Customer Communities Research Articles

Leveraging artificial intelligence in firm-generated online customer communities: a framework and future research agenda

PurposeIn an era where complex technological advances increasingly govern service delivery, it is incumbent on service firms to pioneer innovative strategies to sustain customer engagement and cultivate loyalty. This conceptual paper examines the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of online customer communities, with a particular focus on its creation, management and enhancement facets. The authors explore how AI can revolutionize the dynamics of customer interaction, feedback mechanisms and overall engagement within the service industry.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper draws from marketing and management literature focusing on customer communities and AI in service and customer engagement contexts with a robust future research agenda.FindingsA classification of online customer community engagement is provided along with a conceptual framework to guide our understanding of the integration of AI into online customer communities.Originality/valueThis exploration underscores the imperative for service firms to embrace AI-driven approaches to online customer community management, not only as a means to optimize their operations but as a vital strategy to stay competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. This paper examines the novel combination of AI with online customer communities and provides the framework in the form of an input-process-output (IPO) model for future research into this integration.

온라인 구전의 개념적 고찰

With the advent of the digital age, connectivity between customers increases, and the rapid development of electronic communication has led consumers to gain access to their reviews, on products and services on various channels (business official websites, online communities, newsgroups, chat rooms, email, blog, virtual customer communities and other social networks). The influence of online word of mouth is much more powerful than traditional WOM. The exchange of such information among consumers is not a new phenomenon, but the Internet has dramatically improved the interaction of consumers, especially within social networking sites (Schindler & Bickart, 2012).
 According to the product, many studies have emphasized reliability, consent, and vividness as factors that influence users following the direction of the oral version. So, what is the cause of having the motivations. Various studies have been conducted, but in recent studies, it can be seen as a favorable human relationship orientation, post-purchase advice, focus-related utility, and so on. Finally, online sites should give customers a sense of belonging, reputation, and pleasure in helping them with their own needs to create a system to carefully manage and compensate customers who are active in oral activities to support and support their activities.

Multicriteria Decision-Making Framework for Supplier Selection: A Customer Community-Driven Approach

Supplier selection is the core of enterprise supply chain management. It involves a systematic evaluation of potential supply partners. Customer expectations for products and services are rarely considered when selecting suppliers. Considering customer factors in supplier selection faces many problems, including customer segmentation, importance ranking for customer requirements, and answering how customer requirements guide the supplier selection. For the above, a multicriteria supplier selection framework driven by customer communities is proposed. It includes three stages. In the first stage, a customer segmentation method is used to discover customer communities. In the second stage, the weighted interval rough number method quantitatively analyzes the customer requirements in each community, and then expert knowledge is integrated to determine the importance of supplier selection indicators. In the third stage, a genetic algorithm based on a stochastic tournament model is used to search for the optimal suppliers. A practical case study of a household refrigerator was conducted to illustrate the performance of our framework. A simulation experiment was designed to verify that our framework could update the supplier selection scheme according to changes in customer requirements in a dynamic scenario.

Role of community trust in driving brand loyalty in large online B2B communities

Purpose Online customer communities have become a strategic tool for business-to-business (B2B) firms to drive collaboration among customers around the company’s products and services. This paper aims to argue that the three social capital dimensions, that is, structural, relational and cognitive, themselves driven by brand community trust, can affect brand loyalty for the organization. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a survey to collect data and structural equation modeling to test the conceptual framework by collecting data from 214 participants across three online B2B communities operated by three technology firms in India. Findings Brand community trust is found to have a strong association with social network ties, identification and norm of reciprocity and shared vision. These three have concomitant effects on the quality of customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions. Such communication generates functional, emotional and social benefits, which, in turn, curate brand loyalty. Practical implications The authors’ findings guide community managers in leveraging such conversations in shaping customer loyalty for the corporate brand. Originality/value This work provides an integrated framework to explain the important role of C2C interactions in B2B online brand communities.

THE The Effect of Corporate Image, Service Quality, Experiential Marketing on Customer Loyalty with Customer Satisfaction as Intervening Variable at PT Yudhistira Perkasa Abadi Surabaya

This study aims to determine the effect of Corporate Image, Service Quality, Experiential Marketing on Customer Loyalty, with Customer Satisfaction as a Variable Intervening at PT Yudhistira Perkasa Abadi Surabaya. The population in the study was 57 respondents who met the requirements according to this study. This study uses quantitative methods with random sampling techniques and quantitative/statistical data analysis to test hypotheses. The research location taken was PT Yudhistira Perkasa Abadi Surabaya. Researchers examined this here because this company experienced relatively high tender conditions fluctuations. There was competition for tenders from vendors, which was quite tight. In this study, involving many variables or constructs with a small sample size, this study used Partial Least Square (PLS) analysis. The data processing results show that Corporate Image, Service Quality, and Expential Marketing significantly positively influence Customer Satisfaction. However, Corporate Image does not have a significant influence on Customer Loyalty. Meanwhile, Service Quality, Expential Marketing, and Customer Satisfaction significantly influence Customer Loyalty when mediated by Customer Satisfaction. Future research should consider other variables that affect Customer Loyalty and Customer Satisfaction. Companies can increase customer satisfaction by optimizing marketing and public relations strategies. Public relations can help reduce the gap between customer expectations and the reality they experience. In this case, facilitating the customer user interface by creating applications that facilitate customer access in monitoring the services performed can help build customer satisfaction and strengthen customer communities loyal to the company.

My Own Creation as a Dynamic Subcultural Objectified Authenticity of Adult Fans of LEGO

My Own Creation as a Dynamic Subcultural Objectified Authenticity of Adult Fans of LEGO

Using Digital Customer Communities as a Marketing Tool to Connect and Educate Customers in the Manufacturing Industry

The application of digital customer communities has been observed over the past years but primarily in the business-to-consumer sector. The COVID-19 crisis has affected positively the usage of digital tools in business-to-business, including customer communities. A digital customer community aims to connect individuals and share information between them. It has therewith a positive effect on the trust, loyalty and behavior of customers. The present study reviewed scholarly databases in an attempt to ascertain the current knowledge on the use and relevance of digital customer communities. Several studies have discussed the advantages of using digital customer communities in e-commerce, brand management or business cooperation, but a framework supporting the application of digital customer communities is lacking. The present study used content analysis to examine the existing academic knowledge. It recommends answering the three questions “What does the digital transformation change?”, “Why use customer communities?” and “What drives the customer experience?” when starting to consider using digital customer communities in business-to-consumer.

Collaborative Networked Organizations and Virtual Customer Communities: Crafting the Value Co-Creation to Enhance Marketing Performance

Collaborative Networked Organizations and Virtual Customer Communities: Crafting the Value Co-Creation to Enhance Marketing Performance

Globetrotting adventures in digital data governance and ethics

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings This research paper formulates a framework for managing data ethically – which incorporates data governance – for tourism and hospitality organizations (THOs). The framework encourages THOs, like Airbnb and Booking.com, to move beyond mere compliance and into ethical trust-building among their customer communities. This creates the social license needed to overcome controversial challenges like data breaches, and the invasion of COVID passports and other civil liberty restrictions that impact the travel sector. A privacy framework balancing customer and THO interests rests on four pillars: Compliance, Privacy and ethics, Equitable exchanges of data, and Social license to operate. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

A Sentiment-Aware Approach to Community Formation in Social Media

Participating in a community exemplifies the aspect of sharing, networking and interacting in a social media system. There has been extensive work on characterising on-line communities by their contents and tags using topic modelling tools. However, the role of sentiment and mood has not been studied. Arguably, mood is an integral feature of a text, and becomes more significant in the context of social media: two communities might discuss precisely the same topics, yet within an entirely different atmosphere. Such sentiment-related distinctions are important for many kinds of analysis and applications, such as community recommendation. We present a novel approach to identification of latent hyper-groups in social communities based on users’ sentiment. The results show that a sentiment-based approach can yield useful insights into community formation and meta-communities, having potential applications in, for example, mental health—by targeting support or surveillance to communities with negative mood—or in marketing—by targeting customer communities having the same sentiment on similar topics.

Analysis of Digital Customer Communities in terms of their interactions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has redefined procedures in every business sector. In the first half of 2020, companies had to face an unexpected and unpredictable situation that resulted in both threats and opportunities in real time. Almost overnight, brick-and-mortar establishments of most stores closed, and the dominant part of transactions and activities moved from offline to the online environment. The main goal of the paper is to identify changes in the interactions of digital customer communities of selected e-business representatives in the Czech market. Within a sample of almost one and a half million Facebook users, during the first spring COVID-19 lockdown (March to May 2020), the interactions of the five largest Czech e-shops and their customers were recorded on a daily basis. The data were then subjected to a thorough statistical analysis in order to identify the specifics that resulted from the highly non-standard market situation. The results suggest that during the pandemic, there was a major reallocation of interactions in terms of their timing. Most interactions take place during the working week. From a day-to-day perspective, most of the interactions occur at around noon. In view of the findings, it can be stated that in order to maintain the competitiveness resulting from efficient management of corporate resources, it will be necessary to modify the usual procedures of e-marketing communication, as well as human resources management procedures in terms of the optimization of work of employees working from home.

Evolutionary framework of hierarchy of effects models: exploring relevance in the shifting of customer path

Purpose The hierarchies of effects models have been perpetually updated across different time period. Ever since the evolution of the primary customer path indicated through the Attention, Interest, Desire, Action model in the 1900s, the hierarchical frameworks have witnessed a significant transformation in context to the present age of Web connectivity. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the transformation in the hierarchy of effects models in the age of connectivity. Design/methodology/approach This paper is conceptual in nature and an attempt to provide an overall view of the shifting dimension in the customer path as indicated in the various hierarchies of effects models since evolution up to the age of digitalisation. Findings It is observed that in the age of connectivity customer loyalty is expressed in terms of brand advocacy rather than repurchase, and that the customer path has been redefined. This seems pertinent because of the swift exchange of information that occurs among the online customer communities. Originality/value This paper identifies a need to provide a contemporary outlook to the customer path in the age of internet connectivity.

A Distinct Type of Online Group for Customer Knowledge Innovation: The Virtual Product User Community

Abstract Among online communities of customers there are a number of different types of group that need to be distinguished. One interesting type are virtual product user communities, i.e. company sponsored online forums where product users share usage experience and collaboratively construct new knowledge to solve technical problems. The purpose of this paper is to show that these “virtual product user communities” are a distinct type of customer group with knowledge innovation capability. The research adopts a method combining observation and content analysis of discussion threads where technical problems are solved, complemented by thematic analysis of interviews with forum members to explore its character, especially its knowledge related attributes. The paper confirms empirically that the virtual product user community is a distinct type of virtual community and can be differentiated from other virtual communities of consumers. In addition, an enhanced classification framework, extending Porter’s (2004) classic 5Ps model, is proposed to highlight knowledge-related activities in virtual communities. Of particular interest is that the findings suggest that knowledge-related activities should be considered as an important attribute in defining and classifying virtual communities. In terms of practical implications, it is recommended that the virtual product user community should be given appropriate support from top management in order to fully exploit its knowledge innovation value. Moreover, tailored facilitation strategies to promote knowledge construction activities and community development can be developed in accordance with its unique attributes. The paper precisely distinguishes one specific type of innovative virtual community consisting of product users from other online customer communities. Moreover, it outlines a revised virtual community classification framework, which can be widely applied in analysing features of online groups. Its key attribute of knowledge-related activity redirects attention to virtual communities’ knowledge innovation capabilities.

An online community-based dynamic customisation model: the trade-off between customer satisfaction and enterprise profit

In recent years, the challenges of mass customisation (MC) have been increasing sales conversion rate and effectively matching supply with demand. Additionally, online customer communities (OCCs) have become increasingly popular and have proven to provide substantial value to both customers and enterprises. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to (1) propose a mathematical online community-based dynamic customisation model, (2) explain its practical mechanism and (3) solve its dynamic trade-off challenge. Accordingly, first, the trade-off challenge was formulated according to a multi-objective optimisation model to optimise the trade-off between customer satisfaction and enterprise profit. Second, based on the mechanism of the model, three different matching modes of production between customised products and manufacturers were delineated and analysed. Finally, genetic algorithm (GA) was developed to solve the proposed mathematical model. To validate the proposed model, a case study of an enterprise that provides customised menswear was selected. The degree of customisation and the weights given to the functions of enterprise profit and customer satisfaction were further analysed. The proposed model assists researchers and practitioners to decide the cooperation mode with manufacturers, pricing strategy and the degree of customisation for an optimal trade-off in the context of online community-based dynamic customisation.

Alternative Local Food Shopping Communities in Hungary

As a result of concerns about the long-term sustainability of globalized retail trade and the stronger presence of health conscious consumer behaviour, governments and groups of conscious consumers worldwide are increasingly focusing on the promotion and development of local food systems and small-scale retail chains and the production of quality local food products to promote the market. In our paper, we would like to give an overview of community-led alternative types of local food systems, with particular attention to shopping community-type consumer and consumer communities. We also describe the main results of our primary research in the population and the shopping community. During the questionnaire we revealed general consumer behaviour and the demand and attitude of local food, the popularity of the customer communities in the settlement of the respondents. In the survey conducted among members of the consumer community, we looked at the analytical areas designated as a target in the population questionnaire for the purpose of comparability and our aim was to explore the sociometrics and lifestyles of communities as well as their community experiences and possible developments. Our hypothesis is that there is a close correlation between the respondents with higher education and income and the preferences of local food. Furthermore, it is assumed that there is a significant difference between the food consumption behaviors of the two samples examined.

Cultivating loyal customers through online customer communities: A psychological contract perspective

Despite a number of empirical studies showcasing the power of online customer communities in fostering customer loyalty, the underlying theoretical foundations for this phenomenon remain unclear. Drawing upon psychological contract theory, this study aims to provide a new perspective to understand the exchange relationship between e-retailers and customers through online customer communities. The proposed research model extends the classic trust-commitment framework and incorporates the constructs of feelings of gratitude and personal reciprocity. It addresses the psychological process in relationship development and opens the “black box” between higher-order mental constructs to investigate loyalty. The results of this study indicate that in order to build effective loyalty programs and generate economic benefits from investments in online customer communities, e-retailers should improve customers' awareness of the benefits they receive from these communities, design appropriate strategies to motivate customers' feelings of gratitude, and activate customers' gratitude-based reciprocal behaviors.

The Customer-Dominated Innovation Process: Involving Customers as Designers and Decision-Makers in Developing New Product

This paper aims to explore the mechanism of involving customers as designers and decision-makers in developing new product. This study describes results from in-depth case studies with three companies: Tokyoflash, Threadless, and LEGO. These firms are pioneers in enabling customers to engage in product design and development as both designers and decision-makers. This study is based on detailed in-depth interviews with senior managers within these firms, as well as interviews with participating customer-designers. A new Customer-Dominated Innovation Process is described, which highlights the critical role played by customer-designers and customer communities and challenges the role played by senior managers in traditional phase-review processes. In addition, the methods and key factors needed to enable this engagement are discussed. This new phenomenon challenges standard models of product development in which internal resources retain authority and expertise.

Customer Engagement in Value Co-creation of Xiaomi: A Case Study

The author conducts a case study on a famous mobile internet firm—Xiaomi Technology, which is dedicated to connect all smart devices by smartphone letting everyone enjoy the fun of technology (a new lifestyle). Xiaomi, born for geeks, relentlessly pursues perfection and wins customers’ identity and value co-creation. Xiaomi’s successful customer engagement management reflects in its three strategies (perfect product, fans management, and we-media communication) and three tactics (open participation, interaction mode design, and word-of-mouth event marketing). The author also finds that Xiaomi sponsors hierarchical levels of customer communities each with certain level of customer engagement. Finally, the author proposes further research direction related to the case practices.

Critical Analysis of Current Technologies Employed For e-Commerce Customer Service by Leading Players

The e-commerce customer service technologies adopted by businesses help them present their customers with the information they want quickly, take responsibility for their actions, communicate specific solutions to customers, and maintain their competitive edges. Evidently, different e-commerce customer technologies have different strengths and different deficiencies. Principally, this research study zeroes in on the strengths and downsides of the e-commerce customer service technologies used by Adidas, Standard Bank, and Coca-Cola currently, comparing the technologies critically. They use the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Acquire, and Get Satisfaction e-commerce customer service technologies respectively. If a business is required to adopt Get Satisfaction, Acquire, or Salesforce Commerce Cloud as its e-commerce customer technology, it should consider each of the options’ capabilities and deficiencies. Get Satisfaction and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, unlike Acquire, enable businesses build online customer communities. Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Acquire, unlike Get Satisfaction have analytics capabilities, which are rather important to support organizations, including businesses that offer customer support. Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Acquire, unlike Get Satisfaction, help businesses’ offer consistent customer experiences over varied channels - one of the most critical differentiating factor for retail businesses presently is shopping experience. Acquire and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, unlike Get Satisfaction, assists businesses in integrating customer data.

Open Service Innovation: Capability Portfolio of Online Intermediaries

We integrate service innovation literature with marketing strategy and open innovation thinking to investigate how digital intermediaries facilitate client organizations to innovate their services through the open innovation mechanism of crowdsourcing. Through a longitudinal case study of an online innovation intermediary and its clients, we develop a theoretical framework of the capability portfolio intermediaries deploy in enabling service organizations crowdsource from online customer communities, thus supporting open service innovation. We find that intermediaries cumulatively develop and deploy three capabilities - technological, marketing and co-creation capabilities - to facilitate service organizations in overcoming barriers to implementing open service innovation. Technological and marketing capabilities are developed and deployed right at the start, and help clients overcome project team-level and organizational-level challenges, respectively. Findings show that intermediaries progressively develop and deploy co-creation capabilities. Comprising a portfolio of technology- and market-oriented service capabilities, co-creation capabilities act as a higher-order capability in further enabling open service innovation through two mechanisms. First, through the deployment of client-centric services, co-creation capabilities leverage the intermediaries’ technological and marketing capabilities, thereby amplifying their effectiveness in helping clients deal with identified project-level and organizational barriers to open service innovation. Furthermore, the deployment of co-creation capabilities in intermediaries also enable progressive modifications to technological and marketing capabilities, shifting their very nature to become more relation-focused, in turn leading to better client engagement for open service innovation.