Christopher Phillips Blocker

Colorado State University | CSU · Department of Marketing

Scholars apply the relationship metaphor as a default conceptual lens to under- stand commercial interactions. Yet whereas the relationship paradigm sheds light on how the socially embedded structure of these interactions impacts their out- comes, the relationship metaphor can also obscure scholarly understanding of business buyers’ experiences. Re...

Today's business customers expect sellers not only to respond effectively to their expressed needs but also to understand their business sufficiently well to proactively address their latent and future needs. Yet, research shows that many firms underestimate, misunderstand, or overlook these customer expectations. To draw clarity to this discrepanc...

The pursuit of upward social transformation through service design and practice demands rigorous thinking about what this kind of change looks like and how it comes about. To advance these two goals, this study conceptualizes transformative value, defined as a social dimension of value creation which illuminates uplifting changes among individuals...

Even as customer value research in business-to-business markets burgeons, scholars still circumscribe its progress to studies performed in domestic, Western markets and call attention to the ongoing lack of consensus for how to model customer value. To advance the validity and usefulness of this emerging core construct in marketing, this study inve...

Marketing scholars increasingly aim to research social and policy problems to create and implement solutions with relevant stakeholders that drive societal impact. In 2022, Transformative Consumer Research and the American Marketing Association sponsored the first TCR-AMA Impact Festival, celebrating societally impactful research in marketing. Resu...

Why are leaders rethinking their fundamental profit orientation and charting paths to broader strategies with societal goals based on “purpose”? More fundamentally, what exactly is purpose, and how does purpose evolve in organizations? The concept of organizational purpose is fragmented in research and fuzzy in practice. Many organizations also ass...

This generation of students enters a workforce that increasingly demands interdisciplinary thinking to solve complex problems and create sustainable value. The global pandemic, climate crisis, and state of social inequality call for future business leaders to practice a broader intellectual vision to “see” across domains and apply diverse lenses. H...

When developing products and services for base of the economic pyramid (BoP) consumers, it has been widely assumed that organizations must set extremely low prices that are dependent on substantial product acceptance and economies of scale. However, such pricing is often not feasible. Growing evidence suggests that more moderate price levels are ne...

Resource scarcity is a powerful construct in social sciences. However, explanations about how resources influence overall well‐being are difficult to generalize since much of the research on scarcity focuses on relatively affluent marketplace conditions, limiting its usefulness to large segments of the global population living in poverty. Conversel...

To uncover pathways for understanding and alleviating poverty, this paper offers an alternative approach for examining the real and unseen processes of destitution and in‐work poverty which shape the lives of consumers. We apply a critical realist paradigm structured around three core tenets — stratified realities, complex causations and generative...

This paper advances the conceptual understanding of consumption stewardship, defined here as a moral commitment to safeguard, nurture, and use consumption resources to create consumer value. We delineate consumption stewardship from related consumption variables and articulate its underlying assumptions, conceptual distinctiveness, and application...

Purpose This research aims to examine pathways for providers to facilitate social resilience in service communities to promote collective well-being and engagement. Design/methodology/approach Using abductive and metaphorical analysis, this study develops insights leveraging: the transdisciplinary field of molecular biology where 150 years of rese...

Even as transformative service initiatives promote greater well-being, they may also create unintentionally negative consequences. Research investigates boundary conditions and boomerang effects that wash out or reverse the intended effects of service initiatives. However, such research generally advances greater depth of insight about unintended c...

How do social services disrupt the generational effects of poverty to help families flourish? To address this question, we highlight a less familiar, but resurgent, social work model known as two-generation services that avoids serving only individuals and instead orients around holistic family outcomes. Despite the optimism of leading think tanks...

The authors introduce emotional ability similarity to explain consumer satisfaction in interactions with frontline sales and service employees and other consumers beyond the effects of traditional relational variables in the similarity–attraction paradigm. Four studies examine how and why similar abilities for using emotional information between tw...

The authors investigate emotional ability similarity to explain key outcomes in interpersonal interactions beyond the effects of traditional measures in the similarity-attraction paradigm. Three studies examine how and why similar ability for processing emotional information between two people promotes relational success and joint decision quality...

Despite progress toward poverty alleviation, policy making still lags in thinking about how individuals experience poverty as overlapping sources of disadvantage. Using the lens of intersectionality, this article identifies the gaps that arise from a conventional focus on isolated facets of poverty. Insights generated from an analysis of extant sch...

Using survey data from 800 managers across India, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this study advances the generalizability and strategic potential for understanding customer value perceptions in business markets. Value drivers reveal strong cross-national similarities which challenge recent studies and indicate potenti...

Close-knit relationships are a distinctive facet of subsistence living where survival mode entrepreneurship is a way of life. These relationships fuel “bonding social capital” within informal economies as people rely on others to work, consume, and cope with scarce resources. At the same time, policy agendas encourage business growth and social mob...

In this paper, we expand on two notions of the Flint, Woodruff and Gardial (2002) customer desired value change (CDVC) model which addresses the dynamic nature of customers’ desired value perceptions. We propose that the original CDVC model is actually a focused case of a larger model. Specifically, we suggest that tension likely represents only on...

In this article, we consider the representations of poverty within consumer culture. We focus on four main themes – social exclusion, vulnerability, pleasure and contentment – that capture some of the associations that contemporary understandings have made with poverty. For each theme, we consider the portrayals of poverty from the perspective of k...

Success in business markets demands going beyond satisfactory exchanges with customers. Conventional wisdom therefore dictates that firms must build close customer relationships. Yet, unfortunately, the meaning of a close relationship from the customer's viewpoint can get lost in translation. We find that, contrary to the widely held use of the rel...

The authors propose a new approach for understanding the development of effective relationships in personal and commercial contexts. Beyond traditional measures of interpersonal similarity and attractiveness, we demonstrate that when both members of a dyad are similarly effective at processing emotional information, they have emotional ability conv...

Organizations can pursue a competitive advantage by guarding and enhancing one of its most precious marketplace assets—the sales force. Hiring salespeople who are suited for their role is critical within an increasingly global and competitive environment, and doing so generates dividends for increasing sales force retention, sales productivity, and...

Recent research in marketing strategy emphasizes the dual processes of creating and appropriating value in exchange relationships. In business-to-business markets, salespeople have unique opportunities to translate customers’ desired value back into their firms as well as understand and influence how the value that has been cocreated can be fairly...

Purpose – This study aims to investigate how customer satisfaction and loyalty evolve during the initial years of a business services relationship. In addition to assessing the potential for dynamic effects, models explore how relational transgressions such as very poor sales and implementation experiences might moderate customer satisfaction dynam...

Recent research in marketing strategy emphasizes the dual processes of creating and appropriating value in exchange relationships. In business-to-business markets, salespeople have unique opportunities to translate customers' desired value back into their firms as well as understand and influence how the value that has been cocreated can be fairly...

Increasing attention to global poverty and the development of market-based solutions for poverty alleviation continues to motivate a broad array of academicians and practitioners to better understand the lives of the poor. Yet, the robust perspectives residing within consumer research remain to a large degree under-utilized in these pursuits. This...

A service-dominant logic by definition is inherently customer oriented and relational, reflecting deeper and more complex connections between suppliers and customers. The service mindset driving increased collaboration enables suppliers to have deeper insights to what customers' value. Customer value perceptions are dynamic, sometimes in constant f...

A service-dominant logic by definition is inherently customer oriented and relational, reflecting deeper and more complex connections between suppliers and customers. The service mindset driving increased collaboration enables suppliers to have deeper insights to what customers value, and a fair amount has been written on customer value. Customer v...

Purpose – Successful firms must exploit existing markets while simultaneously exploring new market opportunities. However, skills required to do both simultaneously are often at odds with each other. To reconcile this dilemma, the authors aim to discuss the new concept of "strategic ambidexterity", which is conceptualized as the ability to simultan...

Purpose – A recent development in customer value research is building theory that can help the field go beyond understanding what customers currently value to exploring how customers' perceptions of value change. This paper seeks to extend this emerging theory of customer value change to a global context by conceptually exploring the role of nation...

Segmentation is a mature concept in marketing strategy that continues to receive significant attention from managers and scholars alike. The key goal in segmentation is identifying and reaching profitable segments with products and services that meet the common needs of these customers. However, a fundamental issue needing rigorous attention is tha...

Today's market offers home buyers and sellers an abundance of choices for selecting a real estate agent. In this increasingly competitive environment, communicating effectively and offering expert advice to clients can only take a salesperson so far. To go farther, recent studies show that a salesperson's emotional intelligence can make a real diff...

Good salespeople are still hard to find and keep over the long haul. The national turnover rate for real estate agents remains high and many individuals do not survive in the business. What is the tenure of salespeople in your office? Are you satisfied with it? If you are not, what do you believe is causing this problem? What can you do to improve...