In today's connected world, customer engagement behaviors are very important. Many companies launch initiatives to stimulate customer engagement. However, despite evidence that customer engagement behavior also matters to shareholders, academic research on the firm value consequences of customer engagement campaigns is limited. This study is the first to investigate the value-related consequences of firm-initiated customer engagement behaviors, using shareholder evaluations of the public announcements of such initiatives. We find that companies' customer engagement initiatives, on average, decrease market value, which is likely because the shareholders are sensitive to the risk of these initiatives backfiring. Nevertheless, initiatives that stimulate word-of-mouth are viewed less negatively than initiatives that solicit customer feedback, as are initiatives that are supported by social media. Companies that operate in a competitive environment or do not advertise much can create value by stimulating customer engagement, while companies with a strong corporate reputation are likely to not benefit from it.
Purpose -Consumers increasingly experience and value services as elements of a larger constellation of mutually facilitating, complementary, and supporting services.A service constellation is a combination of multiple interdependent servicesoften produced by multiple specialized service providersthat offer consumers complementary value and synergetic benefits. The service innovation literature and service managers have been slow to acknowledge that the value created by a service should be viewed as being interdependent on other services. In this work, we investigate how the service constellation perspective affects innovation strategies and potentially contributes to the innovation literature, proposing a research agenda.Design/methodology -By analyzing the notion of a service constellation, we provide an overview of major implications for service innovation research and practice. Three illustrative examples serve as anecdotal evidence. By identifying institutional, epistemological, and managerial differences, we contrast the service constellation approach with a traditional approach and describe a paradigm shift in service management. We outline consequences for service innovation.Findings -Firms and service innovation researchers need to focus on the perceived consumer value of the constellation rather than on individual services. We illustrate how service innovation from the constellation perspective requires coordination and synchronization between projects and different approaches to portfolio management and screening.
Research limitations/implications -Adoption of the service constellation perspective creates new opportunities. New ways of creating value are highlighted that would not surface when focusing on individual services in isolation: new value propositions may result not only from conceptualizing and developing individual new 3 services, but also from developing a new service constellation without altering individual services. Article type -Research paper
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