Attitudes of the Indian Middle Class: A Theory of Planned Behavior Approach

The author conducts a pilot study to investigate whether the benefits of global marketing and the purported liberal policies of the Government of India have percolated to the Indian middle-class since the year 2014, when the present government came to power. The author collects data through online surveys from Indian citizens, and then conducts a qualitative analysis of the same to test six propositions based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Model and the Theory of Reasoned Action. The author finds moderate to strong support for five of his propositions and sets the stage for a more robust research study that the author is planning to conduct on this highly relevant topic. Keywords: globalization, consumer experience, marketing strategy, political marketing

Omnichannel Business

The widespread diffusion of digital technologies along with evolving consumer behaviors and requirements have fostered the emergence of omnichannel businesses, i.e., firms that can exploit integrated processes and information systems to realize a seamless and consistent consumer experience across a plenitude of digital and physical channels. To date, omnichannel research has been cluttered and characterized by significant terminological ambiguity that creates unnecessary challenges for researchers and markeeters trying to navigate and advance research and practice in this area. This fundamentals article seeks to address this problem by presenting a definition of omnichannel business that is grounded in its unique characteristics involving technology, organizational, and market perspectives and clearly distinguishes omnichannel from other terms, such as multi-channel or cross-channel. We leverage this conceptual clarity to analyze and structure the previous research on omnichannel business and conclude with an integrated framework that signifies fields of interest for future omnichannel business research.

Blockchain for Transformation in Digital Marketing

Today, an increasing number of firms are embracing blockchain as part of their efforts to achieve operational efficiency and improve performance, thereby acting as a catalyst to bring about digital transformation. Gartner listed blockchain as the most promising technology in digital marketing in the year 2019. Blockchain is driving digital transformation by forcing organizations to rethink how they operate, in terms of identifying ineffectiveness of traditional approaches to doing business, to address their business needs, promote innovation, and through establishment of standard frameworks. Blockchain shows massive disruption potential in the area of customer relationship management and enhancing consumer experience, besides improving trust, security, and privacy. Therefore, this chapter focuses on providing an enlightenment on how blockchain can specifically address the areas of transformation in digital marketing, prominent frameworks in use, and listing the benefits and challenges of implementing this technology.

Hospitality in the Experience Economy

Experience economy plays a predominant role in the hospitality industry. Consumer experience has always been of great importance for the hospitality business. As consumer experience evolved, businesses needed and still need to find new ways to differentiate themselves. To remain competitive and stay in the market, hospitality firms are working towards creating outstanding and memorable experiences that exceed guest expectations. In the context of Pine and Gilmore's experience economy conceptual model, the chapter attempts to theorize and explain how hospitality businesses are curating consumer experiential encounters. Digital nomads are the ignition source of driving an experience economy. The chapter further highlights how technology would additionally ease hospitality enterprises to frame excellent strategies focused on supplying the value to the digital consumers and then expecting their customers to generate additional business.

Financial regulation in the age of the platform economy

Platform businesses allow for collaboration with nontraditional partners and bring together different categories of customers, in the financial context savers and investors or lenders and borrowers, creating large, scalable networks of users. Their entry into finance promises potential benefits to consumers in the form of new products, lower prices, wider choice, and enhanced consumer experience. At the same time, their new business models and technologies potentially threaten the dominant position of traditional financial services providers and create challenges for regulators. Platform businesses can use their preferential access to customer data to skim off high-quality loans, leaving only low-quality customers for other lenders. Their ability to offer complementary nonfinancial services that cannot be supplied by FinTech start-ups and banks can make it difficult or unattractive for customers to switch to alternative providers. This danger is especially acute when BigTech firms have monopoly power in other markets that complement financial services.

The InsurTechs in Brazil: a legal and regulatory analysis

The insurance industry is facing an unprecedented wave of disruption. While all stakeholders welcome the new insurance products and the improved consumer experience resulting from technological advances, jurists face a number of challenges. In particular, it could be asked: is the current Brazilian legal system able to regulate InsurTechs adequately? The following paper will analyze the legal and regulatory aspects of the operation of companies characterized as “InsurTechs” and how they are functioning in Brazil. To this aim, the following will be addressed: (i) the concept of InsurTech; (ii) the Brazilian regulatory authority’s Regulatory Sandbox approach and; (iii) The functioning of InsurTechs in Brazil.

Theoretical Foundations of the First Purchase in Marketing

Consumer decision making as an important process in marketing sphere has been discussed in detail, but so far researchers as a rule have not focused the attention on how the purchase happens for the very first time. The current text is an attempt to develop the foundations and to make a conceptual framework of the first purchase in marketing and to outline its significance for current or future consumption, especially for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Together with a review of the extent to which the first purchase is considered and interpreted in the academic tradition in the field (and in practice), an attempt has been made to outline it as a phenomenon, since it can have significant benefits for better understanding consumer behavior and the further improvement of marketing communications. With this regard, it can be assumed that the first purchase is the initial step of acquiring consumer experience, which determines whether the product will continue to be purchased or not. Of course, all this is largely valid for the b2c (business to consumer) markets, for the products for individual and household consumption, and for the b2b (business to business) ones the particularities may differ significantly and need to be a subject of additional research efforts.

Influence of emotions displayed by employees during service recovery

Purpose While research evidences how customers’ emotions can influence their consumer experience, understanding of how employees’ displayed emotions affect the customer service experience is more limited. Drawing on affect transfer theory, the authors test for the mediating role of attitude towards the employee, which is proposed to mediate the effect of employees’ displayed emotion on customers’ satisfaction with recovery. As service recovery entails a critical service experience in which emotions can easily rise, this paper aims to highlight the pivotal role of employee-displayed emotions during service recovery. Methodology A scenario-based experiment in the context of an airline service failure recovery (3 × 2 between-subjects design) manipulates frontline employees’ emotions (anger vs happiness vs no specific emotion) and the quality of the solution (bad vs good). Findings Employees’ displayed emotions directly affect attitude towards the employee and indirectly affect service recovery satisfaction. Moreover, attitude towards the employee is affected more by the employee’s displayed emotion when the solution offered is bad compared to good. Practical implications Employees’ emotions displayed during service recovery can enhance or damage service recovery strategies. Employees should control for negative emotions in the case of service failure, especially when unable to provide a good solution. Originality Emotions displayed by employees can influence the customer’s service recovery evaluations. There is an interesting interaction between the quality of the solution and employees’ displayed emotions. Additionally, the mantra of “service with a smile” may not be valid in the case of service recovery: rather, employees should avoid displaying negative emotions.