Jochen Wirtz, Jonas Holmqvist and Martin P. Fritze
The market for luxury is growing rapidly. While there is a significant body of literature on luxury goods, academic research has largely ignored luxury services. The purpose of…
Abstract
Purpose
The market for luxury is growing rapidly. While there is a significant body of literature on luxury goods, academic research has largely ignored luxury services. The purpose of this article is to open luxury services as a new field of investigation by developing the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings to build the luxury services literature and show how luxury services differ from both luxury goods and from ordinary (i.e. non-luxury) services.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a conceptual approach drawing upon and synthesizing the luxury goods and services marketing literature.
Findings
This article makes three contributions. First, it shows that services are largely missing from the luxury literature, just as the field of luxury is mostly missing from the service literature. Second, it contrasts the key characteristics of services and related consumer behaviors with luxury goods. The service characteristics examined are non-ownership, IHIP (i.e. intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, and perishability), the three additional Ps of services marketing (i.e. people, processes, and physical facilities) and the three-stage service consumption model. This article derives implications these characteristics have on luxury. For example, non-ownership increases the importance of psychological ownership, reduces the importance of conspicuous consumption and the risk of counterfeiting. Third, this article defines luxury services as extraordinary hedonic experiences that are exclusive whereby exclusivity can be monetary, social and hedonic in nature, and luxuriousness is jointly determined by objective service features and subjective customer perceptions. Together, these characteristics place a service on a continuum ranging from everyday luxury to elite luxury.
Practical implications
This article provides suggestions on how firms can enhance psychological ownership of luxury services, manage conspicuous consumption, and use more effectively luxury services' additional types of exclusivity (i.e. social and hedonic exclusivity).
Originality/value
This is the first paper to define luxury services and their characteristics, to apply and link frameworks from the service literature to luxury, and to derive consumer insights from these for research and practice.
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Gohar F. Khan, Marko Sarstedt, Wen-Lung Shiau, Joseph F. Hair, Christian M. Ringle and Martin P. Fritze
The purpose of this paper is to explore the knowledge infrastructure of methodological research on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) from a network…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the knowledge infrastructure of methodological research on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) from a network point of view. The analysis involves the structures of authors, institutions, countries and co-citation networks, and discloses trending developments in the field.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on bibliometric data downloaded from the Web of Science, the authors apply various social network analysis (SNA) and visualization tools to examine the structure of knowledge networks of the PLS-SEM domain. Specifically, the authors investigate the PLS-SEM knowledge network by analyzing 84 methodological studies published in 39 journals by 145 authors from 106 institutions.
Findings
The analysis reveals that specific authors dominate the network, whereas most authors work in isolated groups, loosely connected to the network’s focal authors. Besides presenting the results of a country level analysis, the research also identifies journals that play a key role in disseminating knowledge in the network. Finally, a burst detection analysis indicates that method comparisons and extensions, for example, to estimate common factor model data or to leverage PLS-SEM’s predictive capabilities, feature prominently in recent research.
Originality/value
Addressing the limitations of prior systematic literature reviews on the PLS-SEM method, this is the first study to apply SNA to reveal the interrelated structures and properties of PLS-SEM’s research domain.
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This paper aims to emphasize a research priority on the understanding of service products and how services can be productized. Furthermore, it provides perspectives on the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to emphasize a research priority on the understanding of service products and how services can be productized. Furthermore, it provides perspectives on the contribution of service research to management practice and who should be the main target audience of service research.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on the personal reflections of an author of two leading services marketing textbooks.
Findings
This paper develops three propositions related to service research. First, it advances that academic service research has neglected the important topic of productizing services and that service products should be treated as concrete units of deliverables to customers rather than something fuzzy of unspecified quantity. That is, service products should be developed, designed, specified, configured, modularized, bundled, tiered, branded, priced sold and delivered to customers. More research is needed on how organizations can do this. Second, this paper argues that academics frequently underestimate the significant contributions service research has made to management practice and details important contributions that originated from the service research community. Third, it is proposed that the main target audience of service research should not be the marketing, sales and service departments. Rather, it should be decision makers (especially C-level executives) across all functions who should develop a service perspective and service mindset.
Research limitations/implications
This paper urges service researchers to focus on what are service products and how firm can create, manage and deliver them. Furthermore, it suggests that service researchers should be more confident and proud of the significant progress and contributions they have made to management practice over the past few decades. Finally, service researchers should tailor their messages for decisions makers of all organizational functions and departments in service organizations.
Originality/value
As a writer of five editions of a services marketing textbook, the author has sifted through three decades of service research. The reflections in this paper originate from this unique perspective.
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Makarand Mody, Jochen Wirtz, Kevin Kam Fung So, Helen HaeEun Chun and Stephanie Q. Liu
This article examines the new phenomenon of the convergence of platform and pipeline business models. It examines the potential synergies and challenges for platforms to add…
Abstract
Purpose
This article examines the new phenomenon of the convergence of platform and pipeline business models. It examines the potential synergies and challenges for platforms to add pipeline components and vice versa for pipeline businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a conceptual approach that synthesizes and integrates the literature from service, hospitality, and strategy, and supplements them with two illustrative mini-case studies.
Findings
While the extant literature typically focuses on the dichotomy between incumbent pipeline businesses that create value by controlling a linear series of activities and network effects-driven platforms, we differentiate between two types of platform business models (i.e. platforms with asset control and platforms with peer-provided assets). Further, we identify three common pathways of convergence; that is, pipelines moving towards (1) platforms with asset control and (2) those with peer-provided assets, and (3) platforms with peer-provided assets adopting defining business characteristics of pipelines. Furthermore, we contrast key characteristics of the three business models and examine potential synergies and challenges for business model convergence. Our findings suggest that convergence from pipelines to platforms with asset control seems to be a natural extension that offers many potential synergies and relatively minor challenges. In contrast, convergence from pipelines to platforms with peer-provided assets is likely to encounter more serious challenges and few synergies. Finally, the synergies and challenges of convergence from platforms with peer-provided assets to pipelines seem to be in between the other two in terms of synergies and challenges.
Practical implications
This article helps managers think through key considerations regarding potential synergies to develop and challenges to mitigate for embarking on convergence strategies between pipeline and platform business models.
Originality/value
This article is the first in the service, business model and strategy literature to identify, define, and conceptualize business model convergence between platforms with asset control, those with peer-provided assets and pipeline businesses. It is also the first to examine potential synergies and challenges these different paths of business model convergence may entail.
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Yeyi Liu, Tobias Johannes Hubert Mayerhofer, André Marchand, Thomas Foscht, Martin Paul Fritze and Andreas Benedikt Eisingerich
This study aims to explore the extent to which customer orientation and creative benefits offered by a firm may weaken rather than strengthen customer engagement. In doing so, it…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the extent to which customer orientation and creative benefits offered by a firm may weaken rather than strengthen customer engagement. In doing so, it sheds new light on how customer orientation and creative benefits may facilitate rather than hinder engagement by customers.
Design/methodology/approach
A field study provides a test of the proposed effects in a hedonic consumption setting with 1,703 customers of an online dating service. Furthermore, an experimental study with 277 executives in a functional consumption setting (new mobile app) helps affirm the robustness of the field study findings.
Findings
This research theorizes and examines how communal relationship norms between customers and a firm, along with customers’ psychological empowerment, mediate the effect of customer orientation and creative benefits on customer engagement. A provocative finding of the study is that communal relationship norms help boost, whereas psychological empowerment reduces, the effects of both customer orientation and creative benefits on customer engagement.
Research limitations/implications
The research examines different relationship norms and how they can become integral to customer–company relationships; this perspective helps reveal the underlying dynamics. It contributes to the literature on customer engagement by theorizing and demonstrating the link between customer orientation and customer engagement, two central constructs in the marketing literature. It theorizes and demonstrates that providing creative benefits brings about a direct competitive advantage for the product itself, and acts as a significant variable that explains the company−customer relationship.
Practical implications
The findings highlight the advantages and challenges associated with encouraging customer engagement. First, they suggest that companies emphasize their customer orientation and creative benefits. Second, managers should try to minimize the possible process of raising customers’ psychological empowerment while maximizing the impact of communal relationship norms.
Originality/value
This study identifies psychological empowerment as a key reason customer-oriented companies that provide creative benefits still struggle to engage their customers. It also suggests viable tactics to overcome barriers to enhanced customer engagement, such as by minimizing the effects of customers’ psychological empowerment while maximizing the impact of their perceived communal relationship norms.
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Martin Paul Fritze, Gertraud Maria Gänser-Stickler, Sarah Türk and Yingshuai Zhao
This case applies a stakeholder analysis to examine the trade-offs between the firm’s strategy and the interests of different stakeholder groups. A PESTEL analysis supports an…
Abstract
Theoretical basis
This case applies a stakeholder analysis to examine the trade-offs between the firm’s strategy and the interests of different stakeholder groups. A PESTEL analysis supports an evaluation of the firm’s situation. Consumer behavior theories on psychological ownership and territoriality offer a framework for analyzing the conflicts that arise from the inhabitants’ protests.
Research methodology
This case relies on secondary sources, including news reports, social media sites and company websites. This case has been classroom tested with undergraduate students in a strategic management course in January 2019 at the University of Cologne, Germany.
Case overview/synopsis
In November 2016, Google announced its intentions to rent a building in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin to open a Google Campus, a business incubator for tech start-ups that would offer entrepreneurs support, workshops and access to networks. Following the announcement, dissatisfied local communities organized protests, in which leaders complained that “It is extremely violent and arrogant of this mega-corporation, whose business model is based on mass surveillance and which speculates like crazy, to set up shop here” (Business Times, 2018). Berlin’s Government supported the Google Campus plan; inhabitants rejected it with fierce and persistent protests. In face of this challenge, was it still possible for Google to continue its plans in Berlin?
Complexity academic level
This case qualifies for use in strategic management classes at undergraduate and MBA levels. Its focus aligns well with stakeholder analyses, PESTEL analyses and business strategy. In addition, for courses on organizational communications or public relations, this case provides a way to explore the relationship between Google and its stakeholders, especially protesters, in detail. Moreover, this case is well suited for consumer research and public policy courses (e.g., transformative consumer research) centered on discussions of territoriality.
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Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford: the names of these universities instantly conjure up images of the highest attainments of higher education. Of course, great universities also operate…
Abstract
Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford: the names of these universities instantly conjure up images of the highest attainments of higher education. Of course, great universities also operate great university presses. So any reference book with the name of Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard in the title possesses immediate credibility and saleability. But it was not always so. Prior to the latter half of the nineteenth century the Oxford and the Cambridge University Presses were known to the public primarily as publishers of the Bible. Oxford broke into reference publishing, and along with it widespread public recognition, by means of its famous dictionaries, of which the pinnacle was the massive Oxford English Dictionary. The Cambridge University Press [hereafter referred to as CUP] took a different approach to publishing scholarly reference works by producing authoritative and encyclopedic histories. According to S.C. Roberts, a long‐time secretary to the Syndics of the CUP, “apart from the Bible, the first book that made the Press well known to the general public was the Cambridge Modern History.”
Erik W. Johnson, Jonathan P. Schreiner and Jon Agnone
We know a great deal about the ways in which routines of news coverage may bias newspaper content, but little about how different article retrieval practices influence newspaper…
Abstract
We know a great deal about the ways in which routines of news coverage may bias newspaper content, but little about how different article retrieval practices influence newspaper data assembled by scholars. Using the New York Times as a source of data on social movement activity, we compare depictions of protest by the African-American Civil Rights movement over time produced using the two most common article retrieval methods: index versus full-story coding. Full-story coding clearly offers more depth and greater breadth in terms of the events identified. Moreover, many of the same event characteristics associated with selection bias in newspaper reporting (e.g., size and confrontational nature of a protest event, presence of counter-demonstrators or police, and event sponsorship by a recognized social movement organization) are selected upon again when stories are indexed by New York Times staff.
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In public health and sustainable transport campaigns, walking is positioned as an important way families can become more active, fit and spend quality time together. However, few…
Abstract
In public health and sustainable transport campaigns, walking is positioned as an important way families can become more active, fit and spend quality time together. However, few studies specifically examine how family members move together on-foot and how this is constitutive of individual and collective familial identities. Combining the notion of a feminist ethics of care with assemblage thinking, the chapter offers the notion of the familial walking assemblage as a way to consider the careful doing of motherhood, childhood and family on-foot. Looking at the walking experiences of mothers and children living in the regional city of Wollongong, Australia, the chapter explores how the provisioning and enactment of care is deeply embedded in the becoming of family on-the-move. The chapter considers interrelated moments of care – becoming prepared, together, watchful, playful, ‘grown up’ and frustrated – where mothers and children make sense of and enact their familial subjectivities. It is through these moments that the family as a performative becoming, that is always in motion, becomes visible. The chapter aims to provide further insights into the embodied experience of walking for families in order to better inform campaigns which encourage walking.