions in a service relationship. This article integrates discussions of service relationships and models of service variability. Leveraging a field study, the authors track over 12,000 experiences across 3,084 consumers for a 2-year period and model the impact of variability in these experiences on consumer relationships. The results reveal variability in a service relationship can significantly impact consumer confidence and that the nature of this relationship is nonlinear, revealing that small variations in quality will have strong effects on confidence and that these effects plateau as variability increases. Despite these overall effects, we also demonstrate that the positive benefits of service improvement strategies can offset these effects. Finally, in a second study, the results suggest firms can insulate themselves from the effects of variability by encouraging consumer involvement in relational investments (i.e., loyalty programs) that provide consumers with both interpersonal (i.e., status) and economic resources (i.e., points). Taken together, the results demonstrate that consumers integrate evaluations across transactions when evaluating a service provider, thus focusing on a single transaction, in isolation, may not accurately capture consumers’ perceptions of the service relationship.

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“…[…] I don’t think [they] would ever be massively lucrative but I think it’s very good for sort of brand loyalty, it’s a marketing budget effectively. (Jo, 41, owner)Jo, a café and bakery owner, is aware of customer-workers’ power as potential brand ambassadors and eager to benefit from eventual indirect online word-of-mouth (Sweeney et al 2020). She recognizes that the value of customer-worker also resides in their marketing value.…”

Section: The Customer-workermentioning

confidence: 99%

Customer Work Practices and the Productive Third Place

Mimoun

Gruen

2021

Journal of Service Research

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Third places—communal or socializing places such as coffee shops—are confronted with a rising customer segment: customers who use them for work. Prior research is divided on this trend: customer-workers are seen either as a source of added value or a major threat to third places. Relying on a multimethod, qualitative study, we investigate the strategic implications of the rise of customer-workers in third places. We extend prior research by considering customer-workers as a new and valuable segment, with its specific motivations and practices. Building on the co-constitution of practices and places, we show that the rise of the customer-worker segment has fostered market differentiation. We identify four types of third places (archetypal, status quo, compromise, and productive) depending on their targeting strategy and their servicescape adaptation. We delineate how customer-workers transform third places’ value proposition and bring challenges to each type. Specifically, we show that status quo third places are most prone to customer conflicts while compromise third places generate managerial struggles. In contrast, productive third places adapt their servicescape to become work accelerators and a source of professional identity for customer-workers. We provide recommendations for managers to overcome conflicts and benefit from this growing customer base.

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Customer Advocacy: A Distinctive Form of Word of Mouth

Cited by 77 publications

References 83 publications

Do value cocreation and engagement drive brand evangelism?

Do value cocreation and engagement drive brand evangelism?

Assessing the Effects of Service Variability on Consumer Confidence and Behavior

Customer Work Practices and the Productive Third Place

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