Customer engagement has been defined as "the customer's behavioral manifestations that h... more Customer engagement has been defined as "the customer's behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers" (van Doorn et al. 2010, p. 254). The term is often used to refer to creating experiences that allow companies to build deeper, more meaningful and sustainable interactions with their customers (The Economist 2007). While practitioners have been very interested in customer engagement as it is believed to lead to loyalty, academic interest toward customer engagement as a separate construct has been somewhat limited (van Doorn et al. 2010). This research extends the literature on customer engagement by looking at internal and external motivational factors driving engagement and by showing that individual and brand characteristics affect consumer inclination to engage. This dissertation consists of two essays. Essay 1 presents a typology of customer engagement behaviors based on perceived motivational benef...
In recent years the birth of 'digital production' has spurred a lively theoretical debate... more In recent years the birth of 'digital production' has spurred a lively theoretical debate in political economy, seeking to understand the implications of 'immaterial labour' for the labour theory of value. These discussions have identified a number of theoretical challenges pertaining to the conceptualization of capitalist production in digital space. In particular, scholars have been puzzled by the question of how the notion of 'abstract labour-time' applies to immaterial labour, how the 'free use' of websites/applications is compatible with 'commodity production', what role 'users' play in the production process, and whether digital firms can be simply seen as rent-seekers disengaged from value-production altogether. In this paper I present an answer to these questions using Marx's Circuits of Capital model which allows a clear understanding of 'commodity production' and 'labour-processes' to be drawn in any micro...
In recent years the birth of ‘digital production’ has spurred a lively theoretical debate in poli... more In recent years the birth of ‘digital production’ has spurred a lively theoretical debate in political economy, seeking to understand the implications of ‘immaterial labour’ for the labour theory of value. These discussions have identified a number of theoretical challenges pertaining to the conceptualization of capitalist production in digital space. In particular, scholars have been puzzled by the question of how the notion of ‘abstract labour-time’ applies to immaterial labour, how the ‘free use’ of websites/applications is compatible with ‘commodity production’, what role ‘users’ play in the production process, and whether digital firms can be simply seen as rent-seekers disengaged from value-production altogether. In this paper I present an answer to these questions using Marx’s Circuits of Capital model which allows a clear understanding of ‘commodity production’ and ‘labour-processes’ to be drawn in any microeconomic arrangement. I then complement this theoretical analysis wi...
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2020
This paper examines the conditions of the global digital class of platform labourers by drawing o... more This paper examines the conditions of the global digital class of platform labourers by drawing on the theoretical paradigm proposed by Engels in his pioneering contribution, The Conditions of the Working Class in England (CWC). Using a host of empirical sources – surveys, oral narrations, medical and legal journals, and journalistic accounts – the paper develops a political-economic understanding of the working conditions of contemporary crowdworkers while paying close attention to the national and gendered disparities within them. Following Engels’s dialectical mode of presentation in the CWC, the paper proposes a framework that contextualizes the lived experiences of crowdworkers in relation to: 1) the technological infrastructure of platforms, 2) emerging contractual and managerial modes of exploitation, 3) the gendered and racial articulation of labour extraction via Engels’s notion of inter-worker competition, and 4) the macro dynamics of “surplus population” that push workers...
Customer engagement has been defined as "the customer's behavioral manifestations that h... more Customer engagement has been defined as "the customer's behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers" (van Doorn et al. 2010, p. 254). The term is often used to refer to creating experiences that allow companies to build deeper, more meaningful and sustainable interactions with their customers (The Economist 2007). While practitioners have been very interested in customer engagement as it is believed to lead to loyalty, academic interest toward customer engagement as a separate construct has been somewhat limited (van Doorn et al. 2010). This research extends the literature on customer engagement by looking at internal and external motivational factors driving engagement and by showing that individual and brand characteristics affect consumer inclination to engage. This dissertation consists of two essays. Essay 1 presents a typology of customer engagement behaviors based on perceived motivational benef...
In recent years the birth of 'digital production' has spurred a lively theoretical debate... more In recent years the birth of 'digital production' has spurred a lively theoretical debate in political economy, seeking to understand the implications of 'immaterial labour' for the labour theory of value. These discussions have identified a number of theoretical challenges pertaining to the conceptualization of capitalist production in digital space. In particular, scholars have been puzzled by the question of how the notion of 'abstract labour-time' applies to immaterial labour, how the 'free use' of websites/applications is compatible with 'commodity production', what role 'users' play in the production process, and whether digital firms can be simply seen as rent-seekers disengaged from value-production altogether. In this paper I present an answer to these questions using Marx's Circuits of Capital model which allows a clear understanding of 'commodity production' and 'labour-processes' to be drawn in any micro...
In recent years the birth of ‘digital production’ has spurred a lively theoretical debate in poli... more In recent years the birth of ‘digital production’ has spurred a lively theoretical debate in political economy, seeking to understand the implications of ‘immaterial labour’ for the labour theory of value. These discussions have identified a number of theoretical challenges pertaining to the conceptualization of capitalist production in digital space. In particular, scholars have been puzzled by the question of how the notion of ‘abstract labour-time’ applies to immaterial labour, how the ‘free use’ of websites/applications is compatible with ‘commodity production’, what role ‘users’ play in the production process, and whether digital firms can be simply seen as rent-seekers disengaged from value-production altogether. In this paper I present an answer to these questions using Marx’s Circuits of Capital model which allows a clear understanding of ‘commodity production’ and ‘labour-processes’ to be drawn in any microeconomic arrangement. I then complement this theoretical analysis wi...
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2020
This paper examines the conditions of the global digital class of platform labourers by drawing o... more This paper examines the conditions of the global digital class of platform labourers by drawing on the theoretical paradigm proposed by Engels in his pioneering contribution, The Conditions of the Working Class in England (CWC). Using a host of empirical sources – surveys, oral narrations, medical and legal journals, and journalistic accounts – the paper develops a political-economic understanding of the working conditions of contemporary crowdworkers while paying close attention to the national and gendered disparities within them. Following Engels’s dialectical mode of presentation in the CWC, the paper proposes a framework that contextualizes the lived experiences of crowdworkers in relation to: 1) the technological infrastructure of platforms, 2) emerging contractual and managerial modes of exploitation, 3) the gendered and racial articulation of labour extraction via Engels’s notion of inter-worker competition, and 4) the macro dynamics of “surplus population” that push workers...
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