Abstract New creative paradigms are emerging where digital consumer communities become endeavours... more Abstract New creative paradigms are emerging where digital consumer communities become endeavours for the cocreation of value. This paper contributes to consumer innovation studies and the marketing literature by revealing that while competition in early-stage communities generates collaborative behaviours (i.e. cocreation process), beyond a certain threshold it enacts discontent (i.e. codestruction process). The empirical context concerns the complementary game modifications (“mods”) for video game engine platforms. The research adopts a multi-method methodological approach. A quantitative study shows that an expansion of online consumer innovation communities initially motivates consumer towards cocreation but the competitive pressure exerted by the raising number and quality of already existing mods limits the innovation process. A qualitative netnographic study unveils that the motives for the decline of consumers content generation lies in the perception of misbehaviours within the community in terms of lack of support, content appropriation, planned obsolescence, stealing, fierce competition, toxic behaviours, addiction to modding and exploitation.
We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a... more We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a form of artistic work (Belch & Belch, 1998). As advertising is a process based on persuasion, even the most aesthetically interesting commercial can never be considered a work of art. This is because advertisers have very defined communicational tasks to achieve. That is to say very strict constraints and strong limits in fantasy, which are two indispensable characteristics in any artistic work. The object of this work will be to develop the psychological process that is at the basis of creation of any kind of business communication. I intend to identify the possible enrichment that the use of appropriate creative capacity can give to various fields of study. INTRODUCTION Marketers use the various promotional mix elements – advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, publicity/public relations, and personal selling – to inform consumers about their products, prices, and places where...
Abstract Whilst there is extant research focusing on the link between hotel reviews and pricing t... more Abstract Whilst there is extant research focusing on the link between hotel reviews and pricing there is scant attention paid to the impact of pricing on hotel review ratings. This paper presents a large scale study based on a novel dataset of more than 44,000 guest review ratings linked to the prices paid for rooms of an European hotel group. Through applying a panel regression analysis we reveal that expectancy-disconfirmation is generally stronger than the placebo effect and higher prices have a negative effect on review ratings, not only when assessing perceived value for money but also when evaluating perceived quality. We identify the trip and guest characteristics which impact on the price-review relationship. Findings provide hotel managers with key quantitative information for simultaneously calibrating quality and revenue targets. Substantial implications include an integrated approach for segmentation as a route to better manage pricing, revenue optimization and reputation.
Healthy eating is often substituted by easily accessible snack foods that are high in saturated f... more Healthy eating is often substituted by easily accessible snack foods that are high in saturated fat, as well as salt and sugar. By uncovering consumer’s expectations towards healthy food, this work proposes the design of a new product - healthy snack bars - as an alternative to unhealthy snacks. Based on a sample of adult coeliac and health conscious people, our study breaks consumers’ expectations down into a set of themes, which represent the ideal product’s objective and subjective features. The empirical study combines two qualitative methods (free word associations and collage creation) and a questionnaire in an explorative setting to retrieve conscious and unconscious feelings of consumer’s decision making. The findings suggest that taste and social inclusion are the characteristics of an ideal healthy snack bar for coeliacs, while self-indulgence is the most salient theme for health conscious consumers. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of nutrition and development of a new product.
Consumer engagement has been heralded as strategic in facilitating sales growth, competitive adva... more Consumer engagement has been heralded as strategic in facilitating sales growth, competitive advantage, and profitability. Expanding the notion of consumer engagement to the stakeholder context, this study examines the determinants of multistakeholder digital engagement. Based on a digital setting (Expo2015), this study collected all the social media posts (n=984) in the Facebook page with restricted access to the stakeholders involved in the event. Initial regression results suggest that the presence of transformation, in terms of activation of creative resource integration in posts, is a strong predictor of compliant and interactive engagement. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) shows the configurations of cognitive and emotional attributes leading to compliance and interaction. Stakeholder engagement is an interactive experiential process based on actors' engagement with a focal organization, but more intensively with other stakeholder community members.
The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital storytelling enables a consumer relationship e... more The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital storytelling enables a consumer relationship experience in online peer-to-peer communities. Within the value co-creation framework, digital storytelling is interpreted as an encounter communication practice where consumers adopt the role of storytellers and story receivers. This study adopts a qualitative multi-method approach to investigate the meanings contained in video stories and the linkage to relationship experience. A case study based on the Airbnb's social platforms was analyzed through the Degreesof-freedom instrument (DFA) and through a systematic dimensional qualitative research called BASIC IDS (an acronym for behavior, affect, sensation, imagery, cognition, interpersonal relations, drugs, and sociocultural factors) to yield psychological valuable insights into the multidimensional construct of consumer relationship experience. The analysis unveils that, within the social media realm, storytelling enables rational, emotional, and relationship experiences. A relationship experience occurs when members of peer-to-peer communities, not only are rationally and emotionally engaged by the story, but are also moved to action going beyond a vicarious roletaking process. Specifically, relatability, a shared sociocultural background, and the drug dimension conceptualize the consumer relationship experience. Implications build on the need for companies to enhance the power of stories through favoring consumers' video making and integrating consumers' flow of stories between multiple social media platforms.
The work explores whether self-storytelling is a powerful predictor of personal reputation in a c... more The work explores whether self-storytelling is a powerful predictor of personal reputation in a collaborative community of the sharing economy realm. By proposing that powerful self-storytelling allows an attractive positioning in respect to potential others, the paper extends the literature of brand storytelling and brand archetypes shifting the perspective to a personal level. This study adopts a qualitative-quantitative approach to investigate the meanings and stories contained in personal profile descriptions and their relation with reputation. Personal descriptions are interpreted as storytelling activities, labels/glosses that allow members to access the services of the community by facilitating personal reputation building. The findings show that powerful storytelling structures have defined phases and are crucial in reputation building when the story evolves in a metaphoric, symbolic lesson. The presence of archetypes, in particular the Sage and the Ruler, also confer reputational power to the stories. The results reveal opportunities for peer-to-peer communities, traditional companies, and social businesses. Marketers should design tools and platforms able to trigger consumers' desire to express their individuality through personal descriptions and suggest the drivers that affect reputation.
New services, like fabrication spaces, 3D printer rentals and virtual marketplaces, have made it ... more New services, like fabrication spaces, 3D printer rentals and virtual marketplaces, have made it easier for empowered consumers to co-create innovative products without almost any involvement of traditional companies. Adopting a consumer-grounded view, this work takes a step forward from the existing service literature by investigating the link between psychological motives and happiness in co-creation. Specifically, the study measures how community affiliation, personal growth, and utilitarian motives are predictors of subjective well-being. The results illustrate that community affiliation and personal growth motives predict high scores of subjective well-being, while utilitarian motives do not. In addition, empowered consumers who co-create with others are happier than consumers who create alone. This indicates that direct interactions are not only a powerful platform for service co-creation, but are also predictors of subjective well-being. We discuss the implications for traditional companies and for decision makers regarding the benefits offered by digital fabrication services.
The work proposes a theoretical and empirical model that investigates how storytelling is a power... more The work proposes a theoretical and empirical model that investigates how storytelling is a powerful co-creative behaviour in tourism. The contribution takes a step forward from the classical theories on co-creation and develops the case where consumers act almost independently from traditional brands. The empirical study adopts an interpretive approach to analyse online travel reviews. Data are interpreted through Yi and Gong's model on consumer value co-creation behaviour [(2013). Customer value co-creation behavior: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research, 66, 127], the Phase dynamics theory of travel epiphany behaviour [Woodside, A. G., & Megehee, C. M. (2010). Advancing consumer behaviour theory in tourism via visual narrative art. International Journal of Tourism Research, 12(5), 418–431], and the Archetype theory [Woodside, A. G., Sood, S., & Miller, K. E. (2008). When consumers and brands talk: Storytelling theory and research. Psychology & Marketing, 25(2), 97–145]. The study indicates that storytelling behaviours in value co-creation activate a ‘customer delight' response, which is an affect-based construct.
Addressing the recent appreciation of value co-creation lying with multiple stakeholders beyond t... more Addressing the recent appreciation of value co-creation lying with multiple stakeholders beyond the consumer, this paper explores the motives and resources for value co-creation within a multi-stakeholder ecosystem using a case study research design. The study's context is the Universal Exposition 2015, an ecosystem comprising disparate actors, analyzing their experiences of value co-creation from a managerial perspective. Findings show that key motives to participate in such multi-stakeholder value co-creation are reputation enhancement, experimentation, and relationship building. Through innovative resource integration practices and individual leadership characteristics, a polyphonic process of co-creation emerges that builds upon the diverse and conflicting identities. Moreover, fundamental enablers of multi-stakeholder value co-creation are trust, inclusiveness, and openness. The paper offers managerial implications with specific suggestions for harnessing value cocreation among stakeholders in multi-stakeholder ecosystems through shared purpose definition, gatekeeper identification and infrastructure design.
We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a... more We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a form of artistic work (Belch & Belch, 1998). As advertising is a process based on persuasion, even the most aesthetically interesting commercial can never be considered a work of art. This is because advertisers have very defined communicational tasks to achieve. That is to say very strict constraints and strong limits in fantasy, which are two indispensable characteristics in any artistic work. The object of this work will be to develop the psychological process that is at the basis of creation of any kind of business communication. I intend to identify the possible enrichment that the use of appropriate creative capacity can give to various fields of study 1.
Purpose of the paper: The study tests whether guests’ perceptions of the environmental policies p... more Purpose of the paper: The study tests whether guests’ perceptions of the environmental policies put in place by the hotel influences guests’ evaluation of their overall experience. Methodology: The empirical analysis uses a dataset of 52,764 reviews from a hotel chain’s internal platform, which specifically requests for a guest evaluation of the environmental policies. The sample includes data from 105 European hotels in 2017-2018. A semantic content analysis of almost 100,000 observations from the chain’s internal platform and from open peer-to-peer platforms complements the quantitative study. Findings: Findings suggest that hotel guests, when evaluating the overall experience, do not take their own evaluation on the environmental policy into account. Research limits: The study adopts a single case-study approach, which does not allow for the generalizability of its findings. The study cannot disentangle the motivation of the results (e.g. limited care about the environment or ina...
Digital technology (viewed as the combination of information, computing, communication, and conne... more Digital technology (viewed as the combination of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technology) is impacting on the marketplaces that SMEs operate in. Yet, little is understood about how these businesses are adapting to, and adopting, digital technologies and creating digital innovation. Technology can be viewed as an opportunity for SMEs through which to engage in competitive behaviour, cost reduction, audience extension and intelligence gathering. European Commission recognises the SMEs form the backbone of the European economy Qualitative data were gathered from 45 interviews with SME leaders across four European countries and 5 industry sectors. This paper reports on the findings from a research project investigating digital preparedness of European SMEs and specifically the characteristics and capabilities of SME leaders in adopting digital innovation. Insight is outlined through the scope of the research which integrates different countries, sizes of SMEs ...
Abstract New creative paradigms are emerging where digital consumer communities become endeavours... more Abstract New creative paradigms are emerging where digital consumer communities become endeavours for the cocreation of value. This paper contributes to consumer innovation studies and the marketing literature by revealing that while competition in early-stage communities generates collaborative behaviours (i.e. cocreation process), beyond a certain threshold it enacts discontent (i.e. codestruction process). The empirical context concerns the complementary game modifications (“mods”) for video game engine platforms. The research adopts a multi-method methodological approach. A quantitative study shows that an expansion of online consumer innovation communities initially motivates consumer towards cocreation but the competitive pressure exerted by the raising number and quality of already existing mods limits the innovation process. A qualitative netnographic study unveils that the motives for the decline of consumers content generation lies in the perception of misbehaviours within the community in terms of lack of support, content appropriation, planned obsolescence, stealing, fierce competition, toxic behaviours, addiction to modding and exploitation.
We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a... more We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a form of artistic work (Belch & Belch, 1998). As advertising is a process based on persuasion, even the most aesthetically interesting commercial can never be considered a work of art. This is because advertisers have very defined communicational tasks to achieve. That is to say very strict constraints and strong limits in fantasy, which are two indispensable characteristics in any artistic work. The object of this work will be to develop the psychological process that is at the basis of creation of any kind of business communication. I intend to identify the possible enrichment that the use of appropriate creative capacity can give to various fields of study. INTRODUCTION Marketers use the various promotional mix elements – advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, publicity/public relations, and personal selling – to inform consumers about their products, prices, and places where...
Abstract Whilst there is extant research focusing on the link between hotel reviews and pricing t... more Abstract Whilst there is extant research focusing on the link between hotel reviews and pricing there is scant attention paid to the impact of pricing on hotel review ratings. This paper presents a large scale study based on a novel dataset of more than 44,000 guest review ratings linked to the prices paid for rooms of an European hotel group. Through applying a panel regression analysis we reveal that expectancy-disconfirmation is generally stronger than the placebo effect and higher prices have a negative effect on review ratings, not only when assessing perceived value for money but also when evaluating perceived quality. We identify the trip and guest characteristics which impact on the price-review relationship. Findings provide hotel managers with key quantitative information for simultaneously calibrating quality and revenue targets. Substantial implications include an integrated approach for segmentation as a route to better manage pricing, revenue optimization and reputation.
Healthy eating is often substituted by easily accessible snack foods that are high in saturated f... more Healthy eating is often substituted by easily accessible snack foods that are high in saturated fat, as well as salt and sugar. By uncovering consumer’s expectations towards healthy food, this work proposes the design of a new product - healthy snack bars - as an alternative to unhealthy snacks. Based on a sample of adult coeliac and health conscious people, our study breaks consumers’ expectations down into a set of themes, which represent the ideal product’s objective and subjective features. The empirical study combines two qualitative methods (free word associations and collage creation) and a questionnaire in an explorative setting to retrieve conscious and unconscious feelings of consumer’s decision making. The findings suggest that taste and social inclusion are the characteristics of an ideal healthy snack bar for coeliacs, while self-indulgence is the most salient theme for health conscious consumers. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of nutrition and development of a new product.
Consumer engagement has been heralded as strategic in facilitating sales growth, competitive adva... more Consumer engagement has been heralded as strategic in facilitating sales growth, competitive advantage, and profitability. Expanding the notion of consumer engagement to the stakeholder context, this study examines the determinants of multistakeholder digital engagement. Based on a digital setting (Expo2015), this study collected all the social media posts (n=984) in the Facebook page with restricted access to the stakeholders involved in the event. Initial regression results suggest that the presence of transformation, in terms of activation of creative resource integration in posts, is a strong predictor of compliant and interactive engagement. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) shows the configurations of cognitive and emotional attributes leading to compliance and interaction. Stakeholder engagement is an interactive experiential process based on actors' engagement with a focal organization, but more intensively with other stakeholder community members.
The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital storytelling enables a consumer relationship e... more The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital storytelling enables a consumer relationship experience in online peer-to-peer communities. Within the value co-creation framework, digital storytelling is interpreted as an encounter communication practice where consumers adopt the role of storytellers and story receivers. This study adopts a qualitative multi-method approach to investigate the meanings contained in video stories and the linkage to relationship experience. A case study based on the Airbnb's social platforms was analyzed through the Degreesof-freedom instrument (DFA) and through a systematic dimensional qualitative research called BASIC IDS (an acronym for behavior, affect, sensation, imagery, cognition, interpersonal relations, drugs, and sociocultural factors) to yield psychological valuable insights into the multidimensional construct of consumer relationship experience. The analysis unveils that, within the social media realm, storytelling enables rational, emotional, and relationship experiences. A relationship experience occurs when members of peer-to-peer communities, not only are rationally and emotionally engaged by the story, but are also moved to action going beyond a vicarious roletaking process. Specifically, relatability, a shared sociocultural background, and the drug dimension conceptualize the consumer relationship experience. Implications build on the need for companies to enhance the power of stories through favoring consumers' video making and integrating consumers' flow of stories between multiple social media platforms.
The work explores whether self-storytelling is a powerful predictor of personal reputation in a c... more The work explores whether self-storytelling is a powerful predictor of personal reputation in a collaborative community of the sharing economy realm. By proposing that powerful self-storytelling allows an attractive positioning in respect to potential others, the paper extends the literature of brand storytelling and brand archetypes shifting the perspective to a personal level. This study adopts a qualitative-quantitative approach to investigate the meanings and stories contained in personal profile descriptions and their relation with reputation. Personal descriptions are interpreted as storytelling activities, labels/glosses that allow members to access the services of the community by facilitating personal reputation building. The findings show that powerful storytelling structures have defined phases and are crucial in reputation building when the story evolves in a metaphoric, symbolic lesson. The presence of archetypes, in particular the Sage and the Ruler, also confer reputational power to the stories. The results reveal opportunities for peer-to-peer communities, traditional companies, and social businesses. Marketers should design tools and platforms able to trigger consumers' desire to express their individuality through personal descriptions and suggest the drivers that affect reputation.
New services, like fabrication spaces, 3D printer rentals and virtual marketplaces, have made it ... more New services, like fabrication spaces, 3D printer rentals and virtual marketplaces, have made it easier for empowered consumers to co-create innovative products without almost any involvement of traditional companies. Adopting a consumer-grounded view, this work takes a step forward from the existing service literature by investigating the link between psychological motives and happiness in co-creation. Specifically, the study measures how community affiliation, personal growth, and utilitarian motives are predictors of subjective well-being. The results illustrate that community affiliation and personal growth motives predict high scores of subjective well-being, while utilitarian motives do not. In addition, empowered consumers who co-create with others are happier than consumers who create alone. This indicates that direct interactions are not only a powerful platform for service co-creation, but are also predictors of subjective well-being. We discuss the implications for traditional companies and for decision makers regarding the benefits offered by digital fabrication services.
The work proposes a theoretical and empirical model that investigates how storytelling is a power... more The work proposes a theoretical and empirical model that investigates how storytelling is a powerful co-creative behaviour in tourism. The contribution takes a step forward from the classical theories on co-creation and develops the case where consumers act almost independently from traditional brands. The empirical study adopts an interpretive approach to analyse online travel reviews. Data are interpreted through Yi and Gong's model on consumer value co-creation behaviour [(2013). Customer value co-creation behavior: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research, 66, 127], the Phase dynamics theory of travel epiphany behaviour [Woodside, A. G., & Megehee, C. M. (2010). Advancing consumer behaviour theory in tourism via visual narrative art. International Journal of Tourism Research, 12(5), 418–431], and the Archetype theory [Woodside, A. G., Sood, S., & Miller, K. E. (2008). When consumers and brands talk: Storytelling theory and research. Psychology & Marketing, 25(2), 97–145]. The study indicates that storytelling behaviours in value co-creation activate a ‘customer delight' response, which is an affect-based construct.
Addressing the recent appreciation of value co-creation lying with multiple stakeholders beyond t... more Addressing the recent appreciation of value co-creation lying with multiple stakeholders beyond the consumer, this paper explores the motives and resources for value co-creation within a multi-stakeholder ecosystem using a case study research design. The study's context is the Universal Exposition 2015, an ecosystem comprising disparate actors, analyzing their experiences of value co-creation from a managerial perspective. Findings show that key motives to participate in such multi-stakeholder value co-creation are reputation enhancement, experimentation, and relationship building. Through innovative resource integration practices and individual leadership characteristics, a polyphonic process of co-creation emerges that builds upon the diverse and conflicting identities. Moreover, fundamental enablers of multi-stakeholder value co-creation are trust, inclusiveness, and openness. The paper offers managerial implications with specific suggestions for harnessing value cocreation among stakeholders in multi-stakeholder ecosystems through shared purpose definition, gatekeeper identification and infrastructure design.
We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a... more We often hear that people who work in the advertising field consider business communications as a form of artistic work (Belch & Belch, 1998). As advertising is a process based on persuasion, even the most aesthetically interesting commercial can never be considered a work of art. This is because advertisers have very defined communicational tasks to achieve. That is to say very strict constraints and strong limits in fantasy, which are two indispensable characteristics in any artistic work. The object of this work will be to develop the psychological process that is at the basis of creation of any kind of business communication. I intend to identify the possible enrichment that the use of appropriate creative capacity can give to various fields of study 1.
Purpose of the paper: The study tests whether guests’ perceptions of the environmental policies p... more Purpose of the paper: The study tests whether guests’ perceptions of the environmental policies put in place by the hotel influences guests’ evaluation of their overall experience. Methodology: The empirical analysis uses a dataset of 52,764 reviews from a hotel chain’s internal platform, which specifically requests for a guest evaluation of the environmental policies. The sample includes data from 105 European hotels in 2017-2018. A semantic content analysis of almost 100,000 observations from the chain’s internal platform and from open peer-to-peer platforms complements the quantitative study. Findings: Findings suggest that hotel guests, when evaluating the overall experience, do not take their own evaluation on the environmental policy into account. Research limits: The study adopts a single case-study approach, which does not allow for the generalizability of its findings. The study cannot disentangle the motivation of the results (e.g. limited care about the environment or ina...
Digital technology (viewed as the combination of information, computing, communication, and conne... more Digital technology (viewed as the combination of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technology) is impacting on the marketplaces that SMEs operate in. Yet, little is understood about how these businesses are adapting to, and adopting, digital technologies and creating digital innovation. Technology can be viewed as an opportunity for SMEs through which to engage in competitive behaviour, cost reduction, audience extension and intelligence gathering. European Commission recognises the SMEs form the backbone of the European economy Qualitative data were gathered from 45 interviews with SME leaders across four European countries and 5 industry sectors. This paper reports on the findings from a research project investigating digital preparedness of European SMEs and specifically the characteristics and capabilities of SME leaders in adopting digital innovation. Insight is outlined through the scope of the research which integrates different countries, sizes of SMEs ...
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Papers by Rebecca Pera