Healthcare is a complex service provided by an ecosystem where multiple stakeholders, from traditional (e.g., medical professionals) to new ones (e.g., patient advocacy groups), interact with patients. This article examines how marketing practices impact public value in healthcare through an autoethnographic account of a breast cancer experience lived by the author. By leveraging the author's journey as both a patient and a marketing academic, the article illustrates how the marketing efforts of various stakeholders can foster or hinder public value. Four vignettes are presented, each coupled with reflexive analysis to offer insights into the different stages of the author's journey, consisting of Diagnosis, Active Treatment, Consequential Treatments, and Survivorship. These vignettes explore how co-created touchpoints enhance resilience mechanisms throughout the patient journey. The findings contribute to the literature on patient journeys in high-stakes contexts and suggest implications for advancing public value through a patient-centric approach infused with 'resilience by design'.
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is a major driver of global economic growth and competitiveness. In an increasingly dynamic environment, the need for sustainable success and rivalry pushes B2B firms to adopt creative, data-driven strategies. Social media platforms now play a crucial role in nurturing customer relationships and strengthening brand loyalty. This study proposes a long-term B2B marketing strategy that integrates social media with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven Natural Language Processing (NLP) within an AI-based Computational Social Network (AI-CSN) framework. The approach aims to understand customers not only by their preferences but also by their behaviors and habits. Using NLP, the system mines blogs, social media, and customer feedback to extract actionable insights, detect patterns, and support data-driven campaign decisions. Simulation results, based on real B2B marketing data, show improvements in customer engagement and revenue. The system's effectiveness is evaluated through user interactions, product ratings, and customer reviews, indicating potential for stronger brand.
The omnichannel customer experience literature has examined various sectors, country samples, and contextual influences; however, a systematic meta-analytic integration of quantitative findings on its impact on shopping intention is still lacking. We used a meta-analytic integration, which combines results from multiple studies to provide a stronger and more general understanding of how OCX influences shopping intentions. This study addresses that gap by synthesizing prior empirical findings and examining the moderating effects of methodological, behavioral, and contextual factors. The results reveal that omnichannel customer experiences positively influence shopping intention across different retail environments. Furthermore, the impact of omnichannel customer experience on shopping intention is found to be stronger in service (vs. product) contexts, for webrooming (vs. showrooming) behaviors, in multiple (vs. single) store settings, under competitive (vs. loyalty) shopping conditions, and in countries with high internet usage, strong online retail activity, and a high number of valuable brands. These findings provide important theoretical and managerial implications for omnichannel retail strategy and future research.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping customer experience design, yet many AI marketing approaches remain constrained by digital first, techno-centric logics that overlook the embodied, emotional, and symbolic dimensions of consumption. As consumers increasingly navigate hybrid phygital ecosystems, experiential value emerges through the continuous interplay of physical, digital, human, and technological elements. This article introduces the Phygital Intelligence Value Experience (PHIVE) Matrix, a strategic tool for evaluating how AI supports, amplifies, disrupts, or erodes value across blended environments. By integrating the extended reality technologies framework, the phygital customer experience model, and the phygital research paradigm, the matrix provides a unified lens for assessing AI's experiential impact through two core axes: depth of phygital integration and degree of human-value alignment. Four resulting configurations (value destruction, erosion, support, and amplification) capture the good, bad, and ugly of AI mediated phygitality. Thus, the PHIVE Matrix equips scholars and practitioners with a human centric, ethically grounded, and strategically actionable framework for designing coherent, meaningful, and transformative AI mediated experiences within increasingly interconnected phygital marketplaces.
Emerging markets are becoming central to global brand growth, yet consumer responses to global brands remain underexplored in these contexts. Drawing on self-congruity theory and social identity theory, this research investigates how perceived brand globalness influences purchase intention through self-congruity and self-brand connection. A quasi-experimental study (N = 212) conducted among Mexican consumers manipulated endorser's ethnic origin (local vs. foreign vs. no endorser) and measured brand perceptions using a fictitious global beauty brand. The results reveal a sequential mediation: perceived brand globalness enhances self-congruity, which in turn strengthens self-brand connection and increases purchase intention. This indirect effect is moderated by global identity and the endorser's ethnic origin, such that local endorsers amplify identity-driven pathways to purchase. For managers, these results highlight the importance of combining global positioning with culturally relevant cues, particularly local endorsers, to reinforce brand relevance, reduce psychological distance, and stimulate purchase intention in emerging markets.
Global concern about the impact food systems have on the environment has accelerated the use of sustainable food labels to steer consumers toward lower-impact choices. Yet with more than 148 schemes worldwide and inconsistent label formats, research findings remain fragmented. This systematic review synthesizes 64 studies published between 2001 and 2025 to clarify how sustainable food labels influence consumer attitudes and behaviour. Using PRISMA guidelines and the TCCM framework, results find SFLs generally have positive effects on consumer attitudes and behaviour. Traffic-light formats - across Eco-, Enviro-, Planet- and carbon-based systems - produce the most consistent improvements, suggesting that simple, familiar, heuristic cues enhance comprehension and decision-making. In contrast, carbon footprint labels generate mixed or negative effects, likely due to higher cognitive demands and lower interpretability. By integrating evidence across diverse label types, contexts, and designs, this review identifies key factors shaping SFL effectiveness and highlights priorities for policy and future research.
This article studies the relationship between creator-related cues and market outcomes - price, time to sale, and non-sale - of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in a leading marketplace. We first extract textual and visual indicators and summarize them into cognitive and affective composites using principal component analysis. We then estimate hedonic regression and duration models with creator-level random effects and recover creator-related components using empirical Bayes shrinkage. These components provide a descriptive decomposition of market outcomes into variation linked to observable asset cues and residual variation systematically associated with creators. We find substantial heterogeneity in creator-related components for both price and liquidity, while simple social-media metrics account for only a small share of that heterogeneity. We also model non-sale probability and show that creators' social media activity is modestly associated with sale failure. Methodologically, the paper offers a transparent approach to mapping creator-related heterogeneity when creator metadata and standard brand-equity measures are limited.
Rising deglobalization is reshaping consumer behaviour, yet existing research has primarily focused on global branding strategies in stable environments. Geopolitical disruptions and economic self-sufficiency movements influence consumer preferences, particularly toward foreign brands. This research integrates the perspectives of Social Identity Theory and deglobalization to examine how self-reliance influences the intention to buy local products. We argue that consumer boycotts and brand country image mediate the relationship between self-reliance and the intention to purchase domestic products. Based on survey data from 460 respondents from emerging markets, which were analyzed using PLS-SEM, the findings highlight that deglobalization strengthens self-reliance ideology, influencing low- and high-involvement product choices. Our findings suggest that global brands should align their strategies with rising nationalism by prioritizing local manufacturing to navigate shifting consumer preferences in emerging markets.
This study examines stock-based compensation (SBC) as an internal financing mechanism to fund marketing. Using data from listed firms, we show that marketing expenditures mediate the relationship between SBC and customer satisfaction, and that SBC strengthens the link between customer satisfaction and firm value. SBC not only aligns employee incentives with shareholder interests but also frees cash through deferred wages, enabling sustained marketing investment to improve customer satisfaction. Further analyses reveal a dual-channel mechanism, whereby SBC increases both the level and the effectiveness of marketing, such that firms with higher SBC achieve greater customer satisfaction returns. The results are robust across models using both observed and predicted customer satisfaction scores. By conceptualising employee equity as a source of internal capital, the study also broadens the understanding of how compensation design can support intangible investment under financial constraints. These findings extend the pecking order theory by demonstrating that firms prioritise employee-based internal financing for marketing investments before turning to debt or external equity. Overall, the study highlights the strategic value of integrating compensation policy, marketing investment, and firm value creation, advancing research at the marketing-finance interface.
This study explores the role of dynamic marketing capabilities (DMCs) and cross-functional dynamic capabilities (cross-functional DCs) in addressing climate change in Chinese SMEs. However, a comprehensive view of the specific capabilities required to support climate action remains underdeveloped. Prior literature has predominantly examined these capabilities separately, offering limited insight into how these capability sets jointly support climate action, particularly in emerging economies (EEs). Qualitative insights drawn primarily from senior managers reveal three DMCs (market sensing, marketing communication, and collaborative stakeholder engagement), and four cross-functional DCs (innovation, strategic leadership, environmental management, and organisational learning) as critical for the development and implementation of effective climate action strategies. The findings show that DMCs connect firms to external market, stakeholder and policy signals, while cross-functional DCs enable internal coordination, adaptation, and implementation. Rather than operating in isolation, these capability sets operate in combination to support coherent and effective climate action in SMEs operating in EEs.
Rebranding is well-established for revising positioning, yet the literature treats internal and external stakeholder perspectives in isolation. This isolation seems to hide potential tensions that arise when diverse stakeholder groups project conflicting demands onto the new positioning. Drawing on a multiple-case study of two Indonesian shopping malls that pivoted from a one-stop model to a technology-focused positioning, this study explores how employees, tenants, and customers respond to rebranding, the resulting multi-stakeholder tensions, and the management strategies used to address them. We identify four phases in the rebranding process: (1) preparation, (2) brand revisioning, (3) stakeholder engagement, and (4) execution. The findings theorise rebranding as a socially negotiated process in which power dynamics shape multi-stakeholder tensions. We conceptualise stakeholder buy-in as organisational sensemaking, which is facilitated by acculturation through structured training and socialization. This research equips practitioners with context-specific strategies for mitigating resistance, including inclusive coalition-building, balanced brand continuity, demonstrable short-term wins, and culturally sensitive negotiation to align stakeholder expectations.
Esports livestreaming is moving from largely observational viewing to more interactive, socio-technical formats in which viewers encounter both human (streamer) and system-level (interface) cues. The study introduces the Streamer Interface Coactive Presence (SICP) model, viewing esports livestreaming as a combined system of streamer cues and interface features. Using a configurable prototype and a 2 & times; 3 online experiment (N = 312), it manipulated streamer credibility, skill and warmth alongside varying levels of interaction richness. PLS-SEM results show that richer interfaces amplify the influence of streamer warmth and skill on immersion, which then drives presence. Credibility more directly predicts presence, especially when overlays highlight viewer activity and reduce cognitive effort. Taken together, the SICP model suggests that immersion and presence in esports livestreams may be shaped not only by content and streamer qualities but also by deliberate configuration of the interaction layer, which may be useful for platforms seeking to optimise viewer experience.
New technologies are constantly being introduced to support sales, with a trend toward more immersive solutions that offer greater depth of information. However, a review of the literature on immersive technologies in sales reveals a lack of insights into how interactions between salespeople and customers should be implemented. Drawing on the literature on media richness theory and customer education, including pedagogical interaction, we explore how pedagogical interaction models can facilitate salesperson - customer interactions in immersive environments. Our results indicate that innovative and constructive pedagogical interaction models can foster a positive atmosphere and rich interactions between salespeople and customers. This heightened experience and interaction can further help strengthen customer engagement and behavioral intentions. This study contributes to media richness theory by suggesting that more immersive environments benefit from richer interaction models, with pedagogical approaches offering a strong fit. In addition, pedagogical approaches can facilitate the salesperson's role as a knowledge broker.
