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This meta-analytic study aims to generalize the impacts of three customer equity drivers (CEDs), including value equity (VE), brand equity (BE) and relationship equity (RE), on different customer metrics (e.g. loyalty, word of mouth [WoM] and satisfaction); examine the relative importance of CEDs on customer metrics; and explore boundary conditions, considering geographic and methodological characteristics.

This study used a meta-analytic approach, collected and coded 85 articles published between 2001 and 2022. After some exclusions, the authors used 272 observations (average of individuals’ sample M = 1,015, min = 10, max = 8,924).

The generalized effects of VE, BE, and RE on the selected customer metrics are positive. However, the importance of each CED differs for WoM and social equity. Between VE and BE, BE correlates more with WoM. RE correlates more with social equity than VE and BE That is, RE is effective in both WoM and social equity. In addition, the impacts of the CEDs on customer loyalty vary across multiple geographic and methodological characteristics. For example, the impacts of VE and RE on loyalty are stronger in more individualistic, more masculine, long-term orientation or more restraint cultures.

While the authors examined VE, BE and RE as the most important marketing strategies, there might be other types of CEDs, such as interactions with others (e.g. employees and customers). Interactions with others at any touchpoints along the customer journey are important experiences (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Second, the authors limited the customer metrics to customer loyalty, WoM, customer satisfaction, customer trust and social equity.

The magnitudes of VE, BE and RE differ across the three customer metrics. Compared with VE, BE symbolizes customers’ identity, status and extended self, which motivates WoM. Compared with VE and BE, RE convinces customers of companies’ actions in social equity such as corporate social responsibilities.

The meta-analysis resolves the issue of inconsistent impacts of CEDs across studies. Moreover, including CEDs in a model provides insight into these strategies’ relative importance when considering different marketing objectives. Finally, this study enriches understanding of the boundary conditions on the CEDs–loyalty link.

Most studies investigating the adoption of lean startup (LS) practices by technology new ventures focus on software startups in mature entrepreneurial ecosystems and disregard their applicability for opportunity exploitation in other technological backgrounds. This study contributes to this research stream by exploring how Brazilian technology new ventures (in different technological fields) tentatively adopt LS to exploit opportunities and whether LS is suitable to their emerging economy context.

The authors adopt an exploratory multiple-case study based on qualitative data collection and analysis of nine Brazilian biotechnology, engineering and software startups.

The study shows how technology new ventures tackle the activities of opportunity exploitation – namely, developing a product or service, acquiring human resources, gathering financial resources and setting up the organization – by leveraging LS tools and practices for business model validation; also, it identifies six contextual constraints hindering the systematic adoption of LS and reveals how technology new ventures cope with such constraints in their early stages by integrating LS with complementary strategies and practices. Furthermore, the study reveals that the systematic and comprehensive adoption of LS nurtures the development of an entrepreneurial experimental capability to explore opportunities in a quasi-scientific and hypothesis-driven fashion.

The study investigates how Brazilian engineering, biotechnology and software startups exploit opportunities and overcome constraints to business model validation through the combined adoption of LS and complementary strategies and practices and provides a set of propositions to guide future research.

Startups have attracted increased attention over the past years. While entrepreneurs develop startups to capture new business opportunities, also large companies are turning to these fast-growing organizations in efforts to become more agile. However, managing business model innovation and validation is challenging. A number of methodologies, like the Lean Startup (LS), emerged to reduce uncertainties concerning innovation-based projects, and to contribute to business model validation. Despite its popularity, the literature on the LS and its key underpinnings (Agile Methodologies and Customer Development) is sparse, lacking an integrated and structured analysis of their impacts and potentialities. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors conducted a comprehensive systematic literature review on the topic fully analyzing a final set of 71 papers.

There is a turning point in the research stream’s maturity with publications in conferences and major journals, with the predominance of empirical investigations in the European region. Articles on the topic are on the rise in several technology fields. However, the literature on the subject falls short on providing guidance to assist practitioners and scholars on the adoption and investigation of these methodologies.

The paper provides guidance for practice by presenting a staircase roadmap for the LS implementation drawing from the final set of papers reviewed.

The study categorizes the current literature through a concept map, and offers a structured research agenda beyond the categories from the thematic analysis.

Through a literature review, a gap has been identified regarding the role of competition as a driver of social network (SN) usage. This study aims to design to address this gap, seeking motivators for SN usage based on how SN consumption may be related to users’ experience of competition. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of competition in social media usage.

The authors used an exploratory qualitative approach, conducting a set of focus groups with young social media users. Data was analyzed with software.

Two new drivers for SN use are proposed, namely, competition and collective narrative.

This is an exploratory study, and it does not seek to generalize results or quantify causal relationships among variables.

This paper offers SN managers a deeper understanding of key growth drivers for these media.

This research can help society understand and debate the impacts of SNs on users’ lives, providing insights into drivers of excessive usage.

This paper proposes the following two SN usage drivers yet to be described in the literature: competition and collective narrative.