| 1. |
- Eriksson, Maria Theresa
(författare)
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Going Above and Beyond : An Assessment of Paying it Forward Behaviour in the B2B Marketing Context
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Helping behavior and other acts of kindness are important in the business context as they lead to numerous positive outcomes for organizations and individuals and they can help form the foundation needed for meeting organizational goals. Acts of kindness can have a multiplying effect which can be achieved by kindness being paid back to the individual who conducted the act of kindness or paid forward to others. Paying it Forward (PIF) is a type of generalized social exchange behaviour that occurs when a person gives something of value to another person because they have in the past received something of value from someone else. PIF is forming a growing area of interest in business, yet to date PIF has received less attention in a Business-to-Business (B2B) context than in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C). There are two key considerations that makes PIF important in the B2B marketing context, namely that marketing itself constitutes exchange and that the multiple responsibilities that the marketing manager often hold makes them actors in social exchange, both as participants of exchange relationships between firms and as facilitators of exchange through the responsibilities they hold within their firm. With this in mind, this dissertation identifies research gaps as it relates to PIF in the context of B2B marketing, and these gaps can be summarized by the research problem statement: How can marketing managers participate in and facilitate/encourage Paying it Forward in the B2B marketing context? This research problem statement was examined by four research questions, each addressed by a study producing an individual research article. The purpose of the first study was to address the research question: What is the role of the Generalized Social Exchange behaviour Paying it Forward in the Business-to-Business marketing context? The findings of this work serve to further situate PIF in the B2B marketing context, and contribute a conceptual framework and several researchable propositions for PIF in the B2B marketing context. Next, the purpose of the second study was to address the research question: How does Generalized Social Exchange such as Paying it Forward occur and drive value co-creation results for employer branding in a business ecosystem? This study extended knowledge of B2B marketing from an employer branding perspective by proposing the existance of an ecosystem-centric perspective and Ecosystem Citizenship Behaviour (ECB) as it relates to employer branding. Meaning that employer branding can be perceived and acted upon from the perspective of the ecosystem as a whole. Following this, the purpose of the third study was to address the research question: Does organizational commitment predict Paying it Forward behaviour in the workplace? This study conceptually confirmed that PIF is an organizational citizenship behavior distinct from other conceptualizations. It also further added to the literature by confirming that there exists a positive relationship between organizational commitment and PIF, and that age and gender are confirmed moderators of this relationship. Finally, the purpose of the fourth study was to address the research question: How can managers encourage Paying it Forward behaviour that contributes to strengthening the firm’s employer brand? Study 4 introduced a conceptual definition for a PIF mindset and described what it entails and the value it may bring. It also provided a summary of different examples, benefits and risks of how PIF occurs on a micro-, meso- and macro-level. Finally, it provided practical guidelines summarized as principles for managers regarding how to foster a PIF mindset among employees and the broader organization. Through these studies taken together, this dissertation is contributing to furthering B2B marketing literature by providing insights into how marketing managers can participate in, facilitate and encourage PIF in the B2B marketing context, by first providing a general assessment of PIF in this context, and then addressing specific areas to further our understanding of how actors engage in this context. This dissertation is organized as follows: First, Chapter 1 provides an introduction and overview of the research area. Next, Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature relating to the key concepts and develops the research questions under examination in this dissertation. In Chapter 3, the methodology undertaken to study the research area is discussed. Chapter 4, in turn, presents a summary of the findings of each research article. Finally, Chapter 5 presents the theoretical contributions and practical implications of each of the four studies, it also discusses limitations and proposes recommendations for future research. The four contributing research articles can be found in full length as appendices to this dissertation.
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| 2. |
- Näppä, Anna
(författare)
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Building Employer Brands: The Employee Perspective
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Employer branding, or the creation and communication of an identifiable identity as an employer, has become a buzzword that interests both practitioners and researchers. Employer branding is considered a key tool for attracting, developing, and retaining the best employees and is believed to be the answer to the so-called “war for talent”. The question of human capital is of the essence for all companies but is particularly prevalent for service organizations. For example, organizations in tourism and hospitality rely on their employees to deliver complex experiences, while balancing high customer expectations and resources available. Attracting and retaining the right frontline employees is crucial due to their unique role as brand ambassadors who deliver the brand promise in each customer encounter. At the same time, employers in tourism and hospitality have been struggling with a negative industry image and high employee turnover, which has intensified even more in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.While employer branding has received a great deal of attention it still offers much research potential. Employer branding includes both current and potential employees, but most studies have focused on talent attraction rather than capturing perceptions of current employees. The majority of research has studied large companies with access to both expert knowledge and financial resources, and thus little is known about employer branding in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In addition, it is only recently the concept of co-creation entered the employer branding vocabulary, referring to the role of employees as active agents or partners to the brand rather than a mere target market. Co-creation has been thoroughly researched in the tourism and hospitality sphere, lending itself as a suitable context for addressing the gap relating to employee co-creation of the employer brand. Thus, the overall research purpose is to investigate how employer brands are perceived and built by employees. This is done with a focus on the tourism and hospitality context.Based on the current gaps in the literature, the following research aims were developed: 1. To explore employer brand management in SMEs2. To explore the role of employees as both target group and co-creators of employer brand equity in the context of tourism and hospitality.3. To investigate employees’ perceptions of their employer’s attractiveness, together with intentions to stay and recommend in tourism and hospitality. Special attention is paid to the role of creativity and innovation. 4. To investigate which employer attributes are related to perceptions about the tourism and hospitality industry and the likelihood to stay. These aims were researched in four individual papers. To reach the overall purpose, a mixed methods approach was applied. The first two papers took a qualitative approach: the first paper used observational data, while the second used in-depth interviews. The two latter papers were quantitative in nature. This research contributes to two areas: the employer branding literature, as well as research on tourism and hospitality. In particular, it highlights employer branding as a co-creational practice and performance, where employees build the brand by participating in internal processes, representing the brand towards outsiders, and simply being part of the collective brand identity. The possibility to do innovative and creative work seems to be an important driver for staying with and recommending one’s current employer. In terms of perceptions of work in tourism and hospitality, there are two levels to consider: the individual employer as well as the industry itself. The results emphasize the role of industry reputation and general industry attractiveness in retaining employees. This research also focuses on the roles and perspectives of current employees which has been lacking in the employer branding literature. The dissertation begins with defining the context of tourism and hospitality and current state of employer branding as an area, moving then to describing the identified gaps and landing in an overall research problem. The most relevant theories are discussed in the second chapter to lay the theoretical foundation together with a review on employer branding and employer brand equity. The second chapter also explains the concept of co-creation and the effects of the industry on the employer brand(ing) and concludes with a justification for the research aims. Chapter three explains the methodological choices for the dissertation and the individual papers and findings from the papers are described in chapter four. Finally, the fifth chapter presents the overall conclusions and implications for theory and practice.
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| 3. |
- Robertson, Jeandri
(författare)
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Competitive Advantage Strategies in Industrial Marketing : Using an Ecosystem Approach
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Intensified competitive pressures related to a dynamic and hypercompetitive global economy, technological advances, unpredictable customers and competitors, and blurring industry boundaries, have compelled industrial marketers to reconsider the strategic imperatives of the organization, in relation to the competitive context in which it operates. As it becomes increasingly difficult for individual firms to identify and respond to external competitive challenges and changes independently, new organizational perspectives have been proposed to thrive in the presence of these forces. The metaphor of the ‘ecosystem’ has increasingly been used in research and practice to highlight the interdependencies between organizations and their environment, providing a renewed way of thinking about the co-evolution, collaboration and creation of value between actors. Although industrial marketers’ knowledge of ecosystems is rapidly developing, the field is still unfolding and relatively little is known about the differences between these ecosystems, especially from a competitive advantage perspective.To deepen our understanding of its value from an industrial marketing point of view, the current research sought to create conceptual and terminological clarity regarding the ecosystem concept and examine the competitive dynamics present within and between these ecosystems. The central research problem guiding this research is: How is competitive advantage achieved through an ecosystem approach in industrial marketing? Contemporary strategy literature converging at the crossroads between organizational evolution and a fast-changing competitive landscape, proposes that relationships and the resources and capabilities embedded within these relationships are key to the attainment of competitive advantage. As such, theoretical streams that incorporate this line of thought are used as lenses through which to assess competitive advantage. The following research questions emerged:RQ1: What are the drivers of competitive advantage through a network analysis approach to ecosystems?RQ2: How does social capital impact the competitive advantage of ecosystems?RQ3: How do dynamic capabilities impact the competitive advantage of ecosystems?RQ4: How do resource- and capability-based theories explain competition in ecosystems?Four papers were constructed as part of the empirical part of this research. Two papers assessed competition and competitiveness within ecosystems, with the other two examining competitive advantage between ecosystems. Two of the papers followed a quantitative descriptive approach, one paper followed a quantitative exploratory approach, while a qualitative exploratory approach was utilized in the fourth paper. The respective approaches were deemed best suited to address the respective research questions. The research contributes to the body of knowledge in that it highlights the centrality of knowledge exploration in leveraging, maintaining and attaining advantage. It also points to a cyclical knowledge-generating process within the ecosystem context, which centers on exploring, then exploiting and finally, transforming of knowledge for sustainable competitive advantage. The dissertation follows a narrative of first sketching the relevance of the ecosystem metaphor within the industrial marketing context, leading to the identification of gaps in the research and an introduction to the research problem. The evolution of the ecosystem concept is then reviewed, laying bare its characteristics, extant definitions and different types of ecosystems. Theoretical perspectives of strategy, inherently embedded in theoretical assumptions of how competition works, are then discussed. The research questions are then introduced, including the respective papers addressing each research question, together with the research methodology followed. The dissertation concludes with a summary of the findings, which also provides a discussion on the research contributions, managerial implications, noted limitations and suggested areas for future research. The four papers are presented as Appendices, of which three have been published and the fourth is in its second round of review.
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| 4. |
- Ferreira, Caitlin, et al.
(författare)
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The writing is on the wall: predicting customers' evaluation of customer-firm interactions using computerized text analysis
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of service theory and practice. - : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 2055-6225 .- 2055-6233. ; 33:2, s. 309-327
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose - This methodological paper demonstrates how service firms can use digital technologies to quantify and predict customer evaluations of their interactions with the firm using unstructured, qualitative data. To harness the power of unstructured data and enhance the customer-firm relationship, the use of computerized text analysis is proposed.Design/methodology/approach - Three empirical studies were conducted to exemplify the use of the computerized text analysis tool. A secondary data analysis of online customer reviews (n = 2,878) in a service industry was used. LIWC was used to conduct the text analysis, and thereafter SPSS was used to examine the predictive capability of the model for the evaluation of customer-firm interactions.Findings - A lexical analysis of online customer reviews was able to predict evaluations of customer-firm interactions across the three empirical studies. The authenticity and emotional tone present in the reviews served as the best predictors of customer evaluations of their service interactions with the firm.Practical implications - Computerized text analysis is an inexpensive digital tool which, to date, has been sparsely used to analyze customer-firm interactions based on customers' online reviews. From a methodological perspective, the use of this tool to gain insights from unstructured data provides the ability to gain an understanding of customers' real-time evaluations of their service interactions with a firm without collecting primary data.Originality/value - This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding the use of computerized lexical analysis to assess unstructured, online customer reviews to predict customers' evaluations of a service interaction. The results offer service firms an inexpensive and user-friendly methodology to assess real-time, readily available reviews, complementing traditional customer research. A tool has been used to transform unstructured data into a numerical format, quantifying customer evaluations of service interactions.
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| 5. |
- Näppä, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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I just work here! Employees as co-creators of the employer brand
- 2023
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1502-2250 .- 1502-2269. ; 23:1, s. 73-93
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study explores the role of employees as both a target group and co-creators of employer brand equity in tourism and hospitality. Extant research has largely focused on the effects of external employer brands; however, studies on internal employer branding have been lacking. The research problem is addressed through the conceptual lens of employer brand equity. To provide empirical insights into employee experiences, exploratory in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 employees in hotels, restaurants, and retail stores in Northern Sweden. While employees constitute a target market for internal employer branding, they also co-create the employer value proposition. Employees act as brand members, representatives, advocates and influencers, increasing knowledge about the organization internally and externally. However, in practice, companies in the service sector seem to place more focus on the customer experience than on reminding the employees of the brand promise towards them. This study identifies and describes the role of employees in the employer branding process by developing a new conceptual framework. Thereby, it adds to the understanding of co-creation in employer branding, an under-researched area which has been suggested to become a new paradigm in the employer branding literature.
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