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This paper aims to explore how the lived experience of online communities’ participants makes these communities evolve into online communities of practice (CoPs).

A quantitative research design was used among backpackers. Data on backpackers’ lived experience and interactions were collected.

The results suggest a process of how online communities can become genuine online CoPs, thanks to participants’ lived experience. Their activities (information search, perceived benefits and electronic word-of-mouth) result in knowledge sharing and creation. The findings also emphasize the roles of expertise and offline interactions as process moderators.

This study focuses on one specific practice to conduct the research (i.e. backpacking), which limits the generalizability of the results.

This study offers several implications for companies and stakeholders. First, it describes how the lived experience transforms online communities into CoPs and helps stakeholders obtain knowledge for customers to innovate. Second, it analyzes the processes of participation, interaction and promotion to share and create knowledge for customers to increase stakeholders’ competitiveness. Third, this study integrates members’ offline interactions by highlighting their potential effects on tacit knowledge loss in online CoPs.

The literature posits that online communities may evolve into online CoPs through a three-stage hierarchical path, but the underlying mechanisms and members’ contributions to the process have been largely neglected in the literature.

This research paper aims to explore how social intrapreneurs use serious games to generate social innovation. In particular, the study depicts the coproduction process between caregivers acting as intrapreneurs, patients and other stakeholders, and unveils the contributions of serious games and their key features in producing social innovation within healthcare facilities.

Through an original case study, the article analyzes a social innovation initiated by caregivers in the French care eco-system. Primary and secondary data were used to observe and examine the successful implementation of a serious game. Specifically, caregivers in hospital designed a game that helps children overcome the stress and anxiety inherent to their hospital journey.

Results unveil the role of social innovations as catalyst of social intrapreneurship and the coproduction of services. In the healthcare setting, serious games both participate in improving the stay of child in hospitals, and in facilitating the working conditions of caregivers.

This article brings together the theoretical background of social intrapreneurship, social innovation and serious games. The successful implementation of social innovation depends on the intrinsic features of social intrapreneurs, coupled with those pertaining to serious games. The positive outcome of social innovation benefits both internal and external stakeholders. Such innovation improves the end users' experience, as the latter participate in the coproduction of their own care.

Building on construal level theory and applying the hypothetical distance dimension, this cross-cultural study (individualistic vs collectivistic culture) aims to explore the effects of cause familiarity on individuals' attitudes toward a brand and how cause–brand fit mediates this relationship. Furthermore, this study explores how perceived betrayal moderates the relationship between cause–brand fit and attitude toward a brand.

A quantitative research design was adopted. Data collection was performed through snowball sampling of French and Turkish participants (N = 455). The collected data were then analyzed using the PROCESS macro for SPSS.

The results reveal a significant effect of cause familiarity on attitude toward the brand, wherein one's attitude toward fit in a cause–brand alliance serves as a mediator in this relationship. The results also indicate that perceived betrayal moderates the relationship between cause–brand fit and attitude toward a brand. However, when it comes to facing a global pandemic, culture has no significant effect on consumers' perceptions and attitudes toward cause–brand alliances.

This research investigates the enhancement of attitudes toward a brand through an alliance with a familiar cause and explains this relationship via attitudes toward fit in such an alliance. Moreover, it provides novel insights into perceived betrayal as a variable that can lead to a more pronounced relationship between attitude toward fit and attitude toward a brand.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns on consumer purchase behavior among French millennials contrasted with their international counterparts. Based on the regulatory-focus theory, the influence of the types of arguments and products is tested on French millennials’ attitudes, intentions and behaviors in the context of CRM campaigns.

Three experimental studies among French millennials examine the effects of a CRM campaign vs non-CRM one on purchase behavior (study 1) through varying the formulation of the argument (promotion or prevention – study 2) and the nature of the advertised product (utilitarian or hedonic – study 3).

The results reveal French millennials’ favorable attitude and greater purchase intention for products carrying CRM messages, displaying similarities with American and Dutch millennials. When exposed to CRM advertising with promotion messages for hedonic products, French millennials, similarly to their South African and American counterparts, show greater purchase intentions, exhibiting cause sensitivity with hedonic products to reach aspirational goals.

Inconsistent findings related to French millennials’ willingness to pay are linked to possible message formulation and product nature biases. The study contributes to the CRM literature by bridging regulatory focus and product type in a CRM campaign context, while contrasting millennials’ perceptions from diverse countries.

To improve CRM effectiveness toward millennials, firms must ensure the consistency between the causes, types of messages and products.

CRM campaign efficiency is enhanced when promoted by brands, thereby increasing millennials’ engagement toward the causes.

This paper is the first to explore, in a single study, CRM campaign regulatory focus and product type among French millennials compared with their international counterparts.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the roles of virtual agents in a virtual co-creation context by exploring their influence on online trust. An empirical study is conducted in the French online wine business to analyse the impacts of different dimensions of virtual agents on generating online trust.

Primary data were collected through a questionnaire targeting French online wine shoppers.

The results demonstrate a positive effect of the utility and hedonic functions of virtual agents on online trust. The findings also confirm the moderating role of the perceived risk.

The authors’ convenience sample shows a bias towards a lack of familiarity with virtual agents.

Wine business actors need to consider their customers’ profiles in order to better adapt virtual agents’ functionality and hence improve their customers’ level of online trust while reducing their risk perception. Additionally, understanding virtual agents’ roles can help identify the underlying mechanisms that emerge in a co-creation process.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the human dimension of co-creation by examining the different roles of virtual agents as sources of customers’ online trust.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the generational cohort effect on responsible consumer behavior. Based on the theory of planned behavior and the generational cohort theory, the authors test the impact of perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE), media exposure (ME), the social group influence of family and peers and self-identity on the intention of Generation X and Generation Y to purchase environmentally responsible products.

The data were collected from 1,870 respondents in France. Based on the factor scores from a confirmatory factor analysis, the authors tested for interaction effects by employing regression and path analyses. A two-group structural model evaluated the strength of each cohort’s direct effects and the significant differences between the groups.

The results reveal a generational (cohort) effect on the relationship between PCE and ME and the intention to purchase environmentally responsible products.

The convenience sample shows bias toward younger people, especially students. In addition, some latent variables show low AVE scores, probably due to scale interpretation differences. By measuring purchase intention, the study disregards the actual behavior of consumers.

To increase consumers’ personal involvement in responsible purchasing behaviors, marketers could cater to the social desirability side of Gen Y by emphasizing products that express community values; on the other hand, marketers could appeal to the PCE of Gen X by providing more information and convincing them that their actions matter.

The efficiency of awareness and promotional campaigns for environmentally responsible products will be enhanced when marketers employ segmentation based on generational cohorts.

The study contributes to a better understanding of responsible consumer behavior by identifying generational cohort differences.

This paper aims to investigate how pharmacies communicate their customer value proposition (CVP) in a complex and multiple-stakeholder setting. More specifically, from the pharmacists’ perspective, the study analyzes how CVP is articulated in complex settings/offerings and among multiple stakeholders; and elucidates the communication gap among stakeholders of the CVP.

Two studies were conducted to examine how offerings are communicated throughout the value chain. Through six in-depth interviews, Study 1 aimed to analyze how pharmacies articulate CVP for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs in a complex business-to-business-to-consumer setting. For Study 2, the data were collected from 113 French pharmacists to investigate the communication issues and to unveil the tools used to promote OTC drugs among the different stakeholders.

From the pharmacists’ perspective, the longer the chain, the more complex the efficiency of the CVP. This study conceives a new and adapted CVP as iterative and cumulative. This paper also highlights how value is distributed across the customer relationship in a complex and regulated industry. The findings feature a reciprocal perspective of CVP between the pharmaceutical labs and their direct/indirect customers. Final customers aim at creating a reciprocal approach with the different stakeholders. Pharmacists use a unidirectional perspective of CVP with their direct customers (patients/final customers).

The study contributes to a better understanding of the CVP in complex industries characterized by a chain of value distributed among multiple stakeholders (i.e. business-to-consumer and business-to-business). The article also enriches past research that analyzed the way firms communicate their offerings from a CVP perspective.