Jens Hogreve and Andrea Beierlein
The authors explore the outcomes of health-care professionals' participation in a vendor-hosted online community by combining qualitative and quantitative data collected in two…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors explore the outcomes of health-care professionals' participation in a vendor-hosted online community by combining qualitative and quantitative data collected in two separate studies. The authors aim to shed light on the potential value outcomes of community participation covering the reduction of service costs by professionals' community participation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors explore the outcomes of health-care professionals' participation in a vendor-hosted online community by combining qualitative and quantitative data collected in two separate studies. The authors also introduce GABEK® as a unique method of qualitative empirical content analysis. In the quantitative study, the authors refer to customer survey data and transactional data.
Findings
The results show that participation in online communities by professionals emerges as a dual concept, consisting of both help-seeking and help-providing behaviors. These behaviors in turn facilitate the creation of economic and relational value, as well as influencing the perceived usefulness of the online community, resulting in higher satisfaction with the community among the participating professionals. Customer survey data and transactional data were gathered from a major medical equipment vendor hosting an online community, and those data confirm that participation also decreases service support costs to professionals by reducing the number of necessary service visits by the vendor's service technicians.
Practical implications
The resulting model of participation and corresponding benefits in an online community for health-care professionals reflects and informs current developments in the health care industry.
Originality/value
The combination of qualitative as well as quantitative studies relying on the data of a world leading medical equipment vendor hosting an online community provides unique and innovative insights into participation and value creation within B2B communities.
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Andreas Oehler, Florian Wedlich, Stefan Wendt and Matthias Horn
The purpose of this study is to analyze whether differences in market-wide levels of investor personality influence experimental asset market outcomes in terms of limit orders…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to analyze whether differences in market-wide levels of investor personality influence experimental asset market outcomes in terms of limit orders, price levels and price bubbles.
Design/methodology/approach
Investor personality is determined by a questionnaire. These data are combined with data from 17 experimental asset markets. Two approaches are used to estimate market-wide levels of investor personality. First, the market-wide average of each personality trait is determined; second, the percentage of individuals with comparable personality in a market is computed. Overall, 364 undergraduate business students participated in the questionnaire and the experimental asset markets.
Findings
Limits and transaction prices are higher in markets with higher mean values in participants’ extraversion and openness to experience and lower mean values in participants’ agreeableness and neuroticism. In markets with lower mean values of subjects’ openness to experiences more overpriced transactions are observed. In markets with a higher proportion of extraverted subjects and a lower proportion of neurotic subjects higher limits and transaction prices are observed. Bubble phases last longer in markets with a higher proportion of extraverted and a lower proportion of neurotic subjects.
Originality/value
Overall, the findings suggest that market-wide personality levels influence market outcomes. As a consequence, market-wide levels of personality help to explain prices in auctions with limited number of participants. Additionally, studies that analyze the influence of subjects’ characteristics, including risk aversion, emotional states or overconfidence, on market outcomes should also consider personality traits as potential underlying factor.
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Melvin Prince, Attila Yaprak, Mark Cleveland, Mark A.P. Davies, Alexander Josiassen, Andrea Nechtelberger, Martin Nechtelberger, Dayananda Palihawadana, Walter Renner, Sona Chovanova Supekova and Sylvia Von Wallpach
The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which personal values, moral foundations and gender-role identities affect, in sequence, consumers' constructions of their…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which personal values, moral foundations and gender-role identities affect, in sequence, consumers' constructions of their ethnocentric and cosmopolitan orientations. Achieving a better understanding of the psychological makeup of consumer ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism should help managers better design international market segmentation and brand positioning strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
The study's conceptual framework is anchored in attitude and values theories, and focuses on the social categorizations that consumers make and how these contribute to the formation of their ethnocentric and cosmopolitan orientations. Drawing data from consumers living in five European countries, we test our theoretical conjectures through structural equation modeling approaches, including multigroup analysis at the country level, as well as the identification and scrutiny of potential pan-European consumer segments.
Findings
Findings show that personal values, moral foundations and gender-role identities do exert direct and indirect (partially mediated) effects on the formation of consumers' ethnocentric and cosmopolitan orientations. These provide numerous insights for managers in terms of how they can segment domestic and international markets, as well as how to position products and communicate brand strategies.
Research limitations/implications
The study focused on consumers' personal and role identities and offers implications based on data gathered from a sample of five European countries. Future work should broaden this perspective by including other identity facets, such as religious and ethnic identities, as well as product-category and brand-specific outcomes, in order to help develop a more comprehensive picture of the psychology underpinning consumers' identity-related orientations, and their effects on consumer behavior. Future research should also study these issues in a broader geographical context, by including national markets that have culturally diverse populations as well as places with dissimilar cultural and economic profiles.
Originality/value
The study shows that individuals' personal values, moral foundations and gender roles have a strong effect on the formation of consumer ethnocentrism and consumer cosmopolitanism orientations. Consideration of how these antecedent constructs operate in concert to shape consumers' in- versus out-group orientations has been overlooked in the international marketing literature. Beyond the ramifications for theory, the study offers numerous substantive managerial implications in terms of how consumers are likely to respond to local and global/foreign products/brands based on these orientations.