Purpose-Past research on luxury is fragmented resulting in challenges to define what the construc... more Purpose-Past research on luxury is fragmented resulting in challenges to define what the construct of luxury means. Based on a need for conceptual clarity, this study aims to map how research conceptualises luxury and its creation.
Design/methodology/approach-This study presents a scoping review of luxury articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Of the initial 270 articles discovered by using the database of Scopus, and after control searching in Web of Science and reference scanning, 54 high-quality studies published before the end of 2020 were found to meet the inclusion criteria and comprised the final analytical corpus.
Findings-The findings demonstrate that research approaches luxury and its creation from three different perspectives: the provider-, consumer-and co-creation perspectives. In addition, the findings pinpoint how the perspectives differ from each other due to fundamental and distinguishing features and reveal particularities that underlie the perspectives.
Research limitations/implications-The suggested framework offers implications to researchers who are interested in evaluating and developing luxury studies. Based on the identified luxury perspectives, the study identifies future research avenues.
Originality/value-The study contributes to the luxury research stream by advancing an understanding of an existing pluralistic perspective and by adding conceptual clarity to luxury literature. It also contributes
Purpose - Digital platform users not only consume but also produce communication related to their... more Purpose - Digital platform users not only consume but also produce communication related to their experiences. Although service research has explored users' motivations to communicate and focused on outcomes such as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), it remains largely unexplored how users iteratively interact with communication artifacts and potentially create value for themselves, other users and service providers. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to introduce communicative affordances as a framework to advance user-created communication (UCC) in service.
Design/methodology/approach - Drawing from the literature in communication, service research and interactive marketing, an affordance perspective on UCC in service is introduced.
Findings - Three UCC affordances for the service context are presentedinteractivity, visibility and anonymityopportunities and challenges for service providers associated with these affordances are discussed and, finally, affordance-specific research questions and general recommendations for future research are offered.
Research limitations/implications - By conceptualizing UCC in service from an affordances perspective, this paper moves beyond the traditional sender-receiver communication framework and emphasizes opportunities and challenges for service research and practice.
Purpose - The definition of value adopted by the current service perspective on marketing theory ... more Purpose - The definition of value adopted by the current service perspective on marketing theory is value as value-in-use. Surprisingly, however, little attention has been given to the question of what constitutes value-in-use for customers in service contexts? Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide an empirical account of value-in-use from service customers' point of view.
Design/methodology/approach - To capture and analyze customers' experiences of value-in-use in the typical service context of retail banking, this study employed a narrative-based critical incident technique (CIT) and a graphical tool called the value chart.
Findings - The study identified seven empirical dimensions of positive and negative value-in-use: solution, attitude, convenience, expertise, speed of service, flexibility, and monetary costs. Interestingly, these value-in-use dimensions overlap considerably with previously identified dimensions of service quality.
Research limitations/implications - The concepts of service quality and value-in-use in service contexts seem to represent the same empirical phenomenon despite their different theoretical traditions. Measuring customer-perceived service quality might therefore be a good proxy for assessing value-in-use in service contexts.
Practical implications - As the findings indicate that service quality is the way in which service customers experience value-in-use, service managers are recommended to focus on continuous quality management to facilitate the creation of value-in-use.
Originality/value - This study is the first to explicitly raise the notion that in the minds of service customers, value defined as value-in-use and service quality may represent the same empirical phenomenon.
Keywords: Value-in-use, Customer value, Service quality, Service logic, Critical incident technique, Retail banking.
Purpose – Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, c... more Purpose – Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences, and behaviours can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities for designing personalized and high-quality service. This paper reviews how netnography can help service researchers and practitioners better utilize such data.
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review and analysis were conducted of 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.
Findings – The systematic review revealed that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical, and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.
Research limitations/implications – This paper shows that netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.
Practical implications – Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising, and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.
Originality/value – Netnography has been put to limited use in service research, despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of this method, and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.
Keywords: Netnography, Ethnography, Service research, Internet research, Qualitative research, Method.
Det här kapitlet handlar om varför människor ger sig själva presenter i form av lyxvarumärken. Må... more Det här kapitlet handlar om varför människor ger sig själva presenter i form av lyxvarumärken. Många konsumenter köper lyxvaror för helt egen konsumtion, men de underliggande orsakerna till detta fenomen är inte helt klarlagda. Å ena sidan antas det att konsumenter köper lyxiga presenter till sig själva för att uppfylla vissa behov, t.ex. belöning för en prestation eller som ”plåster på såren” för en obehaglig upplevelse. Å andra sidan ses lyxvarumärken och lyxvaror som sociala ställningstaganden, d.v.s. konsumenten vill signalera eller kommunicera ett visst budskap till sin omgivning. Det betyder att konsumenters inköp av lyxiga presenter till sig själva kan motiveras av både externa (för att få uppmärksamhet från andra) och interna (för ens egen skull) faktorer. För att skapa en bättre förståelse av detta konsumentbeteende fokuserar vi i denna studie på att undersöka vilka motiv som driver konsumenter att köpa modeprodukter av lyxiga varumärken åt sig själva i present.
International Journal of Bank Marketing, Aug 30, 2014
This research explores value formation in the customer-bank relationship outside the line of visi... more This research explores value formation in the customer-bank relationship outside the line of visibility of service encounters. The customer’s own context has been overlooked by the bank marketing literature as it is traditionally focused on value created by the service process and outcome.
Positioned within the customer dominant logic, a netnography was conducted to explore how bank relationships are realised in customers’ own contexts and experiences. A total of 579 postings from discussions of retail banking in 18 online communities were collected and analysed.
The study uncovered four factors of invisible bank service value experienced by customers: shared moral value, responsibility value, relationship value, and heritage value.
The study conceptualises bank service value as realised in the customers’ own domain and thus highlights previously hidden sources of value in banking. The findings can be used for further conceptualisations of the customer dominant value formation of bank services.
The netnographic method illustrates how naturalistic data about customers’ retail bank experiences can be retrieved unobtrusively. The findings help bank management to understand what comprises customer value beyond the service encounter.
The paper contributes to the research in service marketing and bank marketing in three ways: First, a methodological contribution is the introduction of a netnographic approach to bank service value research. Second, a theoretical contribution is the uncovering of invisible value formation in the customer-bank relationship. Third, the paper uses the customer dominant logic in a banking context, thus providing insights into how banks are involved in the customer’s own life.
Purpose-Past research on luxury is fragmented resulting in challenges to define what the construc... more Purpose-Past research on luxury is fragmented resulting in challenges to define what the construct of luxury means. Based on a need for conceptual clarity, this study aims to map how research conceptualises luxury and its creation.
Design/methodology/approach-This study presents a scoping review of luxury articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Of the initial 270 articles discovered by using the database of Scopus, and after control searching in Web of Science and reference scanning, 54 high-quality studies published before the end of 2020 were found to meet the inclusion criteria and comprised the final analytical corpus.
Findings-The findings demonstrate that research approaches luxury and its creation from three different perspectives: the provider-, consumer-and co-creation perspectives. In addition, the findings pinpoint how the perspectives differ from each other due to fundamental and distinguishing features and reveal particularities that underlie the perspectives.
Research limitations/implications-The suggested framework offers implications to researchers who are interested in evaluating and developing luxury studies. Based on the identified luxury perspectives, the study identifies future research avenues.
Originality/value-The study contributes to the luxury research stream by advancing an understanding of an existing pluralistic perspective and by adding conceptual clarity to luxury literature. It also contributes
Purpose - Digital platform users not only consume but also produce communication related to their... more Purpose - Digital platform users not only consume but also produce communication related to their experiences. Although service research has explored users' motivations to communicate and focused on outcomes such as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), it remains largely unexplored how users iteratively interact with communication artifacts and potentially create value for themselves, other users and service providers. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to introduce communicative affordances as a framework to advance user-created communication (UCC) in service.
Design/methodology/approach - Drawing from the literature in communication, service research and interactive marketing, an affordance perspective on UCC in service is introduced.
Findings - Three UCC affordances for the service context are presentedinteractivity, visibility and anonymityopportunities and challenges for service providers associated with these affordances are discussed and, finally, affordance-specific research questions and general recommendations for future research are offered.
Research limitations/implications - By conceptualizing UCC in service from an affordances perspective, this paper moves beyond the traditional sender-receiver communication framework and emphasizes opportunities and challenges for service research and practice.
Purpose - The definition of value adopted by the current service perspective on marketing theory ... more Purpose - The definition of value adopted by the current service perspective on marketing theory is value as value-in-use. Surprisingly, however, little attention has been given to the question of what constitutes value-in-use for customers in service contexts? Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide an empirical account of value-in-use from service customers' point of view.
Design/methodology/approach - To capture and analyze customers' experiences of value-in-use in the typical service context of retail banking, this study employed a narrative-based critical incident technique (CIT) and a graphical tool called the value chart.
Findings - The study identified seven empirical dimensions of positive and negative value-in-use: solution, attitude, convenience, expertise, speed of service, flexibility, and monetary costs. Interestingly, these value-in-use dimensions overlap considerably with previously identified dimensions of service quality.
Research limitations/implications - The concepts of service quality and value-in-use in service contexts seem to represent the same empirical phenomenon despite their different theoretical traditions. Measuring customer-perceived service quality might therefore be a good proxy for assessing value-in-use in service contexts.
Practical implications - As the findings indicate that service quality is the way in which service customers experience value-in-use, service managers are recommended to focus on continuous quality management to facilitate the creation of value-in-use.
Originality/value - This study is the first to explicitly raise the notion that in the minds of service customers, value defined as value-in-use and service quality may represent the same empirical phenomenon.
Keywords: Value-in-use, Customer value, Service quality, Service logic, Critical incident technique, Retail banking.
Purpose – Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, c... more Purpose – Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences, and behaviours can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities for designing personalized and high-quality service. This paper reviews how netnography can help service researchers and practitioners better utilize such data.
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review and analysis were conducted of 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.
Findings – The systematic review revealed that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical, and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.
Research limitations/implications – This paper shows that netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.
Practical implications – Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising, and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.
Originality/value – Netnography has been put to limited use in service research, despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of this method, and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.
Keywords: Netnography, Ethnography, Service research, Internet research, Qualitative research, Method.
Det här kapitlet handlar om varför människor ger sig själva presenter i form av lyxvarumärken. Må... more Det här kapitlet handlar om varför människor ger sig själva presenter i form av lyxvarumärken. Många konsumenter köper lyxvaror för helt egen konsumtion, men de underliggande orsakerna till detta fenomen är inte helt klarlagda. Å ena sidan antas det att konsumenter köper lyxiga presenter till sig själva för att uppfylla vissa behov, t.ex. belöning för en prestation eller som ”plåster på såren” för en obehaglig upplevelse. Å andra sidan ses lyxvarumärken och lyxvaror som sociala ställningstaganden, d.v.s. konsumenten vill signalera eller kommunicera ett visst budskap till sin omgivning. Det betyder att konsumenters inköp av lyxiga presenter till sig själva kan motiveras av både externa (för att få uppmärksamhet från andra) och interna (för ens egen skull) faktorer. För att skapa en bättre förståelse av detta konsumentbeteende fokuserar vi i denna studie på att undersöka vilka motiv som driver konsumenter att köpa modeprodukter av lyxiga varumärken åt sig själva i present.
International Journal of Bank Marketing, Aug 30, 2014
This research explores value formation in the customer-bank relationship outside the line of visi... more This research explores value formation in the customer-bank relationship outside the line of visibility of service encounters. The customer’s own context has been overlooked by the bank marketing literature as it is traditionally focused on value created by the service process and outcome.
Positioned within the customer dominant logic, a netnography was conducted to explore how bank relationships are realised in customers’ own contexts and experiences. A total of 579 postings from discussions of retail banking in 18 online communities were collected and analysed.
The study uncovered four factors of invisible bank service value experienced by customers: shared moral value, responsibility value, relationship value, and heritage value.
The study conceptualises bank service value as realised in the customers’ own domain and thus highlights previously hidden sources of value in banking. The findings can be used for further conceptualisations of the customer dominant value formation of bank services.
The netnographic method illustrates how naturalistic data about customers’ retail bank experiences can be retrieved unobtrusively. The findings help bank management to understand what comprises customer value beyond the service encounter.
The paper contributes to the research in service marketing and bank marketing in three ways: First, a methodological contribution is the introduction of a netnographic approach to bank service value research. Second, a theoretical contribution is the uncovering of invisible value formation in the customer-bank relationship. Third, the paper uses the customer dominant logic in a banking context, thus providing insights into how banks are involved in the customer’s own life.
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Papers by Gustav Medberg
Design/methodology/approach-This study presents a scoping review of luxury articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Of the initial 270 articles discovered by using the database of Scopus, and after control searching in Web of Science and reference scanning, 54 high-quality studies published before the end of 2020 were found to meet the inclusion criteria and comprised the final analytical corpus.
Findings-The findings demonstrate that research approaches luxury and its creation from three different perspectives: the provider-, consumer-and co-creation perspectives. In addition, the findings pinpoint how the perspectives differ from each other due to fundamental and distinguishing features and reveal particularities that underlie the perspectives.
Research limitations/implications-The suggested framework offers implications to researchers who are interested in evaluating and developing luxury studies. Based on the identified luxury perspectives, the study identifies future research avenues.
Originality/value-The study contributes to the luxury research stream by advancing an understanding of an existing pluralistic perspective and by adding conceptual clarity to luxury literature. It also contributes
Design/methodology/approach - Drawing from the literature in communication, service research and interactive marketing, an affordance perspective on UCC in service is introduced.
Findings - Three UCC affordances for the service context are presentedinteractivity, visibility and anonymityopportunities and challenges for service providers associated with these affordances are discussed and, finally, affordance-specific research questions and general recommendations for future research are offered.
Research limitations/implications - By conceptualizing UCC in service from an affordances perspective, this paper moves beyond the traditional sender-receiver communication framework and emphasizes opportunities and challenges for service research and practice.
Design/methodology/approach - To capture and analyze customers' experiences of value-in-use in the typical service context of retail banking, this study employed a narrative-based critical incident technique (CIT) and a graphical tool called the value chart.
Findings - The study identified seven empirical dimensions of positive and negative value-in-use: solution, attitude, convenience, expertise, speed of service, flexibility, and monetary costs. Interestingly, these value-in-use dimensions overlap considerably with previously identified dimensions of service quality.
Research limitations/implications - The concepts of service quality and value-in-use in service contexts seem to represent the same empirical phenomenon despite their different theoretical traditions. Measuring customer-perceived service quality might therefore be a good proxy for assessing value-in-use in service contexts.
Practical implications - As the findings indicate that service quality is the way in which service customers experience value-in-use, service managers are recommended to focus on continuous quality management to facilitate the creation of value-in-use.
Originality/value - This study is the first to explicitly raise the notion that in the minds of service customers, value defined as value-in-use and service quality may represent the same empirical phenomenon.
Keywords: Value-in-use, Customer value, Service quality, Service logic, Critical incident technique, Retail banking.
Paper type: Research paper
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review and analysis were conducted of 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.
Findings – The systematic review revealed that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical, and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.
Research limitations/implications – This paper shows that netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.
Practical implications – Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising, and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.
Originality/value – Netnography has been put to limited use in service research, despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of this method, and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.
Keywords: Netnography, Ethnography, Service research, Internet research, Qualitative research, Method.
Positioned within the customer dominant logic, a netnography was conducted to explore how bank relationships are realised in customers’ own contexts and experiences. A total of 579 postings from discussions of retail banking in 18 online communities were collected and analysed.
The study uncovered four factors of invisible bank service value experienced by customers: shared moral value, responsibility value, relationship value, and heritage value.
The study conceptualises bank service value as realised in the customers’ own domain and thus highlights previously hidden sources of value in banking. The findings can be used for further conceptualisations of the customer dominant value formation of bank services.
The netnographic method illustrates how naturalistic data about customers’ retail bank experiences can be retrieved unobtrusively. The findings help bank management to understand what comprises customer value beyond the service encounter.
The paper contributes to the research in service marketing and bank marketing in three ways: First, a methodological contribution is the introduction of a netnographic approach to bank service value research. Second, a theoretical contribution is the uncovering of invisible value formation in the customer-bank relationship. Third, the paper uses the customer dominant logic in a banking context, thus providing insights into how banks are involved in the customer’s own life.
Books by Gustav Medberg
Design/methodology/approach-This study presents a scoping review of luxury articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Of the initial 270 articles discovered by using the database of Scopus, and after control searching in Web of Science and reference scanning, 54 high-quality studies published before the end of 2020 were found to meet the inclusion criteria and comprised the final analytical corpus.
Findings-The findings demonstrate that research approaches luxury and its creation from three different perspectives: the provider-, consumer-and co-creation perspectives. In addition, the findings pinpoint how the perspectives differ from each other due to fundamental and distinguishing features and reveal particularities that underlie the perspectives.
Research limitations/implications-The suggested framework offers implications to researchers who are interested in evaluating and developing luxury studies. Based on the identified luxury perspectives, the study identifies future research avenues.
Originality/value-The study contributes to the luxury research stream by advancing an understanding of an existing pluralistic perspective and by adding conceptual clarity to luxury literature. It also contributes
Design/methodology/approach - Drawing from the literature in communication, service research and interactive marketing, an affordance perspective on UCC in service is introduced.
Findings - Three UCC affordances for the service context are presentedinteractivity, visibility and anonymityopportunities and challenges for service providers associated with these affordances are discussed and, finally, affordance-specific research questions and general recommendations for future research are offered.
Research limitations/implications - By conceptualizing UCC in service from an affordances perspective, this paper moves beyond the traditional sender-receiver communication framework and emphasizes opportunities and challenges for service research and practice.
Design/methodology/approach - To capture and analyze customers' experiences of value-in-use in the typical service context of retail banking, this study employed a narrative-based critical incident technique (CIT) and a graphical tool called the value chart.
Findings - The study identified seven empirical dimensions of positive and negative value-in-use: solution, attitude, convenience, expertise, speed of service, flexibility, and monetary costs. Interestingly, these value-in-use dimensions overlap considerably with previously identified dimensions of service quality.
Research limitations/implications - The concepts of service quality and value-in-use in service contexts seem to represent the same empirical phenomenon despite their different theoretical traditions. Measuring customer-perceived service quality might therefore be a good proxy for assessing value-in-use in service contexts.
Practical implications - As the findings indicate that service quality is the way in which service customers experience value-in-use, service managers are recommended to focus on continuous quality management to facilitate the creation of value-in-use.
Originality/value - This study is the first to explicitly raise the notion that in the minds of service customers, value defined as value-in-use and service quality may represent the same empirical phenomenon.
Keywords: Value-in-use, Customer value, Service quality, Service logic, Critical incident technique, Retail banking.
Paper type: Research paper
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review and analysis were conducted of 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.
Findings – The systematic review revealed that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical, and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.
Research limitations/implications – This paper shows that netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.
Practical implications – Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising, and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.
Originality/value – Netnography has been put to limited use in service research, despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of this method, and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.
Keywords: Netnography, Ethnography, Service research, Internet research, Qualitative research, Method.
Positioned within the customer dominant logic, a netnography was conducted to explore how bank relationships are realised in customers’ own contexts and experiences. A total of 579 postings from discussions of retail banking in 18 online communities were collected and analysed.
The study uncovered four factors of invisible bank service value experienced by customers: shared moral value, responsibility value, relationship value, and heritage value.
The study conceptualises bank service value as realised in the customers’ own domain and thus highlights previously hidden sources of value in banking. The findings can be used for further conceptualisations of the customer dominant value formation of bank services.
The netnographic method illustrates how naturalistic data about customers’ retail bank experiences can be retrieved unobtrusively. The findings help bank management to understand what comprises customer value beyond the service encounter.
The paper contributes to the research in service marketing and bank marketing in three ways: First, a methodological contribution is the introduction of a netnographic approach to bank service value research. Second, a theoretical contribution is the uncovering of invisible value formation in the customer-bank relationship. Third, the paper uses the customer dominant logic in a banking context, thus providing insights into how banks are involved in the customer’s own life.