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ABSTRACT In this study we examine the effect of customers’ participation in a firm’s social media efforts on the intensity of the relationship between the firm and its customers as captured by customers’ visit frequency. We further... more
ABSTRACT In this study we examine the effect of customers’ participation in a firm’s social media efforts on the intensity of the relationship between the firm and its customers as captured by customers’ visit frequency. We further hypothesize and test for the moderating roles of social media activity and customer characteristics on the link between social media participation and the intensity of customer-firm relationship. Importantly, we also quantify the impact of social media participation on customer profitability. We assemble a novel data set that combines customers’ social media participation data with individual customer level transaction data. To account for endogeneity that could arise because of customer self-selection, we utilize the propensity score matching technique in combination with difference in differences analysis. Our results suggest that customer participation in a firm’s social media efforts leads to an increase in the frequency of customer visits. We find that this participation effect is greater when there are high levels of activity in the social media site and for customers who exhibit a strong patronage with the firm, buy premium products, and exhibit lower levels of buying focus and deal sensitivity. We find that the above set of results holds for customer profitability as well. We discuss theoretical implications of our results and offer prescriptions for managers on how to engage customers via social media. Our study emphasizes the need for managers to integrate knowledge from customers’ transactional relationship with their social media participation to better serve customers and create sustainable business value.
There has been a blurring with respect to the retail formats because of competition and proliferation of different types of formats. In this research, we use a unique scanner panel dataset to investigate how brand choice behavior varies... more
There has been a blurring with respect to the retail formats because of competition and proliferation of different types of formats. In this research, we use a unique scanner panel dataset to investigate how brand choice behavior varies for the same consumer shopping for the same brand across different retail formats. We develop hypotheses pertaining to promotion sensitivity, price sensitivity, package size preference, and effects of demographic and shopping variables on consumer brand choice behavior and test them using a multi-format probit choice model that allows for the estimation of the cross-format differences with respect to the above. We find that consumers exhibit different promotion and price sensitivities in brand choice behavior between the mass merchandise format and supermarkets. Discussions and insights are provided.
Amid growing competition, retailers are increasingly interested in more effective aisle and display management strategies. These strategies involve placements of product categories in aisles and displays within each store to facilitate... more
Amid growing competition, retailers are increasingly interested in more effective aisle and display management strategies. These strategies involve placements of product categories in aisles and displays within each store to facilitate greater sales affinity (demand attraction) between categories to improve the store's share of customer wallet. The authors investigate the effects of aisle and display placements on the sales affinities