Digital Commons Network^™

Friends With Benefits: Social Coupons As A Strategy To Enhance Customers’ Social Empowerment, Sara Hanson, Hong Yuan

Marketing Faculty Publications

Businesses often seek to leverage customers’ social networks to acquire new customers and stimulate word-of-mouth recommendations. While customers make brand recommendations for various reasons (e.g., incentives, reputation enhancement), they are also motivated by a desire for social empowerment—to feel an impact on others. In several multi-method studies, we show that facilitating sharing of social coupons (i.e., coupon sets that include one for self-use and one to be shared) is a unique marketing strategy that facilitates social empowerment. Firms benefit from social coupons because customers who share spend more and report greater purchase intentions than those who do not. Furthermore, we …

Friends With Benefits: Social Coupons As A Strategy To Enhance Customers’ Social Empowerment, Sara Hanson, Hong Yuan

Marketing Faculty Publications

Businesses often seek to leverage customers’ social networks to acquire new customers and stimulate word-of-mouth recommendations. While customers make brand recommendations for various reasons (e.g., incentives, reputation enhancement), they are also motivated by a desire for social empowerment—to feel an impact on others. In several multi-method studies, we show that facilitating sharing of social coupons (i.e., coupon sets that include one for self-use and one to be shared) is a unique marketing strategy that facilitates social empowerment. Firms benefit from social coupons because customers who share spend more and report greater purchase intentions than those who do not. Furthermore, we …

Gratitude In Relationship Marketing: Theoretical Development And Directions For Future Research, Randle D. Raggio, Anna M. Walz, Mousumi Bose Godbole, Judith Anne Garretson Folse

Marketing Faculty Publications

Purpose – For centuries, gratitude has represented an integral component of social relationships, yet it remains relatively overlooked by marketing scholars in the study of commercial relationships. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how gratitude helps to build, maintain and transform commercial relationships and to suggest noteworthy areas of investigation for those researchers seeking to help companies understand the role of gratitude in relationship marketing.

Design/methodology/approach – Gratitude's role in relational exchange is explored by a review of relevant literature and two qualitative studies. Questions developed from the literature and exploratory interviews are then investigated in a main …