Transcript Socialization Agents: Avatars and their influence in the

The Marketing-Finance Interface: A
Relational Exchange Perspective
Ko de Ruyter, Professor and Chair, Marketing Department,
Maastricht University
Department of Marketing
No school for old men…
• During the past two decades strong focus on the
marketing of services, specifically financial
services
• Tracing back the origins of the MF interface; The
Marketing-Finance: A Relational Exchange
Perspective, Journal of Business Research (2000)
• Wall street vs. Main street
• Marketing managers: Procedural Fairness (+)
• Finance managers: Interfunctional Rivalry (-)
• Both: Mutual Resource dependence
• The Marketing-Finance Interface: A
Relational Exchange Perspective
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
2004 New Kid on the Block:
• JBR paper A Marketing-Finance approach
towards industrial channel contract
relationships: a model and application
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
We fast forward to 2008:
Research on the Formation of
Online Investors’ Self-Efficacy
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Current Trend
• Online consumers are active co-producers of
financial services
• Not only trust the bank, but also trust themselves
• Confidence or self-efficacy is based on increasing
variety of information sources
• As a result self-efficacy updating is a dynamic
process
• We suspect that different patterns will exist!
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Service Providers Educate Customers
• Bank of America: “tools and
independent research to help you
choose the right investments”
• Alex: Alex Academy
• ABN-AMRO: TradeGlobe Academy,
TradeBox
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Managerial Problem: How can customers
adapt to their new service role?
• Online investment induces self-defeating
behaviors such as excessive trading because
of overconfidence
• This is particularly problematic because:
– customers tend to attribute service failures more
to the firm than to themselves,
– share these bad experiences effortlessly with
online peers,
– and can seamlessly switch to a competitor’s web
site
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Research Questions
• How can novice investors be successful
online?
• Does investors’ self-efficacy matter?
• How is self-efficacy formed during prepurchase information search?
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Research Design
• Computerized survey using online
investment context
• Respondents were asked to invest a
predetermined sum of money in stocks
• Respondents were asked to look at three
websites; a firm, expert, and peer
information source of which source
evaluations and self-efficacy were recorded
Department of Marketing
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Example: Third-Party Web Site
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Research Findings
Highly efficacious consumers:
• achieve higher profits
• have higher usage intentions
• Perceive higher service value
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Research Findings
• Information source credibility and argument
quality increase self-efficacy
• Consumers differentiate among information
sources and weigh associated evaluations
differently
• Focus on third-party credibility and firm
argument quality. Surprisingly, peer source
is less relevant.
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Research Findings
• Amount of search does not affect selfefficacy
• Consumers’ engagement impacts effect
of source evaluations
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Research Findings
• Multiple investor segments exist based
on response to information:
– Segment 1 (n = 89): increases selfefficacy during search
– Segment 2 (n = 146): maintains selfefficacy
– Segment 3 (n = 22): decreases selfefficacy
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Research Findings
• Increasing segment: inexperienced, spends high
effort, obtains high profits (€ 61.27 after 2 months)
• Maintaining segment: experienced, little less effort,
medium performance (€ 52.09)
• Decreasing segment: experienced, low effort, low
performance (€ 1.29), less motivation than other
groups
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Implications
• Control investors’ information search by partnering
with and linking to credible external information
providers
• Provide high quality information: authenticity,
consistency, clarity of content and style, and an
explicit and transparent service recovery strategy
• Increase customers’ engagement by incorporating
interactive user forums, real-time updates,
customizable home pages, and virtual agents
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Implications
• Inexperienced investors make up for lack of
experience by spending high effort
• This strategy pays off for novices compared
to experienced investors
• A minority of investors is unmotivated and
performs poorly
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl
Implications: What to do with
underperforming customers?
• Convince customers that spending high
effort on information evaluation and
investment decision pays off
• Set realistic service expectations; customer
makes own success
• Make information easy to digest; summary
section with necessary info, click-through to
details
Department of Marketing
www.marketingsite.nl