Purpose While the customer brand engagement (CBE) research has advanced important insight, most studies to date explore CBE under regular, free-market conditions, yielding an important knowledge gap regarding its manifestation under less regular conditions, including disaster/pandemics. This study, therefore, aims to explore CBE with essential/non-essential service during COVID-19-prompted citizen lockdown. Design/methodology/approach Based on a review, the authors develop a framework of lockdown-based CBE with essential/non-essential service interactions, which are conceptualized by their respective capacity to meet differing needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. The authors view lockdown-based essential/non-essential service interactions to differentially impact CBE, as summarized in a set of propositions. Findings The framework depicts lockdown-based essential/non-essential service interactions and their respective impact on CBE. The authors propose two essential service modes (i.e. socially distant/platform-mediated interactions) and two non-essential service modes (i.e. service closure/platform-mediated interactions), which the authors hypothesize to differently affect CBE. Moreover, the authors view the associations between our lockdown-based service modes and CBE to be moderated by customers’ regulatory focus (i.e. promotion/prevention), as formalized in the propositions. Research limitations/implications Given the authors’ focus on lockdown-based CBE, this paper adds unique insight to the literature. It also raises ample opportunities for further study, as outlined. Practical implications This study yields important managerial implications, including the suggested adoption of differing tactics/strategies to leverage promotion/prevention-focused customers’ brand engagement during lockdown. Originality/value By exploring the effects of lockdown-based essential/non-essential service modes on promotion/prevention-focused customers’ brand engagement, this paper adds novel insight.

This paper studies the link between firm-level predicaments in high-technology start-ups and collective, cluster-level dynamics in early-stage peripheral locations. We investigate, first, the manner in which high-technology start-ups in early stage peripheral clusters accumulate and utilize resources; second, ways in which managers in start-up businesses and public sector officials work around inadequacies in order to move forward clusters composed mostly of high-technology start-ups; and third, the influence of such experiences on the development of clusters. Empirical findings from three IT clusters in Vietnam reveal resource inadequacies, private sector actors' inability to resolve such shortcomings, entrepreneurial passivity, risk aversion, and lack of confidence in governmental initiatives. These findings and the comparison with earlier studies about start-up difficulties in other high-technology peripheral locations form the basis for a theoretical framework of hightechnology start-up difficulties in early-stage peripheral clusters.

Purpose:In the last 10 years, businesses taking advantage of market deregulation, call-centre, Intranet and Internet technology have broken traditional marketing norms and path dependent customer management practices. These businesses offer substantially lower prices and good customer service. In spite of anecdotal evidence of the high level of service complaints in the press, these businesses are expanding rapidly by growing the market and by taking share from traditional suppliers. Service failure recovery and complaint management are two areas which are extensively re-designed by such businesses. This paper identifies and examines such new practices. The authors suggest that the traditional 'customer-centricity' model is being replaced by a 'customer-compliance business model' (CCBM) of service provision. This new model and its propositions defy conventional thinking in the areas of service recovery and complaint management. Design/Methodology/Approach:Available data and research are reviewed, in an attempt to understand CCBM. Differences with the customer-centricity model are discussed. Findings:CCBM cannot be explained adequately by current assumptions in marketing. It breaks commonplace marketing expectations about service failure and recovery. Research limitations/implications:The emphasis is on explaining innovations in service recovery and complaint management. Practical implications:Companies which operate the CCBM model are of growing importance to developed, serviceorientated economies. We build upon evidence to show how CCBM businesses have abandoned or minimised costly customer centricity and have broken past norms and conventional marketing thinking and practice. Originality/value:The scarcity of research in this area is explained by the recent, rapid evolution of these new model businesses. This study reveals and makes sense of important trends in service provision, distinct from and incompatible with normative arguments in some academic writings that advocate service recovery excellence.4