The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers,value creation practices,brand trust and brand loyalty

Social media based brand communities are communities initiated on the platform of social media. In this article, we explore whether brand communities based on social media (a special type of online brand communities) have positive effects on the main community elements and value creation practices in the communities as well as on brand trust and brand loyalty. A survey based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on community markers (i.e., shared consciousness, shared rituals and traditions, and obligations to society), which have positive effects on value creation practices (i.e., social networking, community engagement, impressions management, and brand use). Such communities could enhance brand loyalty through brand use and impression management practices. We show that brand trust has a full mediating role in converting value creation practices into brand loyalty. Implications for practice and future research opportunities are discussed.     

Beyond free software: An exploration of the business value of strategic open source

The phenomenon of open source software (OSS) has been well studied from the software development perspective, but it has received much less attention from the perspective of business value. Nevertheless, OSS, when viewed as a value creation process rather than ‘free’ software, provides businesses with value through access to knowledge and innovation capacity resident in online communities. This conceptualisation, which we label ‘strategic open source’ requires firms to rethink their strategy and processes as there is a shift in focus from ownership to openness and collaboration with external parties. Nonetheless, the emergence of OSS poses a puzzle for conceptions of organisational theory. Therefore, a theorising process is needed in order to develop a deeper understanding of how value is created and captured with OSS. Using a field study of eleven European firms, this paper explores the creation and capture of business value from strategic open source. The findings reveal that while decision makers look to open innovation initiatives like OSS for value creation and capture, there is still a desire to remain self reliant, resulting in collaborative design (of external innovations) rather than collaborative decision making with value network partners in relation to how such innovations would help create and capture value within firms.     

Value creation or meaning construction?

The article takes a critical approach to value creation, challenging quantitative and materialist views. The Norwegian public discourse is considered, and the conclusion supports the continuation of ambiguity. This could be seen as an extension of the linguistic turn.

Unpacking the social media–driven innovation capability: How consumer conversations turn into organizational innovations

Given the scale and scope of consumer conversations on social media, it is both possible and challenging for organizations to identify valuable ideas from those conversations that could lead to successful innovations. We examine how a large retailer developed a new capability to leverage public social media conversations for innovation through a process of filtering, assessing, converting, and deploying. By inductively developing a process model of how the retailer managed to convert consumer conversations on social media into organizational innovation, our study sheds light on the microfoundations of this important capability.     

Digital new market creation by incumbent firms: A political lens on the effect of formalization on agility

Digital new market creation has several advantages for incumbent firms (hereafter referred to as ‘incumbents’) that they seek to exploit by using formalization and implementing agility in their new product development (NPD). We introduce the construct of NPD decision agility encompassing the dimensions of sensemaking, speed, and iteration. However, research reveals heterogeneous insights into formalization’s suitability for digital new market creation and NPD decision agility. In response to this research gap, we test our hypotheses by applying a behavioral lens to a sample of 129 incumbents. We reconcile these heterogeneous insights on innovation by showing that formalization increases digital new market creation, but has more fine-grained effects on NPD decision agility. Although improving sensemaking and reducing iteration, formalization has no effect on speed. Furthermore, political behavior increases formalization’s negative effect on iteration. We contribute to research digitalization and agility at the intersection of information systems and innovation management by reconciling these heterogeneous insights.     

A Visual Analytics Framework for Microblog Data Analysis at Multiple Scales of Aggregation

Real‐time microblogs can be utilized to provide situational awareness during emergency and disaster events. However, the utilization of these datasets requires the decision makers to perform their exploration and analysis across a range of data scales from local to global, while maintaining a cohesive thematic context of the transition between the different granularity levels. The exploration of different information dimensions at the varied data and human scales remains to be a non‐trivial task. To this end, we present a visual analytics situational awareness environment that supports the real‐time exploration of microblog data across multiple scales of analysis. We classify microblogs based on a fine‐grained, crisis‐related categorization approach, and visualize the spatiotemporal evolution of multiple categories by coupling a spatial lens with a glyph‐based visual design. We propose a transparency‐based spatial context preserving technique that maintains a smooth transition between different spatial scales. To evaluate our system, we conduct user studies and provide domain expert feedback.