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The gamification of trust: The case of China's “social credit”
Abstract
Purpose
China is establishing a social credit rating system with the aim to score the trust level of citizens. The scores will be based on an integrated database that includes a vast range of information sources, rating aspects like professional conduct, corruption, type of products bought, peers’ own scores and tax evasion. While this form of gamification is expected to have dire consequences on brands and consumers alike, the literature in that particular area of interest remains non-existent. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual framework is suggested that highlights early on the risks and implications on brands and companies operating in that particular upcoming landscape.
Findings
The gamification of trust that the social credit system focuses on presents potential risks on brand and consumer relationships. This in turn will affect brand sustainability vis-à-vis the expected drastic changes in the Chinese business landscape. This study suggests the strategies to follow which will be of high interest to companies, consumers, as well as to the Chinese authorities during and after implementation stage.
Originality/value
This paper is amongst the first to discuss the potential effects of the Chinese social credit rating system on brands. The conceptual framework fills a sizeable gap in the literature and pioneers the discussion on potential dilemmas brands will be faced with within this new business landscape.
... Trust system (D) Personal privacy (D1) Users' transaction data and personal information will be well protected from abuse. Seufert et al., 2016;Ramadan, 2017;Dastjerdi et al., 2019;Aparicio et al., 2021 Credibility of the content and statement within the app (D2) ...
... Finally, in the digital age, trust is the foundation of all development. The normal operation and growth of all digital businesses and platforms are inseparable from the support of trust mechanisms (Ramadan, 2017;Aparicio et al., 2021;Ashfaq et al., 2021). The game design of an app for sustainable consumption projects is no exception. ...
The gamification of sustainable consumption is receiving more and more attention from both academic and business circles. However, there is still a lack of research on the incentive mechanism and evaluation of gamification design to promote sustainable consumption behavior. Taking the gamified apps that promote sustainable consumption in China as an example, this study attempts to explore the incentive mechanism of gamification application for sustainable consumption by using the “stimulus-organism-response” model. Furthermore, it also constructs an evaluation index system of gamification design for sustainable consumption app and identifies the key factors in the gamification design by using the analytic hierarchy process. The results suggest that gamification apps use game elements and game mechanism frameworks to build a new sustainable consumption context for users, which breaks the boundary between reality and virtuality, and enables users to gain real-life value for their behavior in the virtual world. Moreover, the trust mechanism and socialized contextual experience of the gamified apps further strengthen this sense of connectedness and interaction, and enhance the user's motivation for sustainable consumption. In the gamification design of sustainable consumption app, more attention needs to be paid to the implementation effect behind gamification, that is, to promote the cultivation of public sustainable consumption values and lifestyle. This study advances theoretical and practical understanding of the gamification of sustainable consumption. The results can also be used as a starting base for the development and design of gamified apps in the sustainable consumption field.
... Still, according to the Kobie piece on Wired magazine, the scoring obtained grants prizes, such as shopping discounts, priority customer services in stores and even in hospitals. A low score, on the other hand, withdraws rights, such as purchasing airline and railway tickets [25]. ...
... Fig. 6 summarizes such analysis: In Fig. 6 the Octalysis centers had an elongation directly proportional to the use it seems to have in Sesame Credit. Therefore, it is highlighted: a) Stronger centers -The Sesame Credit works basically in the Achievement centers: obtaining rewards for earned credit points is the essence of the system, aiming at material advantages [29], but also the social climbing [20]; Social Influence: Act accordingly to government and society expectations, and also connect only to those people with high scores [27]; Scarcity: compete for awards in a competitive system, likewise the reward, "receive priority service" [25]; and Avoidance: behave well in order to avoid the punishments indicated in Image 4); b) Medium strength centers -The Sesame Credit uses moderately the Ownership center (the user earns status, advantages, and rewards, but can also lose them as well as its rights, like using the transportation system) and Empowerment (can obtain temporary advantages, such as priority customer service, which can also be revoked); c) Weaker centers -The Sesame Credit does not offer the user tangible rewards in the Meaning center (sense of purpose, and intrinsic motivation, instead of that, it explores extrinsic motivators: money and assets), and Unpredictability (according to the Chinese government, in permanent and explicit regulations, and therefore, with predictable results); d) White Hat & Black Hat -It is noticeable for being the most developed center, the Achievement is part of the White Hat, while two others are part of the Black Hat: Scarcity and Avoidance. The predominant incentive tactics in the Black Hat area, as Chou [10] explains, promotes abundant feelings of stress and stress relief as a motivational regulation. ...
Sesame Creditis the gamified Chinese social credit. It aims at monitoring and controlling the behavior of more than a billion citizens until 2020. Basing itself on the distribution of rewards and punishments to individuals, upon scoring based on the compliance of the aforementioned citizens towards laws and government interests. The present study probes Sesame Credit from data collected from academic papers, Chinese government official documents, as well as media articles.An interpretative analysis is conducted based on the Octalysismethod of gamification and the motivational method known as the Self-Determination Theory. Residing as main conclusions: a) the efficiency of the Sesame Credit depends on extensive and continual monitoring of the population by the Chinese government; b) despite the coercive aspects, such gamification is observed to be as popular in China, due to a millenary tradition of people’s compliance to the social and those of authority obedience
... As a result, a credit scoring model that considers social and environmental factors in addition to economic and managerial factors is critical. In the management literature, sustainable credit scoring has emerged as a new research area (Jaroslav et al., 2018;Ramadan, 2018). Unfortunately, very few studies presented the credit scoring model incorporating all these factors described above. ...
... Environmental and social viability assessments and economic and managerial prospects will lead to more reliable performance towards sustainability integration in business operations. Ramadan (2018) proposed a framework for investigating the potential consequences of China's growing social credit rating system and suggested that social credit scores should consider a wide range of data that affects society as a whole. ...
Sustainability has emerged as a dominating paradigm across global institutions as a critical component for their prospects. Organisations all across the globe must commit to strengthen the values as a participant in sustainable development. Financial institutions are no exception; they are also being pushed to undertake many sustainable initiatives, such as increasing socially meaningful, relevant, and sustainable projects. In addition, they may contribute to sustainable growth by enacting a green banking policy. To promote the green financing strategy, this study proposes a multi-criteria sustainable credit scoring model considering triple bottom line attributes (economic, environmental, and social) besides managerial attributes. The model is built on a novel hybrid approach that combines the fuzzy best–worst method (BWM) with the fuzzy technique for order preferences by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS). The fuzzy BWM was used to weigh factors, while the fuzzy TOPSIS was utilised to evaluate borrowers. The integration of fuzzy set theory assisted in overcoming decision-making ambiguity. An empirical analysis was performed to demonstrate the utility of the proposed model. According to the study’s findings, the most important attribute for sustainable credit scoring is environmental and social sustainability and financial sustainability. On policy implications, regulators could also use the framework as a benchmark to counsel financial institutions on how to include different sustainable criteria into their credit lending process. Furthermore, financial institutions could use the proposed technique as a part of a sustainable lending policy to identify potential borrowers engaged in sustainable business.
... In SCSS, lenders examine social and environmental aspects such as environmental impact, job creation capacity, and firms' social responsibilities in addition to financial analysis (Gutiérrez-Nieto et al. 2016). Sustainable credit scoring has emerged as a new research domain in the management literature, which attracted little attention (Ramadan 2018;Jaroslav et al. 2018). ...
... If financial institutions want to create a sustainable credit rating process, they must consider a variety of environmental and social factors in addition to financial and managerial aspects. Ramadan (2018) provided a conceptual framework that examines the risks and consequences of China's evolving social credit rating system. The authors pointed out that social credit scores can take into account a wide variety of data that affects society as a whole. ...
Sustainable development has emerged as a critical agenda for all organisations around the world. Despite the fact that profitability and sustainability are inorganically linked to financial institutions, sustainable lending has been a constant focus of attention. Due to regulatory pressure and stakeholder concerns, financial institutions are forced to implement a variety of sustainable measures; they are also gradually thinking to give more support to socially impactful and sustainable projects. Financial institutions can play a major role in establishing sustainable development by adopting the green lending policy. However, there have been few studies on sustainability credit score systems (SCSS) that take into account social and environmental factors. To fill the gaps of existing literature, this study proposes a multi-criteria SCSS that takes into account the environment and social aspects in addition to financial and managerial aspects. A combined Best-Worst Method (BWM) and the fuzzy-Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method are used in this study to create a credit scoring system. The BWM is used to determine the weight of factors, and the fuzzy-TOPSIS is used to evaluate applicants. The ambiguity while evaluating borrowers has been captured by applying fuzzy set theory. A real-life case study is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model. The model is unique in terms of the number of social and environmental factors considered. This research will assist financial institutions in identifying borrowers who engage in sustainable business practices. Borrowers can be holistically prioritised by applying the model.
... The cultivation of integrity is vital for fostering honesty and self-regulation, thus strengthening the moral fabric of society and forming a part of the socialist core values system (Avelino et al., 2019;Valkenburg et al., 2021). Credit innovation is inherent to the socialist market economic system and serves as a crucial avenue for fortifying and innovating primary-level governance (Hou & Fu, 2022;Ramadan, 2018). ...
... Rogier Creemer's translation (at chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction -of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/) is closer to the Chinese original version: 'Ensure that those keeping trust receive benefit in all respect and those breaking trust meet with difficulty at every step.' 'gamification of trust' because of its scary scoring system (Ramadan, 2018). As for the most interesting analysis of the SCS and the various aspects of the digitalisation of Chinese society discussed above, much has been done by Martin Chorzempa, Paul Triolo and Samm Sacks (2018). ...
... Individuals express their feelings within the SNSs while maintaining and developing this bond. The strong emotions and trust bonds develop accordingly when the relationship is reliable (Islambouli et al., 2020) and when emotional feeling are well associated (Ramadan, 2018). ...
... The development of the conceptual framework incorporates the extant literature relating to online based relationships, social bonding and SNS related experiences (Akoury, 2020). Customers' relationships with the social platform and the effect on the apparent perceived value of ads on the social network (hereby FB) are also integrated within the discussed framework (Ramadan et al., 2018a;Mrad & Cui, 2018;2020). In a social networking site setting, friend likability is considered to be a key social factor that influences positively similarity with friends (Vallor, 2012). ...
Consumers are increasingly joining social networking sites (SNS) where they build online relationships with friends and brands they engage with. While SNS related studies are growing, the Middle East region still lacks a proper understanding relating to SNS effects on customer retention within a service environment. This study aims to develop the understanding pertaining to SNS relational factors and the ensuing consequence of such bonding on the social platform’s advertising value, consumers’ proneness in comparing insurance premiums and the effect on retention. An internet-based survey was filled by 297 respondents on Facebook, targeting individuals who already use an insurance company’s services. The model measured the overall experience on Facebook while integrating socialization with friends, relationship with the social network itself, SNS ad value, premium comparison, and retention and customer service. This study is amongst the first to examine the effects of relational aspects, from a peer-to-peer and peer-to-SNS perspectives, on the social ad value and the ensuing influence on price comparison propensity and the effects on customer retention in the region.KeywordsFacebookSocial networking sitesInsuranceRetentionSocial advertising
... Individuals express their feelings within the SNSs while maintaining and developing this bond. The strong emotions and trust bonds develop accordingly when the relationship is reliable (Islambouli et al., 2020) and when emotional feeling are well associated (Ramadan, 2018). ...
This study aims to identify the determinants of purchasing private label brands (PLBs) by non-buyers and occasional buyers. This study aims to identify levers that may raise the purchasing rate of non and occasional Private Label Brands (PLBs) buyers.We conducted online quantitative research with 151 customers from a panel attending one of the French retail chains. In addition, we used PLS-SEM to test the research model. The findings show that attitude toward PLBs plays a central role in converting non and occasional PLBs buyers into more regular buyers. Furthermore, theoretical contributions and managerial implications are developed.KeywordsPrivate Label BrandAttitudeTrustOccasional Buyers
... In recent studies, gamification has found applications in crowdfunding platforms to enhance the engagement of participants (Behl & Dutta, 2020;Kim & Ji, 2021). Ramadan (2018) suggests that gamification is a critical construct for the sustainable engagement of participants. The game-based environment can be customized depending on the type of users and gamification in DBC platforms to sustain donors' engagement, resulting in repeated donation behavior. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the financial well-being of people and the world’s economy. Crowdfunding is a prominent contributor to this pandemic's adverse effects. Donations on crowdfunding platforms have received attention; however, repeated donations, especially during COVID-19, need to be studied. This study aims to understand the role of reward-based gamification as a tool for understanding repeated donation behaviour on crowdfunding platforms during COVID-19. The study uses the self-determination theory to propose the conceptual framework and uses cross sectional data from 514 donors using survey based instruments. This study aims to understand the role of social relatedness with donors’ intrinsic motivation to make repeated donations. Similarly, it tries to establish the role of social relatedness and engagement with repeated donation behaviour. The study uses reward-based gamification as moderating variables, and the model controls the experience of donating on crowdfunding platforms. The results confirm the relationship between social relatedness impacting a donor’s intrinsic motivation and engagement in crowdfunding platform activities leading to repeated donation behaviour. The study further establishes that reward-based gamification moderates the relationship between intrinsic motivation and repeated donation behaviour. The results reveal that the experience of donating impacts the users' repeated donations. The study presents new insights on the role of gamification in inducing repeated donations on crowdfunding platforms during COVID-19.
... Trust is fundamental in building relationships and brand marketing. Brand trust, based on positive expectations of the company, is the most influential relationship tool for a company (Ramadan, 2018). ...
Positive word of mouth in the form of recommendations and referrals is the most effective way to recruit new students. The purpose of this study was to determine how service quality, parental satisfaction, and brand trust affect the likelihood of parents recommending their child’s international school to family and friends and to test the mediating effect of parent satisfaction. The study developed a contextually relevant and reliable survey to measure the perception of 458 Generation X parents at The International School of Macao. Scale items from the literature were contextualized for education. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to confirm convergent and discriminant validity. Structural equation modeling was used to determine the relationships. It was found that parent satisfaction had the biggest influence on the likelihood of parents recommending their child’s international school by word of mouth. While the service quality that parents experience and the trust that they have in the school brand had an impact on satisfaction, it was found that parent satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between service quality and word of mouth as well as the relationship between brand trust and word of mouth. Schools must ensure that current parents are satisfied to cultivate positive word of mouth through recommendations and referrals to prospective parents. Previous studies have demonstrated the mediating role of satisfaction, but no significant studies have empirically tested the same in K-12 international contexts. The study contributes to the existing field of knowledge by providing support to the contention that satisfaction mediates the relationships between service quality, brand trust, and word of mouth.
... As Enzle and Anderson (1993, p. 261) put it, "it is not surveillance per se that is important, but the belief that the surveillant intends to exercise social control." For now, it seems that even though digital surveillance is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in China, it is not yet seen in a negative light by most Chinese citizens (Kostka 2019;Kostka and Antoine 2020;Xu et al. 2021)-possibly because gamification is diverting attention from the control aspects of digital surveillance (Ramadan 2018). Whether these sentiments will remain stable or change in the future remains an open question. ...
The most important resource to improve technologies in the field of artificial intelligence is data. Two types of policies are crucial in this respect: privacy and data-sharing regulations, and the use of surveillance technologies for policing. Both types of policies vary substantially across countries and political regimes. This chapter examines how authoritarian and democratic political institutions can influence the quality of research in artificial intelligence, and the availability of large-scale datasets to improve and train deep learning algorithms. We focus mainly on the case of China, and find that—ceteris paribus—authoritarian political institutions continue to have a negative effect on innovation. They can, however, have a positive effect on research in deep learning, via the availability of large-scale datasets that have been obtained through government surveillance. We propose a research agenda to study which of the two effects might dominate in a race for leadership in artificial intelligence between countries with different political institutions, such as the USA and China.KeywordsArtificial intelligencePolitical institutionsBig dataSurveillanceInnovationChinaJEL:O25O31O38P16P51
... In recent times the issue of explicit mind control has surfaced again, at least in the media, now championed by China as a means to bring all its citizens, irrespective of faith and ethnic culture, into one politically condoned mindset with ensuing approved-of behaviour. For some minority groups this means a forced change of subjective reality by means of 're-education camps' (e.g., Dirks & Leibold, 2020;Ramadan, 2017;Raza, 2019). ...
The significance of illusion as a positive force in everyday life has been underestimated in both societal discourse and in empirical science. The objective of this study is to provide a synthesis of many academic disciplines’ understanding of illusion and reality by proposing a taxonomy of functional and dysfunctional subjective realities as based on the assumption that the human mind is adaptive in an evolutionary sense and likely to be a quantum entanglement system. Assumptions and discussions needed to construct the taxonomy are generally based on empirical research drawing from evolutionary theory, neurology, biology, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, physics and other disciplines. The purpose of the proposed taxonomy is heuristic, serving as a base for further studies drawing particular attention to the fact that, by evolutionary processes, Homo sapiens have been made dependent on multiple subjective realities where illusion and reality are not necessarily opposites. The article is concluded by discussing possible reasons for why illusions as a positive force in human behaviour has been neglected in comparison to the dysfunctions of the human mind of which research abound.
... In line with these imperatives, the term "social credit" has gradually expanded to encompass efforts in both market regulation and social governance (Chen and Cheung 2017). Today, the STS exists as the technical engine powering Party-state efforts to construct a gamified society (Ramadan 2018) under the auspices of "a culture of honesty and integrity" (诚信文化) (Trauth-Goik 2019). On a macrolevel, the STS can be divided into two main components. ...
Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu 放管服 (decentralise, manage, and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market regulation, (2) supervision and management systems, and (3) service provision processes. By applying a case study analytical approach, this paper explores how advancements in big data contributed to these reforms aimed at centralising information in China. Combining the joint knowledge of surveillance and China studies scholarship, this paper offers evidence of big data surveillance streamlining China’s fragmented intergovernmental policy system. We build on David Murakami Wood’s 2017 outline of a political theory of surveillance and argue that decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of both bureaucratic and public access to information are key components of the Party-state’s regulatory governance strategy incorporating the use of big data and comprehensive surveillance. Our findings have implications for future analyses of the relationship between political organisations and surveillance within other nation-state contexts, particularly in situations where Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted.
... Legal and ethical issues were also introduced into the discussion. With social scoring in China as a prominent example [101], data protection due to data collection and monitoring, which functions as an incentive to cheat or trick the system, risk of abuse and social pressure due to competitive orientation, and even the risk of addiction, have all been identified as potential drawbacks of gamification. This topic is examined in more detail in Section 2.5.7. ...
Gamification can help to increase motivation for various activities. As a fundamental concept in HCI, gamification has connections with various fields involving mixed reality, health care, or education. This article presents the expertise of 106 gamification specialists who participated in four workshops called “Gam-R — Gamification Reloaded.” The extraction of current and future trends in gamification is the result of this. Four general topics, four in-depth topics, and seven emerging fields of application for gamification are depicted and enriched with the current state of research to support interested academic scholars and practitioners. Technical and less technical areas, which are the fields of work and research in gamification, are demonstrated. Some areas are already trending, while others are just beginning to show a future trend.
... As Enzle and Anderson (1993, page 261) put it, "it is not surveillance per se that is important, but the belief that the surveillant intends to exercise social control." For now, it seems that even though digital surveillance is becoming increasingly omnipresent in China, it is not yet seen in a negative light by most Chinese citizens (Kostka 2019;Kostka and Antoine 2020;Xu et al. 2021) -possibly because gamification is diverting attention from the control aspects of digital surveillance (Ramadan 2018). If these sentiments remain stable or will change in the future remains an open question. ...
The most important resource to improve technologies in the field of artificial intelligence is data. Two types of policies are crucial in this respect: privacy and data-sharing regulations, and the use of surveillance technologies for policing. Both types of policies vary substantially across countries and political regimes. In this chapter, we examine how authoritarian and democratic political institutions can influence the quality of research in artificial intelligence, and the availability of large-scale datasets to improve and train deep learning algorithms. We focus mainly on the Chinese case, and find that -- ceteris paribus -- authoritarian political institutions continue to have a negative effect on innovation. They can, however, have a positive effect on research in deep learning, via the availability of large-scale datasets that have been obtained through government surveillance. We propose a research agenda to study which of the two effects might dominate in a race for leadership in artificial intelligence between countries with different political institutions, such as the United States and China.
... Users can compare themselves with others through PBL and attempt to improve their reputation or status, which can affect users' motivation to promote better user experience and engagement (Harms et al., 2015) and, finally, their intention to use the web. In addition, gamification creates new forms of communities in which users share opinions and influence behaviours (Scheiner et al., 2017;Ramadan, 2018). ...
Since prior research has shown that engagement might exert positive effects on value creation and continuous purchase intention, this study aims to examine the influence of gamification on user engagement in e-commerce. An online consumer panel was used to collect data from 253 Spanish Amazon users. Principal component analysis was performed first to validate the scale through an exploratory analysis. Subsequently, partial least squares structural equation modelling calculations were performed to test the research model and hypotheses. This study found that gamification has direct effects on user engagement in e-commerce. In addition, the User Engagement Scale (UES) is presented as a valid and reliable instrument for measuring engagement in Spanish e-commerce. This research investigated and verified a five-factor structure of the UES; however, a reduction in its factors is recommended. Additionally, four key factors through which gamification exerts a direct influence were identified. Finally, specific marketing actions were proposed for application in e-commerce.
... A different example is given by the Social Credit System that is aimed at fostering good behaviors rather than actions or feedback. It is a pervasive platform supported by the Chinese government still in development and designed to measure and track the level of reliability of citizens and enterprises (Ramadan 2018). The rating is established on the basis of various aspects such as professional conduct, compliance with laws and regulations, etc. ...
In the context of smart communities , it is essential an active and continuous collaboration between citizens, organizations and institutions. There are several cases where citizens may be asked to participate such as in public decision-making process by informing, voting or proposing projects or in crisis management by sharing precise and timely information with other citizens and emergency organizations. However, these opportunities do not automatically result in participatory practices sustained over time. Mobile technologies and social networks provide the substratum for supporting formal empowerment, but citizen engagement in participation processes is still an open issue. One of the techniques used to improve engagement is gamification based on the humans’ predisposition to games. So far, we still lack studies that can prove the advantage of gamified systems respect to non-gamified ones in civic participation context. In this work, we present a between-group design experiment performed in the wild using two mobile applications enabling civic participation, one gamified and the other not. Our results highlight that the gamified application generates a better user experience and civic engagement.
... In line with these imperatives, the term "social credit" has gradually expanded to encompass efforts in both market regulation and social governance (Chen & Cheung 2017). Today the STS exists as the technical engine powering Party-state efforts to construct a gamified society (Ramadan 2018) under the auspices of "a culture of honesty and integrity" (诚信文化) (Trauth-Goik 2019). On a macrolevel the STS can be divided into two main components. ...
Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu 放管服 (decentralise, manage and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market regulation, (2) supervision and management systems, and (3) service provision processes. By applying a case study analytical approach, this paper canvasses how advancements in big data contributed to these reforms of centralising information. Combining the joint knowledge of surveillance and China studies scholarship this paper offers evidence of big data surveillance streamlining China’s fragmented intergovernmental policy system. We build on David Murakami Wood’s 2017 outline of a political theory of surveillance and argue that decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of both bureaucratic and public access to information is a key component of the Party-state’s regulatory governance strategy incorporating the use of big data and comprehensive surveillance. Our findings have implications for future analyses of the relationship between political organisation and surveillance within other nation-state contexts, particularly in situations where Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted.
... The way consumers feel about the advertisement gets transferred to the brand and develops the attitude toward the advertised brand (Posavac et al., 2014). Ramadan (2018) argues that marketing in games is best for brands familiar to the players. The games should focus on improving the brand's visibility rather than introducing new brands for the players. ...
Purpose
The study explores the effect of game flow, game enjoyment and game customization on consumers' attitudes toward the game (ATG). It also examines the relationship between consumers' ATG and attitude toward the in-game advertising (IGA) brand.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used SEM and PROCESS MACRO to analyze the results.
Findings
The study asserts the significant role of game flow, game customization and game enjoyment as antecedents of consumers' ATG. Furthermore, psychological ownership and perceived IGA invasiveness were found to be significant moderators between attitude toward game and attitude for the IGA brand.
Originality/value
The study examines how players’ attitude toward the game influences their attitude toward the IGA brand due to the player's ownership perceptions over the game and invasiveness perceptions for IGA. The study used psychological ownership and psychological reactance theory in the gamification context. The study findings present pertinent implications for game developers and brands interested in using IGA tools.
... The journey starts with customer satisfaction, which in turn creates customer trust that is followed by customer commitment and a relationship (Oliver, 2010). Successful relationships are driven by affective elements such as customers' opportunistic tendencies, involvement, and shared values (Vásquez-Párraga et al., 2014;Ramadan, 2018). ...
The virtual assistants' market is drastically growing and is expected to reach $2.1 billion by 2020. Nonetheless, the quick expansion and high penetration of e-retailers’ AI ecosystem into the shopper's journey is still under-researched in the extant literature. Amazon's Alexa in particular has been fast proliferating into the customer's journey, favoring the development of captive audiences given this new ambient environment. Through a mixed methodology using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, this study examines Amazon's captive relationship strategy on shoppers, brands and competing retailers. The research findings show that Amazon's AI relationship strategy with its customers is based on forming a multi-faceted identity for the AI that would later on facilitate a captive situation that would lead to an addictive relationship. This study is amongst the first to examine the rapid development of e-retailers’ AI ecosystem into the shopper's journey. Taking the pioneering case of Amazon's Alexa powered devices, this research presents a working framework upon which scholars and practitioners alike could base their future studies and strategies on in the fast-growing field of interactive voice assistants and AI led conversations.
... Cyr et al. (2018) used social presence as peripheral route to attitude change in designing website features. It is identified that gamified lecture courses can design with more active and problem-based learning approach (Berger et al., 2018;Dassen et al., 2018;Nakada, 2017) with more gamified socialization components such as comments of the peers, peer notice and feedbacks, team-based gamification performance, progress points, avatars, game fictions, grading scales or scores (Barrio et al., 2015;Hamari and Koivisto, 2013;Hamari and Koivisto, 2015;Hew et al., 2016;Kwak et al., 2018;Ramadan, 2018;Sailer et al., 2017;Stansbury and Earnest, 2017;Wongso et al., 2014;Yamakami, 2013;Zamfiroiu and Sbora, 2014). Therefore, these findings lead to the formation of the research proposition of: ...
Purpose
The purpose of this theoretical paper is to introduce a conceptual model to investigate e-learning persuasion through gamification elements using the social psychology theory of elaboration likelihood model (ELM).
Design/methodology/approach
The author systematically reviewed several theoretical and empirical papers which applied the ELM in various settings. Based on the literature, the author identified six research prepositions which facilitate to investigate e-learning persuasion through gamification.
Findings
This study contributes to the existing literature by identifying an ELM-based conceptual model which can be used to empirically investigate the e-learning persuasion using gamification elements. Accordingly, the central route persuasion could be conducted through argument quality, demographic differences and technology context facilitated through gamification elements. The peripheral route persuasion could be conducted through variables such as source credibility, social presence and message content.
Practical implications
This study contributes important findings to the e-learning research by introducing a conceptual model–based on the social psychology theory of ELM. Thereby, this study introduces a method for the future researchers, to investigate the e-learning persuasion using gamification elements. Further, future researchers can use this model to investigate the e-learning persuasion through gamification in different contexts including primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study can be considered as the first theoretical paper which developed an ELM-based conceptual model to investigate the e-learning persuasion through gamification in education context.
... Sciences du jeu, 13 | 2020 importé de l'Occident par des puissances étrangères coloniales malveillantes et corruptrices (les tripots et salles de jeu de Shanghai, associés à l'opium), tantôt comme une façon ingénieuse de lever un impôt pour les finances publiques (financement de grands travaux publics par des loteries). Aujourd'hui, après une période d'assouplissement, le contrôle plus étroit exercé sur les comportements individuels s'apparente à une forme d'ordre moral auquel chacun est invité à se plier, ce contrôle étant renforcé par la mise en place désormais fameuse du crédit social qui permet de sanctionner positivement ou négativement une série de comportements dont la liste n'est pas encore connue et peut varier d'une initiative à l'autre (Kostka, 2019 ;Ramadan, 2018). Ainsi les comportements d'achats peuvent être sanctionnés de limitations (acheter un billet d'avion ou de train) en cas de comportements déviants, par exemple lorsqu'une personne ne s'acquitte pas d'une dette. ...
This article offers a comparative study of two contrasting schemes of representation: the French individualist paradigm and the Chinese moralist paradigm. It provides a better understanding of the conditions of diffusion of the scientific discourse of gambling disorders and the transformations of the various regimes of governance of the risk associated with gambling. The aim is to understand how scholarly discourse and regulatory efforts can interact with ordinary representations; where medical discourse in France partly offers a disempowerment, in China it is a moral condemnation that dominates as the gambler endangers his entourage, his family and more broadly social harmony. Based on an analysis of the different levels of representations relating to gambling – academic, operational and ordinary representations – this study explores the hypothesis that the spread of the responsible gambling model is based on various actors adhering to liberal world representations that accompany the development of a rationale of free market but are not necessarily uniformly adopted.
... Reisebeschränkungen oder Kündigungen (Sartorius, 2020). Des Weiteren könnten Unternehmen Kundinnen und Kunden, welche deren Marken anhängen, aber eine niedrige Bewertung aufweisen, ausschließen und diskriminieren, damit sich deren niedrige Bewertung nicht negativ auf die Marke und somit auf das Unternehmen auswirkt (Ramadan, 2018). Ähnliche Auswirkungen sind bei Freundschaften zu erwarten. ...
Die Beantwortung der Frage, welche Risiken und Nebenwirkungen mit der Nutzung von Gamification einhergehen können, ist für die Abwägung und die Art dessen Einsatzes von entscheidender Bedeutung. Damit verfolgt der Beitrag das Forschungsdesiderat von Koivisto und Hamari (2019), welche in ihrem aktuellen und umfassenden Gamification-Literaturreview geschlussfolgert haben, dass die potentiellen negativen, nachteiligen oder nicht bevorzugten Auswirkungen von Gamification, und wie diese gemildert werden können, erforscht werden sollten.
Dazu ist es unabdingbar auf die sogenannte dunkle Seite der Gamification zu blicken, und sich der Literatur zum scheinbar etablierten Term Dark Side of Gamification (DSoG) zu widmen. Dazu werden die nachstehenden Fragen verfolgt:
1) Welche Risiken und Nebenwirkungen werden im Kontext DSoG genannt?
2) Welche alternativen Bezeichnungen gibt es für DSoG?
... Dies gilt insbesondere, wenn durch Gamification gesellschaftliche institutionelle Arrangements verändert werden. Im Extremfall können sich Individuen dem nur schwer entziehen, wie die Experimente mit dem quasi-freiwilligen sozialen Credit-System in der Volksrepublik China zeigen (Ramadan 2018). ...
Zukunft ist keine Tatsache, die sich einstellt, sie wird imaginiert, ermöglicht, durchgesetzt. Doch während das Ringen um eine lebenswerte Zukunft die visionäre Verständigung der Vielfalt der Verschiedenen, mitunter Fremden braucht, drückt eine ökonomisch beförderte Fantasielosigkeit der Gegenwart zunehmend die Luft ab.
Bestimmte Wissenschaften hingegen, die der Fantasie Futter geben, was warum wie wo noch möglich ist, können einen visionären und reflektierten Boden für ein lebenswertes Zusammenleben schaffen. Solche Wissenschaften sind ›Möglichkeitswissenschaften‹ (Reinhard Pfriem).
Dieses Buch versammelt zur Feier des 70. Geburtstages von Reinhard Pfriem fachübergreifende Erkundungen dazu, was es heißen kann, Ökonomie mit Möglichkeitssinn zu betreiben.
... People who have violated trust are not allowed to take aeroplanes and trains (Xinyongzhongguo, 2019). It has been utilised to monitor the trust behaviour of citizens (Chen & Cheung, 2017;Dai, 2018;Ramadan, 2018). The vision of this credit system is to "foster trustworthiness in society, enhance market efficiency, strengthen social governance and build a harmonious society within the social state " (Chen & Cheung, 2017, p. 6). ...
This research presents an empirical study of the cultural differences that Chinese residents have experienced in Hungary, that so far is lacking in the scientific literature. To illustrate, the study first addresses the prevalent problems that Chinese residents have experienced in Hungary. It follows the wall theory, consisting of the visible wall and the invisible wall. The wall theory not only identifies the cultural difference between China and Hungary with regard to the notion of tangible and intangible boundaries, but it may also predict the intercultural conflicts when the boundary of the wall, i.e. the visible wall or the invisible wall is violated. Subsequently, the potential strategies to overcome the wall were proposed to reduce the intercultural conflicts. The study further investigates the gender differences between Chinese males and females in Hungary based on their educational background and employment status. By addressing these aspects, it is hoped to provide people with information about Chinese residents in Hungary, and the practical knowledge to be aware of the differences between Chinese and Hungarian cultures.
... These projects-wrapped in the discourse of "big data" analytics-seek to understand their stakeholder groups, be they citizens, clients or employees, but only to the extent to which that knowledge fulfils institutional objectives. This is most obvious in the authoritarian internet of China, where the hard power has most recently been combined with "soft" incentivising through the "social credit system" (Ramadan 2018) but can also be seen, to a seemingly less intrusive extent, in developed democracies through the aforementioned corporatised nature of e-governance and behavioural policy units. The naturalisation of the technologies underpinning these management systems, be they in liberal democracies or authoritarian regimes, further erodes the capacity of users to express consent (with legitimacy implications important in democratic regimes) and participate in process design, eroding the capacity for the transference of democratic capacity into other areas of life. ...
This article critically examines the role new media can play in the political engagement of young people in Australia. Moving away from “deficit” descriptions, which assert low levels of political engagement among young people, it argues two major points. First, that there is a well-established model of contemporary political mobilisation that employs both new media and large data analysis that can and have been effectively applied to young people in electoral and non-electoral contexts. Second, that new media, and particularly social media, are not democratic by nature. Their general use and adoption by young and older people do not necessarily cultivate democratic values. This is primarily due to the type of participation afforded in the emerging “surveillance economy”. The article argues that a focus on scale as drivers of influence, the underlying foundation of their affordances based on algorithms, and the centralised editorial control of these platforms make them highly participative, but unequal sites for political socialisation and practice. Thus, recent examples of youth mobilisation, such as seen in recent climate justice movements, should be seen through the lens of cycles of contestation, rather than as technologically determined.
... Depending on this rating, citizens will be rewarded or punished by having access to more or less privileges in society. Such as, low-rated people may be denied credit at the bank [3]. ...
... Consumers today are demanding convenience due to their busy lifestyles, which cause them to value platforms that facilitate the delivery of products directly to their own doorsteps (Jiang et al., 2013;Msaed et al., 2017). Therefore, and in order to maintain a competitive edge in today's ultra-connected world, companies must consistently aim to provide their consumers with simple-to-use features that enable easy access to products , which will ultimately affect the services industry (Zgheib, 2017;Ramadan, 2018;Mrad et al., 2018). ...
... 5 The document is centered on the concept of "trust" ( ; chengxin) that is mentioned 143 times but remains more than vague about the legitimate authority or agency which can define it and adjudicate disputes about its interpretation. Seen by some as a "gigantic social engineering experiment" (Dockrill, 2018), the SCS has been described by others as a "gamification of trust" because of its scary scoring system (Ramadan, 2018). As for the most interesting analysis of the SCS and the various aspects of the digitalization of Chinese society discussed above, much has been done by the economists Martin Chorzempa, Paul Triolo and Samm Sacks from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (Chorzempa et al., 2018). ...
There is no question that China is ahead of many developed countries in the digitalization of both its society and surveillance systems. It is also clear that the new technologies made possible by this digitalization — the widespread use of smart ID cards, the Great Firewall, the accumulation of Big Data, the social credit system (SCS) and facial recognition — have enhanced the capacity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to rule China, maintain control over society and stay in power indefinitely. While these are not the only systems in place to manage and control Chinese citizens and this is not their sole purpose, these developments have been rightly seen as part of an ambitious Orwellian project to micromanage and microcontrol every aspect of Chinese society. To better comprehend the significance of this new phenomenon, this paper employs Michel Foucault’s “Panopticon” metaphor, the perfect mean of surveillance and discipline as well as an “apparatus of power.” Yet, these new technologies have their own limits. In real life there is no perfect Panopticon as no society, even the most controlled one, is a sealed prison. Censorship on the Web is erratic and the full implementation of the SCS is likely to be postponed beyond 2020 for both technical and political reasons, as more Chinese citizens have raised concerns about unchecked data collection and privacy breaches. As a result, China is probably heading toward a somewhat fragmented digitalized society and surveillance system that is more repressive in some localities and more flexible in others, as is the case with the Chinese bureaucracy in general.
... With the advance of the internet, e-WOM has played an increasingly important role, as it is no longer limited to a one-to-one basis, but rather to a one-to-many basis where people from around the world share their opinions through social media platforms and blogs (Abu-Khzam and Lamaa, 2018;Al Shehhi et al., 2019). WOM and e-WOM can affect brand perceptions, market share and the purchase rates (Ramadan, 2018(Ramadan, , 2019b. ...
The growth of new technological innovations has given rise to a highly digitized retailing world that is re-defining the consumer purchase journey. Innovations, such as Amazon's Alexa, Dash-buttons (physical and virtual), and Spark, have indeed led to the creation of an Omni-channel journey that reshaped the shopping experience. Such tech-disruptions are likely to have a significant bearing on shoppers, brands and retailers, which is expected to vary between the short and the long-term. A quantitative research based on 600 U.S. Amazon customers studied the long-term incremental sales effect of e-retailers' tech innovations when driven by impulsive shopping behavior. The findings show that while retailers' tech-driven solutions would increase shoppers' impulsiveness, and hence sales, their continued interaction with such purchasing solutions would decline over time, making the overall innovation cycle much shorter.
... A gamificação pode, ainda, propiciar o engajamento de clientes e funcionários, delineando os diferentes tipos de envolvidos que atuam como "jogadores" em experiências gamificadas (Robson et al., 2016). Além disso, a gamificação da confiança, em que o sistema de crédito social foca os riscos potenciais presentes nas relações entre marca e consumidor, é capaz de afetar a sustentabilidade da marca devido à drástica mudança no panorama empresarial (Ramadan, 2018). ...
Resumo
A gamificação consiste no uso de técnicas de design de jogos orientadas a contextos normalmente não relacionados a jogos, como o organizacional, para estimular o engajamento e a motivação entre os funcionários e para manter e atrair novos clientes. Trata-se de um tema ainda recente na pesquisa acadêmica, o que justifica estudos nessa área. Diante disso, este artigo buscou analisar de que forma a temática em questão impactou a pesquisa acadêmica no período de 2008 a 2018. Para isso, desenvolveu-se um estudo bibliométrico nas bases de dados Scopus e Web of Science, tendo como critérios de análise os artigos mais citados, os autores da área (e sua relevância) e as principais revistas científicas que publicaram estudos sobre o assunto. Foram identificados 14 artigos publicados na base Web of Science desde 2015 e 34 artigos publicados na Scopus desde 2012. O artigo “Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification”, dos autores Robson, Plangger, Kietzmann, McCarthy e Pitt (2015), possui a maior quantidade de citações em ambas as bases de dados. Além disso, os resultados permitem afirmar que a gamificação proporcionou um impacto limitado na realidade das pesquisas acadêmicas, mas possibilitou analisar o tema em questão e seus construtos, gerando mais informações e contribuindo para a área.
Palavras-chave: Gamificação. Jogo. Bibliometria.
Abstract
The gamification consists of using game design techniques geared to contexts not normally related to games, such as organizational ones, to stimulate engagement and motivation among employees and to maintain and attract new customers. This is still a recent topic in academic research, which justifies studies in this area. Therefore, this article sought to analyze how the issue in question impacted academic research in the period 2008 to 2018. For this, a bibliometric study was developed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, having as criteria of analysis the most cited articles, the authors of the area (and their relevance) and the leading scientific journals that published studies on the subject. We have identified 14 articles published in the Web of Science database since 2015 and 34 articles published in Scopus since 2012. The article "Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification ", by authors Robson, Plangger, Kietzmann, McCarthy e Pitt (2015), has the largest number of citations in both databases. In addition, the results allow us to affirm that gamification provided a limited impact on the reality of academic research, but it made it possible to analyze the theme in question and its constructs, generating more information and contributing to the area.
Keywords: Gamification. Game. Bibliometric.
... A low score, on the other hand, withdraws rights, such as purchasing airline and railway tickets [18]. According to [19], the Sesame Credit represents the gamification of reliability present in social and political ties. Fig. 2 summarizes the operation of the Sesame Credit in terms of the nature of the user data which are analyzed to generate the score of the five indicators shown in Table I, and; also the consequences of the scoring regarding rewards and punishments: The generating items in each of the five fields in Fig. 2, still according to [20] are: 1) Financial history: tax payment history, existence of debt, default payments, accounts receivable, etc.; 2) Ethics and duties: compliance with local and national regulations and laws, partaking in voluntary work, accession to government programs, etc.; 3) Online Activities: online purchase history, friendship and connections on social networks, "reliability" in social media posting, etc.; 4) Rewards: access to certain public services, facilitation to get loans, discounts on vehicles rentals, priority in customer services in stores as well as in hospitals, high speed Internet access, university admission, etc.; 5) Punishments: hindrance to participating in civil service examinations, barred from purchasing airline and/or railway tickets, barred from seeking accommodation in luxury hotels, etc. ...
Sesame Credit is the most important gamified Chinese social credit model. It aims at monitoring and regulating the behavior of more than a billion citizens until 2020. Basing itself on the distribution of rewards and punishments to individuals, upon scoring based on the compliance of the aforementioned citizens towards laws and government interests. The present study probes Sesame Credit from data collected from academic papers, Chinese government official documents, as well as media articles. An interpretative analysis is conducted based on the Octalysis method of gamification and the motivational method known as the Self-Determination Theory. Residing as main conclusions: a) the efficiency of the Sesame Credit depends on extensive and continual monitoring of the population; b) despite the coercive aspects, such gamification is observed to be as popular in China, due to a millenary tradition of people's compliance to the social and those of authority obedience.
... A gamificação pode, ainda, propiciar o engajamento de clientes e funcionários, delineando os diferentes tipos de envolvidos que atuam como "jogadores" em experiências gamificadas (Robson et al., 2016). Além disso, a gamificação da confiança, em que o sistema de crédito social foca os riscos potenciais presentes nas relações entre marca e consumidor, é capaz de afetar a sustentabilidade da marca devido à drástica mudança no panorama empresarial (Ramadan, 2018). ...
A gamificação consiste no uso de técnicas de design de jogos orientadas a contextos normalmente não relacionados a jogos, como o organizacional, para estimular o engajamento e a motivação entre os funcionários e para manter e atrair novos clientes. Trata-se de um tema ainda recente na pesquisa acadêmica, o que justifica estudos nessa área. Diante disso, este artigo buscou analisar de que forma a temática em questão impactou a pesquisa acadêmica no período de 2008 a 2018. Para isso, desenvolveu-se um estudo bibliométrico nas bases de dados Scopus e Web of Science, tendo como critérios de análise os artigos mais citados, os autores da área (e sua relevância) e as principais revistas científicas que publicaram estudos sobre o assunto. Foram identificados 14 artigos publicados na base Web of Science desde 2015 e 34 artigos publicados na Scopus desde 2012. O artigo “Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification”, dos autores Robson, Plangger, Kietzmann, McCarthy e Pitt (2015), possui a maior quantidade de citações em ambas as bases de dados. Além disso, os resultados permitem afirmar que a gamificação proporcionou um impacto limitado na realidade das pesquisas acadêmicas, mas possibilitou analisar o tema em questão e seus construtos, gerando mais informações e contribuindo para a área.
... Brand-consumer relationships are based on a complex web of components that include brand image, likeability, trust, and association, that are themselves affected by social influence factors such as interaction, similarity, strength of tie, and eWOM on online platforms (Palmatier et al. 2006;Walker 2008;Valos et al. 2016;Ramadan 2018;Nieroda et al. 2018). What makes such relationships more peculiar is the high anthropomorphization of brands through their behavioral endeavors on social media. ...
Marketing has evolved from being mainly transactional based to relationship driven. As social media platforms facilitated a two-way communication channel between brands and consumers, they also made it possible for brands to have their own conversations. In fact, such brand–brand conversations are found on Twitter and are increasingly going viral as followers become intrigued and excited around such creative brand exchanges. Interestingly enough, when non-human brands engage in relational moments, they forge even further their brand personalities and become highly anthropomorphized by their followers. These relational moments present high risks and opportunities for companies and are still under-researched. Through a qualitative approach using an inductive thematic analysis to analyze a total of 17,136 comments from brand followers on Twitter, the research studies brand–brand conversations leading to the typology of such relational moments. The findings map six brand–brand relational moments alongside the different inherent strategies, objectives, and desired outcomes from such conversations. This research is among the first to establish the grounds for a brand–brand relationship alongside a typology for such relational moments. While most of the researches focus on relational building between brands and consumers, this research shows that brand–brand relationship moments could be an influencing factor on consumers’ brand perceptions.
... including, but not limited to, profession, types of products bought, and tax evasion (Ramadan, 2018). These pieces of information, so called big data, are collected through surveillance cameras, smartphone application history, and other various means, and are usually stored in one place (the concentration of information). ...
... Using mobile application with IoT technology for collecting data, authors in [18] show gamification that provides personalized recommendations to employees in order to drive desired behavior. Moreover, behavior of consumers is influenced through gamified environments according to China's "social credit" case presented in [19]. A research concerning the best practices of gamification design is presented in [20] which followed three steps, firstly, gather up-to-date literature and knowledge of gamification experts, secondly design a framework based on this knowledge and lastly evaluate the framework by interviewing domain experts. ...
Nowadays a lot of people working in industrial environments face daily routines as boring and dull which disaffects them from each other. Thus, the evolution of online communities has given a great opportunity in communication and interaction between people that work in the same environment but may not have direct interaction. An online Social Collaboration platform introduced to industrial environment enhances interaction between colleagues and empowers bonding by creating a social community where participants can share concerns, ideas and knowledge. Moreover, when introducing a new idea to a workplace, like Social Collaboration platform, it is expected to have both positive and negative reactions so it is challenging to create an attractive environment and engage as many individuals as possible. For this reason a gamification strategy can be used which is proven to appeal to the majority of people when applied with appropriate strategy. The gamified social collaboration platform that is introduced in this paper supports engagement of employees in to their daily jobs by triggering motivation and offering only positive feedback. The objective of the proposed concept is the creation of a pleasant and friendly environment in industrial premises where employees have the need to participate in collective activities and improve team spirit. A complete social collaboration tool with gamified actions is presented which is deployed in a plant floor at CERTH/CPERI and tested on real conditions during 3 months. The analysis of the user's engagement is promising and showed that the platform was successfully introduced at daily procedures and interactions using the gamified actions. Moreover, an overall enhancement of positive mood between colleagues is noticed along with engagement and satisfaction. This novel social platform proves that there is a necessity for change in industries by boosting human contact and eliminating alienation. Fortunately, with the right use of technology, this necessity can be satisfied and the whole procedure of communication, engagement and knowledge exchange is facilitated.
The study examines the relationship between gamification and customer brand engagement, focusing on its impact on brand value co-creation. It analyzes various studies published between 2013 and 2023, revealing that gamification positively influences brand engagement by fostering active participation, emotional connections, and increased motivation. It also facilitates brand value co-creation by encouraging consumers to actively contribute to brand development, innovation, and advocacy. Design considerations like game mechanics, aesthetics, and personalized experiences are crucial for maximizing gamification's impact on customer engagement and brand value co-creation. The review identifies potential moderating factors, such as consumer characteristics, cultural differences, and industry-specific dynamics, which may influence the effectiveness of gamification strategies.
This paper examines how journal-, article-, and author-related factors influence citation counts in the business field using 236 journal articles collected from an AACSB medium research output business school in the Middle East between 2017 and 2021. Results from association tests demonstrated that journal rank and format, the subfield of the article, and author prestige are significantly related to the number of citations. Results from CHAID further demonstrated the presence of an interaction/joint effect among variables; in particular: (1) articles published in Q1 WoS journals that are also authored/co-authored by prestige authors resulted in the highest number of citations; (2) articles published in Q2–Q3 WoS journals that also belonged to the business and management domain resulted in an average number of citations, and (3) articles published in Q4 or unranked journals in WoS also ranked Q3–Q4 or unranked in Scimago resulted in the lowest number of citations. These results provide theoretical implications and practical recommendations for faculty and business schools interested in enhancing their scholarly impact and rankings.
The monograph presents the result of a two-year interdisciplinary research (sociological, political science, economic, cultural studies) of the problems of digitalization of society and the economy, as well as the social credit system (SCS, SCS) actively introduced in the PRC since 2014, conducted within the framework of the international scientific project of the RANEPA SZIU ( Russia) and the Shanghai Administrative Institute (China). The opportunities provided by digitalization for solving the problems of improving the welfare of citizens are analyzed and substantiated, issues of public administration are considered in the context of the use of big data. A look at the SSC phenomenon is presented simultaneously from the inside (materials of Chinese authors) and from the outside (materials of Russian authors). Chinese scientists give the necessary for
understanding of this phenomenon, documents, statistics, specific facts, and most importantly, a detailed history of the emergence and development of the SSC in China.
The publication is intended for scientists involved in the study of the control system in the digital state and interested in SSC, as well as for students of all levels of training (bachelor's, master's, postgraduate studies) of social, humanitarian and economic profiles.
Common to the construction industry, distinct parties of different backgrounds and disciplines were assembled to complete a project. Despite being unfamiliar and sharing little in common except the project’s goal, this ad-hoc syndicate was expected to effectively communicate the expectation of the project’s stakeholders. While it was possible for project parties to get along and gradually form an effective relationship, contrasting interests and values were the norms, which resulted in conflicting attitudes and behaviour. Among the most critical constituents of a successful relationship, trust was identified as the fundamental building block to allay conflict or cushioning its impacts it. Through advancements in project management thinking in recent times were able to offer pragmatic solutions to relationship issues in construction, it appeared that digital transformation was not widely inculcated in the approaches. Against this backdrop, this paper aimed to gain insightful disclosure on digital development that promotes and accelerates trust-building in different contexts. This is methodically carried out by identifying and reviewing 100 pieces of relevant literature from the Scopus database, followed by deductive content analysis to observe the interplay between digital development and trust in a wider context. The analyses revealed two types of digital approaches having bright prospects for infusion in construction which are Gamification and Virtual Reality (VR). The outcome from this analysis provides the much-needed departing point for humanizing digital development in construction and signifies a paradigm shift in dealing with trust issues in construction.
Online accommodation-sharing has experienced rapid growth and greatly attracted the interest of current scholars. This study develops a theoretical model to explore the factors determining future bookings based on the novel perspective of information processing. We examine the effects of basic room and host information and the contingent role of credit information. The research model is tested by using a dataset from xiaozhu. com, one of the largest accommodation-sharing platforms in China. The results show that basic room information plays a major role in affecting future bookings, with room price generating a negative effect and consumer reviews generating a positive effect. Similarly, host information (reply rate and acceptance rate) is also significantly related to future bookings. Moreover, credit information weakens the negative effect of the room price and strengthens the effects of consumer reviews and the host acceptance rate. This study contributes to the literature on online accommodation-sharing, consumer booking behavior, and information processing theory and provides practical implications.
This Chapter starts by an overview of the literature that investigates the links between smart city practices and governance. It builds on the question proposed in the critical literature on the links between democracy in governance and city shaping, in general, and smart city development, in particular. This Chapter offers an overall analysis of all participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge based on their democracy scores—obtained from the Democracy Index 2018. This is followed by summary accounts of a few case study cities involved with the Challenge to provide tangible narrations of the role that different levels of democratic governance (e.g., full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes) have played in smart city development. The overall goal is to identify whether or how much democracy matters in the ways in which cities around the world adopt smart solutions.
The purpose of this article is to identify and analyze the ideas currently available in world science and practice among foreign researchers on the Social Credit System (SCS). The article analyzes the basic principles of SCS, which allowed us to draw the following conclusions: the social credit system for China is very close to ours mentally and historically, it fits well with the management paradigm based on the principles of Confucianism and Taoism, its main task is to promote the formation of citizens’ behavior based on openness, following rituals.
The main conclusions are made, such as the fact that this system allows you to put into practice the principle of the golden mean, that the application of SCS will contribute to the formation of citizens’ behavior on the basis of openness, following rituals and the desire for peace of mind. The formation of the population’s habit of living in the context of SCS, as the authors believe, will help to increase the sincerity of life. An analysis of the materials of foreign researchers was carried out in the article, which gave reason to conclude that the social credit system, launched in China, so far scares the rest of the world. In this regard, the article discusses the five main fears associated with SCS, as well as the five advantages of introducing this system, draws conclusions, and develops recommendations.
The purpose of this Letter is to identify and specify what type of research is required to explore the role of the Chinese Social Credit System for Chinese outbound tourism decision-making. The Social Credit System will likely cause visible and invisible effects on tourist behaviour of the Chinese people. Visible effects include social media sharing of high trust scores by tourists. Invisible effects may include how the SCS affects decision-making of Chinese outbound tourists. I conclude that we need a more emic-etic understanding of Chinese outbound tourists by using a Delphi method in combination with the Analytical Hierarchy Process method.
Natural disasters have caused significant financial and economic losses. One prominent way to combat these losses is crowdfunding. Donation-based crowdfunding platforms have been the backbone for disaster relief operations (DRO), but the engagement of donors with these platforms needs significant attention. This study aims to understand how gamification is used as a tool for understanding the behaviour of donors on crowdfunding platforms for DRO. The study uses the Civic Voluntary Model (CVM) to propose the conceptual framework and collects empirical data from 321 respondents to test the hypothesis. The study uses information quality and voluntariness as moderating variables and the model also controls for ownership of the crowdfunding platform and previous experience of donation. The results confirm that gamification positively impacts the behaviour of donors, which then leads to higher participation in crowdfunding channels. Both information quality and voluntary behaviour of donors have significant moderating effects that help in understanding the behaviour of donors and their participation in crowdfunding platforms. The results indicate that previous experience of making donations does not have a significant impact on the behaviour and actions of donors. The study thus brings a fresh perspective to using game mechanics along with understanding the quality of information on crowdfunding platforms to attract and sustain donations in DRO.
“How to make the perfect citizen?” This has been one of the
questions driving the construction of the Chinese Social Credit
System: a technology-driven project that aims to assess, evaluate,
and steer the behavior of Chinese citizens. After presenting social
credit systems in China’s public and private sectors (Part II), the
Article provides normative standards to distinguish the Chinese
system from comparable systems in liberal democracies (Part III).
It then discusses the concept of civic virtue, as implemented by the
Social Credit System, claiming that it creates a new form of
governance, “cybernetic citizenship,” which fundamentally changes the essence of citizenship and the political role of the state
(Part IV). On the whole, the Article demonstrates how the Chinese
Social Credit System redefines the institution of citizenship and
warns against similar patterns that are mushrooming in liberal
democracies.
A gamificação é um jogo eletrônico usado no ambiente empresarial para estimular o engajamento entre os funcionários e para manter e atrair novos clientes. A gamificação é um tema recente na pesquisa acadêmica, sendo esta uma possibilidade para ampliar os estudos nesta área. O artigo buscou analisar como o tema gamificação impacta e contribui para a pesquisa acadêmica no período de 2008 à 2018. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida por meio de um estudo bibliométrico nas bases de dados Scopus e Web of Science tendo como critério de análise os artigos mais citados, os autores da área com sua relevância, e as principais revistas científicas. Houve a apuração de 14 artigos publicados na base Web of Science desde 2015 e 34 artigos publicados na Scopus desde 2012. O artigo “Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification” dos autores Robson, Plangger, Kietzmann, McCarthy, e Pitt (2015), possui a maior quantidade de citações em ambas as bases de dados. A gamificação proporcionou um impacto limitado na realidade das pesquisas acadêmicas mas contribuiu de maneira satisfatória para o referencial teórico e os resultados do artigo com os conteúdos pesquisados.
The authors investigate the role of trust between knowledge users and knowledge providers. The kind of knowledge of special concern is formal market research. Users include marketing and nonmarketing managers; providers include marketing researchers within a user's own firm and those external to the firm. A theory of the relationships centering on personal trust is developed to examine (1) how users’ trust in researchers influences various relationship processes and the use of market research and (2) how the relationships vary when examined across dyads. The relationships were tested in a sample of 779 users and providers of market research information. Results indicate that trust and perceived quality of interaction contribute most significantly to research utilization, with trust having indirect effects through other relationship processes, as opposed to important direct effects on research utilization. Deeper levels of exchange, including researcher involvement in the research process and user commitment to the research relationship, however, have little effect on research use. Finally, the relationships in the model show few differences depending on whether the producer and user share marketing or research orientations. Interorganizational dyads, however, generally exhibit stronger model relationships than intraorganizational dyads.
The attainment of quality in products and services has become a pivotal concern of the 1980s. While quality in tangible goods has been described and measured by marketers, quality in services is largely undefined and unresearched. The authors attempt to rectify this situation by reporting the insights obtained in an extensive exploratory investigation of quality in four service businesses and by developing a model of service quality. Propositions and recommendations to stimulate future research about service quality are offered.
Conveying a brand image to a target market is a fundamental marketing activity. The authors present a normative framework, termed brand concept management (BCM), for selecting, implementing, and controlling a brand image over time. The framework consists of a sequential process of selecting, introducing, elaborating, and fortifying a brand concept. The concept guides positioning strategies, and hence the brand image, at each of these stages. The method for maintaining this concept-image linkage depends on whether the brand concept is functional, symbolic, or experiential. Maintaining this linkage should significantly enhance the brand's market performance.
Purpose
In Australia and many other nations the prevalence of overweight and obesity is increasing, while physical activity declines. This paper investigates the effect of gamification on consumers' motivation and behaviour to engage in physical activity over time from a social marketing perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental design was used to determine the effect of a popular gamified fitness application (app) on both intrinsic motivation and walking behaviour over four weeks.
Findings
While the study found that gamification supported behaviour change and maintenance, there was no significant change to intrinsic motivation as a result of using the app. This finding suggests there may be an alternative mechanism underlying how gamification achieves behavioural outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
Future research is recommended to further explore the manner in which gamification influences behaviours.
Originality/value
This paper addresses the call for longitudinal studies of gamification and for studies examining both the motivational and behavioural outcomes of gamification.
The first two years of the Xi Jinping administration saw a thorough reconfiguration of Internet governance. This reconfiguration created a centralized and integrated institutional framework for information technologies, in support of an ambitious agenda to place digital technologies at the heart of propaganda, public opinion and social control work. Conversely, the autonomy and spontaneity of China’s online sphere was vastly reduced, as the leadership closed channels for public deliberation. This article reviews the institutional and regulatory changes that have taken place between 2012 and 2014, and analyses the methods and purposes of control they imply.
Social media includes Western and Asian platforms. Asian consumers perceive, feel and behave according to their own cultural values and these drive their attitudes within social media with significant implications for branding and brand relationship within these social media platforms. The choice between a global Western or local Asian strategy creates potential threats and opportunities. Thus, this chapter aims at helping managers to understand the complexity surrounding branding in Asian via social media. Key critical success factors are discussed together with depth discussion of managerial implications for branding on social media (Western and Asian) in Asia.
This article elaborates and extends the Vargo and Lusch (2004a) service-dominant (S-D) logic thesis. Three linked exchange-enablers and their potential for improving value-in-use are discussed: first, relationships to give structural support for the creation and application of knowledge resources (relating); second, communicative interaction to develop these relationships (communicating); and third, the knowledge needed to improve the customer's service experience (knowing). These activities are integrated within an augmented S-D exchange model, and the implications for co-creating value are discussed. Finally, the argument is put that a customer's value-in-use begins with the enactment of value propositions, and the development of reciprocal value propositions is discussed in the context of the notion of sustainable betterment.
Conveying a brand image to a target market is a fundamental marketing activity. The authors present a normative framework, termed brand concept management (BCM), for selecting, implementing, and controlling a brand image over time. The framework consists of a sequential process of selecting, introducing, elaborating, and fortifying a brand concept. The concept guides positioning strategies, and hence the brand image, at each of these stages. The method for maintaining this concept-image linkage depends on whether the brand concept is functional, symbolic, or experiential. Maintaining this linkage should significantly enhance the brand's market performance.
Purpose - The objective of the study was to explore the effect of the image of country of origin (COO) and word of mouth (WOM) towards brand equity.
Design/methodology/approach - Questionnaire was deployed to collect data. Prior to data collection, validity and reliability tests were performed. Valid and reliable questionnaire was distributed to car customer in Jabodetabek region. It was succeeded to distribute 389 questionnaires and completely filled up by respondents. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) further was deployed to analyze the data.
Findings - COO and WOM significantly influence Brand Equity (BE) indirectly thorough BE dimensions. WOM exhibited stronger influence towards BE. The influence of COO and WOM towards BE dimension was also investigated. WOM showed stronger influence towards BE dimension, in descending order are Brand Loyalty (BL), Brand Association (BAS), Perceived Quality (PQ), and Brand Awareness (BA). COO showed weaker influence and different order, in descending order are BA, PQ, BL, and BAS.
Originality/value - Role of WOM in marketing has been extensively discussed by researchers. It is generally acknowledged playing a considerable role in in?uencing and forming consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions. However up to this date role of WOM on BE has not been explicitly studied by researchers. COO in another hand has been related to BE although in a limited references. Those studies were performed outside of Indonesian consumer. Up to this date study of COO of Indonesian consumer behavior remains unaccounted
We empirically study the motivations of users to contribute content to social media in the context of the popular microblogging site Twitter. We focus on noncommercial users who do not benefit financially from their contributions. Previous literature suggests that there are two main types of utility that motivate these users to post content: intrinsic utility and image-related utility. We leverage the fact that these two types of utility give rise to different predictions as to whether users should increase their contributions when their number of followers increases. To address the issue that the number of followers is endogenous, we conducted a field experiment in which we exogenously added followers or follow requests, in the case of protected accounts to a set of users over a period of time and compared their posting activities to those of a control group. We estimated each treated user's utility function using a dynamic discrete choice model. Although our results are consistent with both types of utility being at play, our model suggests that image-related utility is larger for most users. We discuss the implications of our findings for the evolution of Twitter and the type of value firms may derive from such platforms in the future.
This paper reports on an exploratory study of segmentation practices of organisations with a social media presence. It investigates whether traditional segmentation approaches are still relevant in this new socio-technical environment and identifies emerging practices. The study found that social media are particularly promising in terms of targeting influencers, enabling the cost-effective delivery of personalised messages and engaging with numerous customer segments in a differentiated way. However, some problems previously identified in the segmentation literature still occur in the social media environment, such as the technical challenge of integrating databases, the preference for pragmatic rather than complex solutions and the lack of relevant analytical skills. Overall, a gap has emerged between marketing theory and practice. While segmentation is far from obsolete in the age of the social customer, it needs to adapt to reflect the characteristics of the new media.
Marketing theory and practice have focused persistently on exchange between buyers and sellers. Unfortunately, most of the research and too many of the marketing strategies treat buyer-seller exchanges as discrete events, not as ongoing relationships. The authors describe a framework for developing buyer-seller relationships that affords a vantage point for formulating marketing strategy and for stimulating new research directions.
The author examines consumer affective responses to product/consumption experiences and their relationship to selected aspects of postpurchase processes. In separate field studies of automobile owners and CATV subscribers, subjects reported the nature and frequency of emotional experiences in connection with product ownership and usage. Analysis confirms hypotheses about the existence of independent dimensions of positive and negative affect. Both dimensions of affective response are found directly related to the favorability of consumer satisfaction judgments, extent of seller-directed complaint behavior, and extent of word-of-mouth transmission.
Salespeople involved in the marketing of complex services often perform the role of “relationship manager.” It is, in part, the quality of the relationship between the salesperson and the customer that determines the probability of continued interchange between those parties in the future. A relationship quality model is advanced and tested that examines the nature, consequences, and antecedents of relationship quality, as perceived by the customer. The findings suggest that future sales opportunities depend mostly on relationship quality (i.e., trust and satisfaction), whereas the ability to convert those opportunities into sales hinges more on conventional source characteristics of similarity and expertise. Relational selling behaviors such as cooperative intentions, mutual disclosure, and intensive followup contact generally produce a strong buyer-seller bond.
New organization forms, including strategic partnerships and networks, are replacing simple market-based transactions and traditional bureaucratic hierarchical organizations. The historical marketing management function, based on the microeconomic maximization paradigm, must be critically examined for its relevance to marketing theory and practice in the 1990s. A new conception of marketing will focus on managing strategic partnerships and positioning the firm between vendors and customers in the value chain with the aim of delivering superior value to customers. Customer relationships will be seen as the key strategic resource of the business.
Relationship marketing—establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges—constitutes a major shift in marketing theory and practice. After conceptualizing relationship marketing and discussing its ten forms, the authors (1) theorize that successful relationship marketing requires relationship commitment and trust, (2) model relationship commitment and trust as key mediating variables, (3) test this key mediating variable model using data from automobile tire retailers, and (4) compare their model with a rival that does not allow relationship commitment and trust to function as mediating variables. Given the favorable test results for the key mediating variable model, suggestions for further explicating and testing it are offered.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i.e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of source credibility, message credibility and tie strength, on acceptance and subsequent forwarding of electronic word of mouth (EWOM). Forwarding EWOM (FEWOM) also depends on personality traits, which this work investigates in form of moderation effect of individual regulatory focus.
Design/methodology/approach
Hypotheses are developed using social exchange theory and the elaboration likelihood model and tested using structural equation modelling. Data were collected online, using a random sample of 324 respondents in India.
Findings
Findings indicate that source credibility and tie strength are instrumental in influencing acceptance of EWOM. A strong mediation role of acceptance of EWOM, confirms that people tend to forward information online only if they accept it.
Research limitations/implications
This study represents a unique effort to focus on the combined effects of message credibility, source credibility and tie strength on acceptance and subsequent forwarding of EWOM.
Originality/value
This study provides original insights about antecedents of FEWOM as well as the role of individual regulatory focus as a moderator in the process.
The gamification of retail, helped essentially by the development of augmented reality, is hailed today as being the reverser of declining retail sales trends. With the rapid expansion and adoption of the Pokémon Go augmented reality game, there is a dire need to understand the true implications of this game app on brands and retailers alike. Given that studies on the risks attributed to the actual gamification of augmented reality are still scarce, this paper establishes an early understanding on this subject and expands the discussion on the potential negative implications of the commoditisation of augmented reality. Based on an exploratory qualitative design whereby 24 experts in the marketing field were interviewed, this study develops the currently narrow theoretical and practical understanding of how these apps could affect retailers. In sum, the study proposes a pioneering direction on the likely negative implications that gaming platforms such as Pokémon Go could
have on the first moment of truth.
The objective of this paper is to explore the necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain high consumer-brand identification (CBI) and high repurchase intentions (Rep). Different from most business research on CBI and Rep that is based on symmetric thinking, this paper uses asymmetric analytics and performs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The findings show that (1) although it is possible to identify the necessary conditions for very high consumer-brand identification and very high repurchase intentions, no combination of conditions is sufficient to achieve these outcomes; (2) affective drivers have more importance than cognitive drivers for obtaining high CBI; (3) the configuration solutions for high CBI include at least two antecedents; (4) high CBI is a sufficient but not necessary condition for high Rep; (5) high Rep can also be achieved if brand-self similarity and brand identity occur; and (6) memorable brand experiences alone may be enough to obtain high Rep.
The development of multiple applications with features of games has brought about a new trend – gamification. Gamification has become a fast-emerging practice in the business world, with a growing number of organizations adopting gaming techniques and game-style rewards in order to increase customer engagement. Despite this growing trend and the potential role played by gamification, the marketing literature lacks models that explain the use of gamification in the marketing context, customers' perceptions of gamification and its effects on their attitudes towards the brand. This study addresses this omission by adopting the TAM framework in a gamification context. Similar to TAM, gamification finds its roots in the technology and information systems literature. Drawing on TAM, this study presents a model that examines the effects of gamification on customers' intention to engage in the gamification process and their attitudes toward the brand. Using a quantitative methodology, the results provide empirical support for perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment as predictors to intention of engagement and brand attitude. However, perceived ease of use was surprisingly found not to be significantly related to people's intention of engagement with the gamification process and their brand attitude. In addition, perceived social influence was found not to be related to people's intention of engagement, but was related to their brand attitude. The findings of this research have theory and practical implications.
Purpose
Brands have been progressively using social networking sites, namely Facebook, as part of their strategy to engage their consumers, and ultimately build long-term relationships with them. Nonetheless, with the overuse of ‘engagement ads’ by brands, saturation related to information overload is expected to be reached leading to the dilution of the consumer-brand relationship. The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature which has predominantly focused on the positive side of social networking sites, and hence still lacks a thorough understanding of the potential risks brands face when using Facebook. Accordingly, this research examines the different risks brands would be facing from saturated consumers on social networking sites such as Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study was conducted, with a total of 40 respondents using face-to-face semi-structured interviews over two stages. While the first stage of the study focused on examining the saturation risk and its potential negative effects, the second one explored these risks specifically on the consumer-brand relationship on Facebook. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, then coded for analysis using NVivo 8.
Findings
Brands are overloading their followers with passively-endorsed brand messages, which are negatively affecting consumers’ experience on Facebook, as well as the relationship with these brands. This overall dilution of the consumer-brand relationship on Facebook was hence found to be affecting interaction, similarity with friends, the system quality of the social networking site, as well as information quality. Furthermore, this dilution was found to be affecting brand likability, brand trust and brand association.
Originality/value
The negative implications are still scarcely examined in the literature where social media engagement is predominantly discussed through a positive lens. Hence, this study has the peculiarity of discussing the risks that companies would face with Facebook’s engagement model along with their implications on the consumer-brand relationship.
Purpose
Consumers’ underlying motives to co-create value are important when determining their willingness to engage in co-creation activities. However, the importance of their motives may vary according to different service contexts. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the value co-creation research by investigating how the service contexts shape consumers’ motives to co-create.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on a survey of 284 consumers. By focusing on professional vs generic services (context), based on differences in knowledge intensity and workforce professionalism, the paper pinpoints the contextual nature of consumer motives to co-create.
Findings
The results show that in professional services consumers are positively influenced to co-create by developmental motives, whereas empowerment motives have a negative impact. In turn, the positive effects of individualizing and relating motives are predominant in generic services. Willingness to co-create is a strong determinant of intended co-creation behaviors, regardless of the service type.
Research limitations/implications
This study clearly shows the contextual nature of motives to co-create value, thereby questioning the generalizability of single-context studies.
Originality/value
This is the first paper to compare consumer motives to co-create across different service contexts.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of electronic referral (eReferral) marketing and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on brand image and purchase intention, coupled with the moderating effect of gender in the relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
– Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the interplay between the proposed variables, using a random sample of 308 respondents in Cyprus.
Findings
– The empirical results suggest the following: eReferral does influence brand image, and the impact is significant with women only; eWOM influences brand image, and the impact is more significant with women than men; eWOM influences purchase intention, and the impact is the same for both genders; brand image influences purchase intention, and the impact is more significant with women than men.
Research limitations/implications
– Marketing managers can benefit from these competitive advantage tools. Brand image, awareness and sales volume can be increased by utilizing eWOM or eReferral, depending on the product and/or service functionality as well as gender.
Originality/value
– While there is a substantial research stream on eWOM, to the best of the authors’ knowledge no research has differentiated eReferral from eWOM. This paper provides useful insights regarding the two concepts.
Purpose- The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between perceived external prestige (PEP), the student experience, attitude, and behaviour in the context of higher education institutions.
Design/methodology/approach– A comparison of the relationships between prestige perception, the student experience, WOM, and loyalty is examined within a one highly prestigious institution and one mid-ranked institution. Multigroup structural equation modelling was employed to examine data obtained from 948 respondents at the two institutions.
Findings– While respondents from the top-ranked institution exhibit a significantly higher perception of university prestige than mid-ranked university respondents, no significant differences were found between the two groups of respondents in terms of the strengths of relationships between constructs. The analysis revealed that students’ perception of their university experience performed a full mediating effect on the relationship between PEP and WOM, as well as a partial mediating effect on the relationship between PEP and loyalty.
Practical implications– Student perceptions of the university experience is a strong indicator of attitude and behaviour. For university administrators, enhancing the student experience is just as important as managing a university’s reputation with respect to engendering loyalty and positive WOM.
Originality/value – This is the first study to link PEP with student attitude and behaviour. The findings provide interesting theoretical insights as well as useful managerial implications to enhance consumer experience which in turns affect their attitude and behaviour towards the organisation.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of brand communication, brand image and brand trust as potential antecedents of brand loyalty in a sample of consumers in Gauteng Province of South Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
– Data were collected from 151 respondents, an 89 per cent response rate, using anonymously completed questionnaires. Research scales were operationalized on the basis of previous work. Data were collected from 151 respondents, an 89 per cent response rate, using anonymously completed questionnaires. Research scales were operationalized on the basis of previous work. Proper modifications were made in order to fit the current research context and purpose. “Brand communication” measure used six-item scales while “Brand image” used eight-item scale measure. “Brand trust” and “brand loyalty” used a four-item scale measure. All the measurement items were measured on a five point Likert-type scales that was anchored by 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree to express the degree of agreement.
Findings
– The four posited hypotheses were empirically tested. The results supported all the hypotheses in a significant way except one ( H2 ). Important to note about the study findings is the fact that brand communication has a stronger effects on brand image than on brand trust. However, brand image strongly influences brand trust. Notably too, the relationship between brand trust and brand loyalty is robust. This finding indicates that brand communication can have a strong influence on brand trust and brand loyalty via brand image. Perhaps this could be due to the fact that customers are likely to trust and be more loyal to brands with good image and reputation.
Research limitations/implications
– Despite the usefulness of this study aforementioned, the research has its limitations. Most significantly, the sample size was small and limited to Gauteng Province of South Africa. The study can be strengthened by increasing the sample size and including participants in other geographical areas. Future studies can also attempt to compare the perceptions of customers on the current study antecedents of brand loyalty from non-durable/FMCG to other product/service categories groups.
Practical implications
– The findings of this empirical study are expected to have to provide fruitful implications to both practitioners and academicians. On the academic side, this study makes a significant contribution to the brand management literature by systematically exploring the impact of brand communication on brand image, brand trust and brand loyalty in South Africa. On the practitioners’ side, this study therefore submits that marketers ought to pay attention to both brand communication and brand image in order to build customer brand trust. By increasing the perceived level of brand image through effective brand communication, marketers will be able gain customer brand trust. Eventually, the customers will become loyal to a brand they perceive to trustworthy. In this regard, from a policy perspective, it is recommended that managers and business strategists ought to develop policies and strategies aimed at winning customers brand loyal or increasing customers’ brand trust since such an endeavour is likely to lead to customer retention and marketing cost reduction. There is growing evidence in the extent literature indication that loyal customers are likely to share their experience with brands with their peers through “word of mouth” (WOM) (Bennetta et al. , 2005; Zehir et al. , 2011; Russell-Bennett et al. , 2013). At the same time, the society will tend to benefit from such information shared by their peers based on their brand experience.
Originality/value
– Overall, the current study findings provide tentative support to the proposition that brand communication, brand image and brand trust should be recognized as significant antecedents for gaining and sustaining brand loyalty in South Africa. This study therefore, stand to immensely contribute new knowledge to the existing body of brand management literature in Africa – a context that is often most neglected by some researchers in developing countries.
Purpose
– At present no frameworks exist for services marketers to incorporate social media (SM) within marketing communications planning. The majority of integrated marketing communications (IMC) frameworks were developed prior to the development of the widespread use of digital and SM for information seeking, sales and service. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue for services marketers specifically as they differ from FMCG, industrial and durable marketers in terms of marketing messages, branding, media and channels. Furthermore, as they are less reliant on outsourced sale channels they have more potential than other industries to integrate social and digital media to build awareness, brands and sales.
Design/methodology/approach
– Depth interviews were conducted with eight senior services marketing executives to identify the impact of SM on marketing communications planning, implementation and measurement.
Findings
– The findings revealed that the unique characteristics of SM (such as interactivity and individualisation, integration of communication and distribution channels, immediacy and information collection) impact traditional marketing communications frameworks. These impacts manifested in 12 modifications specific to services and SM to traditional generic IMC frameworks encompassed by the themes of reach, service channel, word-of-mouth advocacy, consumer generated messages, listening and behavioural measurement.
Practical implications
– The rapidly evolving nature of SM means senior services marketers need to educate organisational stakeholders regarding implementation issues, which may be a barrier to effective integration of SM within marketing communications.
Originality/value
– With digital marketing communications budgets reaching 30 per cent within some organisations, it is timely to put forward a marketing communication decision-making framework that first incorporates SM and second is suitable for services marketers.
Consumers act and interact via social media networks and online brand communities, collectively generating brand culture. In this context, organisations have the opportunity to develop a cultural following. The respective task for brand managers and marketers is to understand how consumers collectively generate online brand culture? Using active and overt netnography and investigating the specific context of the Behance Network, the findings presented here demonstrate that online brand community members collectively generate brand culture in variant ways: through construction of self, emotional relationships, storytelling and ritualistic practices. Pragmatically, this work demonstrates that online brand community members are curators of online brand culture and netnography offers a window through which to identify what actions and interactions need to be facilitated and fostered.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to understand the differences between organic (i.e. naturally occurring) and sponsored (i.e. marketer influenced) consumer-generated blog reviews, by examining how blog source and review valence can impact upon perceived credibility, brand attitude, and behavioural intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
– This study used an online experiment, where participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions in a 2 (blog source) × 3 (review valence) between-subjects factorial design.
Findings
– The findings indicate that balanced reviews are perceived to be the most credible. Negative reviews led to the lowest ratings on brand attitude and purchase intention, while positive reviews led to the highest ratings on these two constructs. However, the effects of review valence were not found to differ based upon whether a blog was organic or sponsored.
Originality/value
– The findings of this study extend and contribute to the knowledge of the impact of source and valence in electronic word of mouth settings. Moreover, the findings of this study provide practical insight into how consumers react to the sponsorship of blog web sites on the internet.
We investigate how the tendency to adopt a new product independently of social influence, the recipients' susceptibility to such influence, and the sources' strength of influence vary with social status. Leveraging insights from social psychology and sociology about middle-status anxiety and conformity, we propose that for products that potential adopters expect to boost their status, both the tendency to adopt independently from others and the susceptibility to contagion is higher for middle-status than for low-and high-status customers. Applying a nested case-control design to the adoption of commercial kits used in genetic engineering, we find evidence that status affects (i) how early or late one adopts regardless of social influence, (ii) how susceptible one is to such influence operating through social ties, and (iii) how influential one's own behavior is in triggering adoption by others. The inverse-U patterns in (i) and (ii) are consistent with middle-status anxiety and conformity. The findings have implications for how to use status to better understand adoption and contagion mechanisms, and for targeting customers when launching new products.
In a quest for connecting with customers, the world's largest brands have gone online to develop communities to interact with consumers. Despite widespread adoption less is known about what motivates consumers to continually interact in these communities. Across six studies, we develop and test a typology of online brand community engagement (i.e., the compelling intrinsic motivations to continue interacting with an online brand community). We identify 11 independent motivations and test the scale's predictive power for participation in an online brand community. This study provides a much needed refinement to the disparate conceptualizations and operationalizations of engagement in the literature. As a result, academic researchers can now rely on a diverse set of motivational measures that best fit the context of their research, adding to the versatility of future research studies. The results provide managers with new insight in the motivations for and impact of interacting in online brand communities.
The notion of peer influence in new product adoption or trial is well accepted. We propose that peer influence may affect repeat behavior as well, though the process and source of influence are likely to differ between trial and repeat. Our analysis of the acceptance of a risky prescription drug by physicians provides three novel findings. First, there is evidence of contagion not only in trial but also in repeat. Second, who is most influential varies across stages. Physicians with high centrality in the discussion and referral network and with high prescription volume are influential in trial but not repeat. In contrast, immediate colleagues, few of whom are nominated as a discussion or referral partner, are influential in both trial and repeat. Third, who is most influenceable also varies across stages. For trial, it is physicians who do not consider themselves to be opinion leaders, whereas for repeat, it is those located towards the middle of the status distribution as measured by network centrality. The pattern of results is consistent with informational social influence reducing risk in trial and normative social influence increasing conformity in repeat.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i. e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
Recent work on the organized sources of network ties and on the social structural determinants of association are synthesized to produce several hypotheses about homophily. These hypotheses are tested with data on 304 face-to-face groups from 10 communities. We find that friends are more similar on status dimensions than chance and that this homophily is produced both by the restricted opportunity structure offered by the group and by homophilous choices made within the group. Organizational heterogeneity leads to substantially greater dyadic status distance within the organization, while organization size consistently reduces dyadic status distance. At a given level of diversity, a larger group will permit more homophilous friendship pairing. However, correlated status dimensions create little reduction in dyadic social distance. In general, homogeneity within groups is the overwhelming determinant of homophily.
This article presents managers with a framework for measuring the strength of a brand. It specifically examines ten sets of measures grouped into five categories: loyalty, perceived quality, associations, awareness, and market behavior. Employing these measures can be difficult and their results must be used carefully. However, they have the capacity to provide managers with a set of important and extremely useful measurement tools.
This article presents a study designed to investigate and map the trajectories of brand love. Consumers described experiences related to the initiation and evolution of their relationships with their most loved brand. Participants were asked to graphically trace the course of their feelings toward their currently most loved brand and to recall the events that influenced those feelings. The paths toward brand love followed five distinct trajectories, labeled as “slow development,” “liking becomes love,” “love all the way,” “bumpy road,” and “turnabout.” The formative experiences shaping these trajectories often include individual, personal, and private experiences that are largely outside any marketer’s control.
This study investigates how the online and offline communication channels jointly influence a firm's new product diffusion. Considering the online and offline word-of-mouth effect, we compare three strategies through which a firm diffuses its product, i.e. offline diffusion strategy, online diffusion strategy and both offline and online diffusion strategy. The findings indicate that product peak sales rate and cumulative sales at peak time would be highest when managers market their products only through the online channel. However, product peak adopting time is not determined by the strategy which the manager takes, but is contingent on the relationship among the online/offline innovation effect, online/offline imitation effect and the proportion of offline consumers. Further parameter analysis provides several managerial insights.
Purpose
– The purpose of this article is to analyze how social media activities, in specifically the Facebook page of a car manufacturer, and user interactions with these brand related activities affect the perception of brands and ultimately influence consumers purchase decision. Based on an online survey with users of the corporation's Facebook fanpage, and in accordance to hierarchy of effects theory the author's findings show the positive effect of fanpage engagement on consumers' brand awareness, word of mouth (WOM) activities, and purchase intention. The findings further indicate that annoyance with the fanpage due to information overload leads to negative effects on fanpage commitment and to decreased WOM activities. From a theoretical standpoint the results of this study contribute to understanding of the value-enhancing potential of social media campaigns.
Design/methodology/approach
– To answer the authors' research questions and test their hypotheses, a study was set up in cooperation with the car brand MINI. To test their hypotheses, the authors applied structural equation modeling with AMOS 18.
Findings
– The article analyzes the influence of brands’ social media activities and participants' social media involvement on the purchase decision process of consumers. Their findings demonstrate that engagement with a Facebook fanpage has positive effects on consumers' brand awareness, WOM activities and purchase intention. Results further indicate that annoyance with the fanpage leads to negative effects in respect to the overall commitment to and involvement with the fanpage and WOM. The authors' research shows that social media activities indeed affect the purchase decision-making process.
Originality/value
– New marketing communication reality presents new challenges and opportunities for companies as purchase decisions are increasingly influenced by social media interactions. People rely more than ever on their social networks when making those decisions. Nevertheless, outcomes of social media activities are still disputed in practice. The effects of social media campaigns on consumers' perception of products and brands as well as the effects on purchase decisions have yet to be better understood. This study therefore investigates how social media activities, in specific the Facebook appearance of a car manufacturer, affect the perception of brands, and ultimately influence the purchase decision process of consumers while considering the risk of creating annoyance. From a theoretical standpoint the results of this study contribute to understanding of the value-enhancing potential of social media campaigns and demonstrate how the perception of brands is influenced through this new communication channel. For brand managers this study is of value, as it shows that social media activities do have a positive influence on brands as they support their management of the purchase process.
Until recently, brand identities were built by firms via brand image advertising. However, the flourishing consumer communication weakened the firms' grip on their brands. The interaction between advertising and consumer communications and their joint impact on brand identity is the focal point of this paper.
We present a model in which consumer preference for functional attributes may correlate with the identity they desire to project of themselves. This correlation is known to the firm but not to the consumers. Both the firm and the consumers can communicate their desired brand identity, although the actual brand identity is determined endogeneously by the composition of consumers who purchase it (i.e., what types of people consume the brand).
We find that sometimes the firm can strengthen the identity of its brand by refraining from advertising. This result is based on the following intermediate finding: advertising can diminish the endogeneous informativeness of consumer communications by making it one-sided. Furthermore, it turns out that refraining from brand image advertising may be optimal for the firm when the product is especially well positioned to create a strong identity—i.e., when consumer preferences for functional and self-expressive attributes are highly correlated.
Trust and the concept of the brand are increasingly of interest in the study of business relationships on the Internet. Synthesising studies of trust from other disciplines such as accounting, sociology, psychology and biology can provide useful insights into the application of trust both specifically and generally, to Internet business relationships. While there is a plethora of models, those with potential application for Internet business relationship theory are described and analysed. The argument is extended to discuss the concept of the brand as a surrogate for trust, and hence as a reliable identifier of a certain cluster of values.
In today's fragmented media landscape, generating positive word of mouth (WOM) among consumers has become an important tool for marketers. Marketers are challenged with identifying influential individuals in social networks and connecting with them in ways that encourage WOM message movement. In this article, we explore the nature of social networks, their role in influence, and the characteristics of the most influential individuals. We also examine the characteristics of viral marketing messages. Our findings contradict the commonly accepted notion that WOM influence comes from an elite, highly-connected few. Rather our research suggests that most people are moderately connected and are as willing as the highly connected to share marketing messages with others. Also, we find that influence is motivated by our basic human need to be helpful by giving advice, and that people share a common enjoyment in seeking out valuable information. The implications of these findings for marketers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Advertising Research is the property of Warc LTD and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)