This research examines the influence of recommendations on consumer decision making during online shopping experiences. Evidence from two empirical studies suggests that many online consumers seek and accept recommendations in order to effectively manage the amount of information available during online search processes. These findings suggest that consumers use the mere availability of peer recommendations as a decision-making heuristic, irrespective of the peer recommender's personal characteristics. Findings also suggest that consumer preference for peer versus editorial recommendations depends on the specific nature of the consumer's shopping goal: utilitarian or hedonic. Finally, results from this study indicate that consumers prefer peer and editorial recommendations over other types of effort-reducing cues that might be available during online search. As such, retailers must consider a number of factors including recommender characteristics, shopping goals, and product characteristics in their bid to provide consumers with the appropriate type of recommendation for their respective decision-making task.

Innovation generation has increasingly been recognized as an outcome of interaction between

Extant service research considers several aspects of customer participation (CP) but lacks a clear and inclusive typology that delineates CP's domain, scope, or boundaries. To address this gap, the authors build on a review of extant literature and propose a typology to classify CP into three categories-mandatory, replaceable, and voluntary. They demonstrate how this proposed typology improves the conceptual and empirical clarity of CP research. More specifically, the authors (1) suggest using Bcustomer participation^to replace other terminologies such as coproduction and cocreation to reduce confusion; (2) conceptualize CP, customer engagement, and customer innovation as related but distinct concepts; (3) use the proposed typology to extend existing conceptualizations, integrate prior empirical research, and reconcile conflicting findings. Building on the enhanced conceptual clarity, managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.