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CHAPTER 14 Sharing Experiences Via Social Media as an Integral Part of the Service Experience Andreas Munzel Werner H. Kunz

Abstract Social media has empowered customers to express their feelings and opinions online and to share their experiences with other individuals through videosharing platforms (e.g., YouTube), photo-sharing sites and communities (e.g., Flickr), or virtual opinion-sharing platforms (e.g., TripAdvisor or Yelp). Sharing experiences with other individuals online is not only part of the service experience for a multitude of consumers, it enhances the impact that successful service providers can have on current and potential customers. However, the value of experience-sharing activities via social media is less frequently discussed in the literature. In this chapter, we first clarify the concepts of sharing, empowerment, and engagement before discussing the value of experience sharing from three perspectives: the sharing individual, the individuals consulting the shared experiences, and the service providers. Finally, the importance of experience sharing, in what is often referred to as the sharing economy, and the problems of the deceptive behaviors of marketers will be addressed in our conclusion as well as implications for managers.

Learning Objectives of the Chapter Readers of this chapter will acquire knowledge and skills to: 1. Assess the value of sharing experiences via social media from three perspectives: the sharing individual, individuals seeing the shared experiences, and the service provider. 2. Master the concepts of sharing, empowerment, and engagement and understand how they relate to an enhanced customer experience.

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3. Gain valuable insights to enhance customer experiences via social media from international case studies. 4. Evaluate and contrast the value of sharing experience activities as opposed to the malicious effects of deceptive behaviors of bad marketing.

Keywords social media sharing experience consumer empowerment

customer engagement sharing value

Introduction “Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.” —Louis L’Amour “The only source of knowledge is experience” —Albert Einstein While during the first phase of the Internet, individuals were enabled to consume now easily accessible information from companies, institutions, and organizations, we have recently entered an era in which individuals share information, experiences, or even goods and services over a multitude of online platforms. The sharing economy pushed forward collaborative consumption schemes and it now empowers individuals to become hoteliers on Airbnb, car renters on carpooling.com or Zipcar, or boat renters on Boatbound. Additionally, the Internet has empowered customers to express their feelings and opinions online and to share their experiences with other individuals through video-sharing platforms, such as YouTube, photo-sharing sites and communities, such as Flickr and Pinterest, or virtual opinion-sharing platforms, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp. TripAdvisor, for example, reached 100 million reviews and opinions in March 2013, a more than 50% yearover-year increase according to the site operator (TripAdvisor, 2013). Gansky (2010) recently referred to this as a new model—the mesh—in which individuals have more choices, more tools, more information, and more power to guide those choices. Basically, developments in the information and communication technologies have enabled individuals to not only reinvent what is consumed, but how they consume (Botsman and Rogers, 2010). Sharing experiences with other individuals online is not only part of the service experience for a multitude of consumers, it enhances the impact that successful service providers can have on current and potential customers. Furthermore, recent empirical findings in the field highlight the effects of sharing experiences on the sharer’s mood (Emmons and McCullough, 2003), life satisfaction (Lyubomirsky 238  Chapter 14  Sharing Experiences Via Social Media

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et al., 2006), and positive affect (Lambert et al., 2013). However, we know from the literature on power that while powerful individuals tend to display anger more than powerless individuals, their power also leads to generosity (Galinsky et al., 2003). Sharing experiences with others via social media, therefore, not only empowers other consumers to make better-informed purchase decisions (Kozinets et al., 2012) on B-to-C and C-to-C marketplaces, this type of customer engagement also impacts potential customers for companies and influences the sharer’s attitudes and emotions. Sharing experiences becomes an integral part of the service experience and the recent advances in social media platforms empower engaged customers to articulate and share their experiences. By highlighting the importance of the sharing experience via social media, this chapter first discusses and clarifies the conceptual understanding of sharing. Second, we present sharing experiences as articulations of the empowered and engaged customer and, hence, bring together the recent discussions about sharing and the increasing conceptual discussions around the concepts of customer empowerment and engagement. Third, we present the reasons why individuals share their experiences with other consumers on the Internet, supported by our own empirical findings in this field. The different motives to share experiences highlight the valuable contributions of customers for other consumers, for companies, and for their own customer experience.

Sharing experiences as expressions of the empowered and engaged customer Sharing and its embedded value Belk and Llamas (2013, p. 5) draw a picture of what they call the Homo connectus, who is “gregarious and hypersocial, in constant communication (albeit not often face to face) with the digital others on the other side of a screen or keyboard.” Furthermore, these authors explain that Homo connectus is constantly learning—a ubiquitous and social activity of including online sources and peers to obtain knowledge—and sharing this knowledge with digital others (Belk and Llamas, 2013). Sharing experiences with the Internet community has been shown to build online social capital (Belk, 2010; Belk and Llamas, 2012). Belk (2007, p. 126) defines sharing as “the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for their use and/or the act and process of receiving or taking something from others for our use.” From a service-dominant perspective and the central idea of consumer co-creation of value, Chen et al. (2012, p. 1541) understand experience sharing as a “value creation effort for the direct benefit of others, and is tied to service provision.” The Internet facilitates and amplifies sharing through advice, help, and information (Gruen et al., 2006) and, therefore, it empowers the engaged individuals to share their experiences and knowledge with peers online.

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Consumer empowerment and engagement Consumer empowerment has recently received increasing attention from academia and businesses. A topic search on consumer empowerment within the Web of Science database provides 526 record entries from a wide range of scientific disciplines, of which 88 are related to research in business and management. Consumer empowerment has often been defined as an increasing amount of control that consumers obtain either through companies actively providing that control or through the development of information and communication technologies (Pires et al., 2006; Wathieu et al., 2002). Consumer empowerment is referred to either as a process that “requires mechanisms for individuals to gain control over issues that concern them, including opportunities to develop and practice skills necessary to exert control over their decision making” (Pires et al., 2006, p. 938) or as an outcome, which describes a subjective perception of control and the individual’s motivation to become active and to exert that control (Pires et al., 2006). The process-related perspective on consumer empowerment, therefore, emphasizes the increasing control given to the customer. The process-oriented perspective on empowerment (i.e., the aspect of providing customers with the resources and power to develop or adapt market offerings) has been shown to influence their preferences, attitudes, and behaviors (Fuchs et al., 2010). While marketers can explicitly provide customers with control over specific product attributes or service attributes, such as through customization (Etgar, 2008), empowerment is not induced only by companies. In the era of information availability over the Internet, consumers can easily obtain sufficient knowledge to exert control over companies and manage decision-making processes based on information from and about other customers (Pires et al., 2006; Wathieu et al., 2002). Therefore, consumer empowerment emphasizes the processes and outcomes of the customers’ increasing amount of control. Consumer engagement is related to this idea, but it refers to the consumer’s motivational drivers to participate (van Doorn et al., 2010). In their recent overview of the state-of-the-art research on customer engagement and related research fields, Brodie et al. (2011, p. 9) comprehensively defined customer engagement as follows: “Customer engagement (CE) is a psychological state that occurs by virtue of interactive, co-creative customer experiences with a focal agent/ object (e.g., a brand) in focal service relationships. It occurs under a specific set of context-dependent conditions generating differing CE levels; and exists as a dynamic, iterative process within service relationships that co-create value. CE plays a central role in a nomological network governing service relationships in which other relational concepts (e.g., involvement, loyalty) are antecedents and/or consequences in iterative CE processes. It is a multidimensional concept subject to a context- and/or stakeholder-specific expression of relevant cognitive, emotional and/or behavioral dimensions.” 240  Chapter 14  Sharing Experiences Via Social Media

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In addition to this global definition of customer engagement, van Doorn et al. (2010, p. 254) have straightforwardly defined customer engagement behavior as “a customer’s behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers.” As a consequence of the ongoing debate over the empowered and engaged customer, customer engagement has received considerable attention from academia—the Marketing Science Institute considered the phenomenon in its 2010– 2012 Research Priorities (MSI, 2010)—as well as from a managerial perspective. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, 2007) has conducted an extensive survey on this topic with executives from multiple industries, highlighting the importance of the customer’s engagement for management. In this survey, executives were asked which attributes described an engaged customer, and 79% of the 311 respondents said that engaged customers recommended products or services to others, outranking engagement defined through frequent purchases, at 64% (EIU, 2007, p. 3).

Value of sharing experiences via social media So far, the literature mainly focuses on how experience-sharing activities, via electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), affect recipients and companies; however, research on the effects that sharing experiences have on the sharing individual remain scarce. This approach follows the idea of value fusion, where all interaction partners generate more value for themselves through the existence of a network relationship (Larivière et al., 2013). For this reason, we focus on the value of experience sharing from three interdependent perspectives: the sharing individual (3.1), other individuals (the listeners) (3.2), and the service provider (3.3). We, therefore, underline how articulations of positive or negative service experiences create value and should be seen as an integral part of the customer’s experience. The relationships are illustrated in Figure 1.

Value for the sharing individual The permanently connected individual is able to share his experiences in realtime via the various social networking sites, such as Facebook; microblogging services, such as Twitter; or review sites, such as TripAdvisor. Several motives push individuals to share experiences with the Internet community. These factors can be related to the sharing individual himself, to his social connections with other individuals, to other consumers online, or to the company (Dichter, 1966; Sundaram et al., 1998). After a consumption experience that exceeded or failed to meet expectations, an individual tends to reduce the cognitive dissonance by sharing his experience with others (Arndt, 1967). Furthermore, sharing his own experiences with the Internet community enhances the individual’s status as an expert in this category, enabling him to receive recognition from the community (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). Additionally, sharing experiences can be motivated through extrinsic incentives, such as monetary rewards, or intrinsically for the fun and enjoyment of the activity of sharing (Munzel and Kunz, 2014). Beyond Chapter 14  Sharing Experiences Via Social Media 241

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Figure 1 SHARING EXPERIENCE VALUE Value for the sharing individual • Dissonance reduction • Social enhancement and recognition • Rewards • Fun and enjoyment • Social bond creation • Altruism

Value for the other individuals • Decision related, unbiased information • Dissonance reduction • Online community affiliation • Consumption and usage related information and support

• Supportive service provider • Retaliation

Value for the service provider • Customer aquisition • Identification of competitive advantages • Detection of needed service improvement • Customer complaint and recovery management • Loyalty of the sharing individual

• Comprehension of the experience

Perspectives of the sharing experience value these self-referential motives related to the individual, sharing experiences via social media can be socially motivated as well. Interactions with the online community can help the individual benefit from or even build social capital: sharing one’s own experiences with other individuals online supports the development of social capital as it helps the individual connect with peers and build social bonds (Belk, 2010; Belk and Llamas, 2012). Hence, participation in online communities through sharing experiences supports individuals in their efforts to find like-minded people and to create a sense of belonging to the community (Foster et al., 2010). As related to the social online community, individuals usually also satisfy their need to help other consumers make better (purchase) decisions by sharing their own experiences with them. This altruistic motive of providing support to fellow consumers represents one of the key drivers for sharing behaviors via social media (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Munzel and Kunz, 2014). In the case of positive experiences, individuals can decide not only to help the community make better decisions, they can also support good service providers by providing recommendations that help companies acquire new customers (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). However, in the case of negative service experiences, this companydirected motive takes the form of a desire to retaliate in response to the perceived dissatisfaction (Sundaram et al., 1998). 242  Chapter 14  Sharing Experiences Via Social Media

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Sharing positive experiences affects the sharer’s mood (Emmons and McCullough, 2003), his life satisfaction (Lyubomirsky et al., 2006), and positive affect (Lambert et al., 2013). Furthermore, Moore (2012) highlights the important role that articulating consumption experiences plays in the individual’s ability to understand the causes and consequences of his experiences. Moore has found that explaining experiences leads to dampened evaluations of the (positive or negative) experience; it also leads to lower intentions to repeat and recommend experiences in the context of hedonic experiences (e.g., emotional experiences such as watching a movie). However, in the context of utilitarian experiences (e.g., using a USB stick), explaining the causes and effects of an experience leads to polarized evaluations and a higher intention to repeat and recommend the experience.

Exhibit 1: Sharing travel experiences via online review sites

Social media and, in particular, online review sites that serve as platforms for sharing experiences (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004), have been attracting increasing interest from researchers and practitioners in the tourism industry (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). Furthermore, because experience qualities cannot be evaluated to a significant degree prior to the booking decision, travelers perceive the experiences and opinions from former guests to be more credible than the information provided by the service providers (Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009). In addition, research confirms that online reviews have a relatively higher influence on buying decisions related to products and services characterized by experience qualities (Sen and Lerman, 2007). For those reasons, reports and experiences from travelers are published on review sites, such as TripAdvisor and HolidayCheck, or travel booking sites, such as Expedia. Recently, Munzel and Kunz (2014) have conducted an analysis to understand how and why individuals share their travel experiences via review sites. Although they confirm the importance of helping other consumers make better-informed booking decisions as a prior motive to share experiences on a site, one-third of the study participants articulated their desire to give something back to the community. By sharing their own experiences via the site, the site users tend to settle the social debt they incurred by benefiting from the valuable experiences published by other travelers. Review sites, such as TripAdvisor, offer individuals a variety of ways to share their experiences. They can write comments about their experiences with a hotel or a service provider, upload photos and videos, comment and forward shared experiences from fellow travelers, and engage in further exchanges and connect with others within the sites’ forums.

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Value for other individuals Consumption and service experiences, provided by peers via social media, present pervasive and usually more credible information than traditional communication efforts by marketers (Nielsen, 2012). Research further shows that experiences shared via social media platforms, such as review sites, affect the receivers’ purchasing decisions, product and brand choice, and attitudes (Gupta and Harris, 2010; Lee et al., 2008; Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009). The value for individuals who read and watch customer experiences with products, services, and brands is related to the characteristics of those forms of articulations: they are perceived as being unbiased and as coming from peers who have no commercial interest in posting their positive or negative experiences (East et al., 2008). Therefore, individuals are able to reduce purchase-related risks and lower their search time and efforts by obtaining buying-related information from the experiences shared by other individuals. This first motive for individuals to read opinions and experiences posted online usually presents the most important driver (Hennig-Thurau and Walsh, 2003). Furthermore, by consulting the experiences shared by other individuals, consumers are able to reduce cognitive dissonance by becoming aware that they are not the only people who have a certain problem and they can compare their own opinion and experiences with the opinions and experiences of others (Hennig-Thurau and Walsh, 2003). As to what we previously framed as the creation of social bonds, individuals can also attempt to become part of a social online community and check out new products, services, and brands (Hennig-Thurau and Walsh, 2003). Finally, consulting the experiences made by other consumers helps individuals acquire further information about how to consume or use a product. The case of the French sports equipment retailer Décathlon (cf. Exhibit 2) provides insights into the potential benefits.

Exhibit 2: Customer reviews at Décathlon, a French sports equipment retailer

The French sports equipment retailer Décathlon opened its first store in Lille, in northern France, in 1976. Today, this retailer has nearly 700 stores worldwide with outlets in Europe (France: 256 stores; Spain: 97 stores), Asia (China: 55 stores), and South America (Brazil: 14 stores) (Oxylane, 2013). Since 1996, the company has sold products under its own brands, such as Quechua (mountain sports) or Tribord (aquatic sports), which represent 65% of its 2012 turnover. By selling equipment for all sports under one roof, Décathlon offers a part of its products under its own brands and continually attempts to innovate, such as offering the folding bike, Tilt, which can be tilted within a second. To tap into the potential of customer feedback, the French sports retailer integrated a customer review posting function into its ecommerce site. The comments 244  Chapter 14  Sharing Experiences Via Social Media

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posted by customers can be positive or negative, reporting some critical issues with the company’s products. Those comments not only help the company permanently improve its products and services, they enable customers to read the opinions and experiences reported by other customers so they can make better-informed purchase decisions. To address the customer-described problems, the product manager responds to the posted comments and provides support (e.g., steps to be reimbursed in the store, compatibility of spare parts replaced in the store for free) and hints about product improvements (e.g., recent investments in the quality of bike brakes for the new versions). The shared experiences of fellow customers and the responses posted by product and brand managers are helpful for customers prior to the purchase decision, as reported in the helpfulness statements posted on the site.

Value for the service provider In times when the traditional communication strategies used by companies have become increasingly ineffective, we can observe that firms are increasingly attracted to integrating their customers into their communication activities. Sharing activities by existing or former customers via eWOM communication drastically affects the company. For example, Villanueva et al. (2008) have measured the value of the customers acquired through marketing-induced activities and they have compared that value with the value of customers won through WOM acquisition mechanisms. The authors have found that, even though marketing-induced customer acquisition acts more quickly than WOM, the equity of customers acquired through WOM has a cumulative impact over a longer period and WOM has twice the impact of marketing-induced acquisition attempts. In addition, the different characteristics of sharing activities by customers via online channels further increase the value of experience sharing for companies. Whereas traditional, offline, WOM communication between peers, family members, and acquaintances usually happens in intimate circles and, hence, behind closed doors, companies can observe, monitor, and analyze online sharing activities. A sensitive analysis of articulations published in the public online environments, such as social networking sites, video platforms, or virtual opinion sites, enables marketers to identify areas of competitive advantage and fields of necessary service improvements. Furthermore, most of the online sharing platforms permit companies to respond to customer articulations. Because published descriptions of negative service experiences can potentially harm the firm’s reputation (Lee and Song, 2010; van Laer and de Ruyter, 2010), companies can induce online service recovery tools to prevent potential, unfavorable effects. First, by apologizing, companies are potentially able to improve the perceptions of the online complainant who is exposed to a negative service experience

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(Gelbrich, 2010; Mattila, 2006). Second, research shows that public apologies online enable companies to prevent unfavorable effects on the people who read the online articulations (Kunz et al., 2012; Lee and Song, 2010). In addition to providing companies with the opportunity to deal with mass complaints by presenting their apologies, online forums provide satisfied customers, who observe negative articulations by other individuals online, with the opportunity to react and defend the brand, product, or service. Those statements in defense of the firm additionally alter the potentially negative perceptions of people who read those interactions (Kunz et al., 2012).

Exhibit 3: Nestlé’s digital acceleration team

Multiple impressive examples of experience-sharing activities over the Internet exist that show how companies fail in dealing with unfavorable statements published online (Warner and Yeomans, 2012). One famous example of this is the creative way that singer/songwriter Dave Carroll voiced his opinion after he had a negative service experience with United Airlines. His video United Breaks Guitars published on YouTube in 2009 has amassed more than 13 million views to-date. In another example, Nestlé was confronted with harsh criticism over using palm oil in its chocolate bars, resulting in a Greenpeaceinduced video campaign in 2010. The Swiss food company tried to get the video pulled and announced that it would delete all comments on Facebook, which caused severe reactions from the online community (Thomasson, 2012). However, Nestlé learned a lesson from this experience and, today, the company systematically analyzes, 24/7, all its brand-related articulations posted online (Lorin, 2013). The food company reinforced its social media dedicated budgets and put in place a digital acceleration team (DAT) in what it termed a digital war room. On numerous screens in that war room, the DAT permanently tracks consumer sentiments in real-time and responds to customer articulations via Twitter, or other platforms, carefully and in a timely manner. That team of 20 captures and analyzes a total of 150 million sources each day (Lorin, 2013). In addition to these monitoring, analyzing, and responding strategies, Nestlé uses the online environment to engage with consumers. For example, for the company’s Purina brand, the DAT tries to motivate pet owners to post photos (Thomasson, 2012; Verity, 2012). Furthermore, the DAT triggers immediate action in response to posted messages. When a Nespresso customer sends a tweet explaining that he is out of capsules, the DAT sends capsules. Thanks to the information details in the Nespresso customer database, the company can identify the customer and get in touch with him.

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Figure 2 SHARING EXPERIENCES VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

CEV Customer engagement value Customer engagement value is driven by the nature and intensity of customer engagement regarding the firm or the brand.

=

CLV Customer lifetime value

The present value of future profits generated from a customer over his or her life of business with the firm.

+

CKV Customer knowledge value

+

CRV Customer refferral value

+

CIV Customer influencer value

The value of feedback provided to the firm for ideas for innovations and improvements and the contribution to knowledge development.

The value of a person’s abilty to bring in profitable new customers (as induced by the marketer).

The value of a customer’s influence on other acquired customers as well as on prospects (as induced by the customer).

Consumers’ sharing activities provide information about potential service improvements, new products/service ideas, competitive landscape and advantages

Online sharing activities are an influential source of information and companies can motivate satisfied customers e.g., to post their experiences with a brand.

Consumers exert social power over other consumers by shaping attitudes and affecting purchase decisions via their shared experiences.

Authors’ own illustration with some reference to the research of Kumar et al. (2010)

Sharing experiences via social media as drivers of customer engagement value The importance of sharing experiences via social media has recently been reflected in academia. Researchers also emphasize this component in their conceptualizations of customer engagement value (Kumar et al., 2010). Kumar et al. propose the total customer engagement value as follows (cf. Figure 2): the first component, customer lifetime value, includes aspects, such as the transactional value of the customer through purchasing, repeat buying behavior, and up-buying and cross-buying aspects. The second component, customer knowledge value, refers to the customer’s informational potential and is enacted through feedback to the company for service improvements and new product and service ideas. The third and fourth components address WOM from two different perspectives and highlight the importance of WOM as an integral part of customer engagement. The referral value refers to positive recommendation behavior initiated by the marketer who rewards the customer for turning a prospect into a customer. The customer influencer value deals with intrinsically motivated WOM and sharing activities.

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As previously discussed (cf. Exhibits 2 and 3), service providers can monitor and analyze the sharing behaviors of consumers, posted via social media, without interrupting the customer-to-customer interactions. The main characteristics of online sharing activities, such as their referability, enable companies to gain important insights about potential problems and usage contexts, which can be permanently integrated to further improve the product or service. Furthermore, the description of consumption experiences highly affects other (potential) customers. Consequently, marketers can attempt to trigger sharing activities through incentives. In addition to this rather extrinsically motivated behavior, consumers usually have motives, such as helping others or life documentation (cf. 3.1). Moreover, while sharing experiences online has been shown to affect the recipients of those forms of virtual interactions, recently, research has begun to investigate the effects that online sharing and recommendation activities have on the sender. Garnefeld et al. (2011), for example, were able to show the effects of WOM communication on affective commitment, which in turn affects behavioral loyalty.

Conclusion As social media makes peer-to-peer interactions ubiquitous, consumers are sharing experiences with the online community permanently, instantly, and in real-time via social networking sites, virtual opinion-sharing platforms, or video-sharing portals. These articulations posted online not only enable individuals to benefit and to build social capital as they connect with like-minded peers, research also shows that articulating their experiences helps sharing individuals understand the causes and consequences of their experiences (Moore, 2012). One purpose of this chapter was to highlight the effects of sharing behaviors on the articulating individual—a topic that, thus far, has been less frequently discussed in the literature. However, the value of experience sharing via social media for the sharing individual presents only one perspective on these valuable interactions. First, sharing one’s own experiences with other individuals online supports the development of social capital as it helps individuals connect with peers and build social bonds (Belk, 2010; Belk and Llamas, 2012). Second, these online relational interactions empower consumers to evaluate marketplace offerings and enable them to make better informed decisions (Kozinets, 1999). Third, companies benefit from observing, analyzing, and integrating consumers’ sharing activities via social media in multiple ways: to identify service or quality problems, to detect potential brand crises, to engage with individuals online, and to derive immediate actions from the observations. However, it is essential that individuals trust the various social media platforms they use to share their experiences. As experiences by other consumers are valuable for potential customers, shared experiences highly impact the recipients. At the same time, the anonymity of the interacting individuals on multiple

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platforms potentially leads to deception efforts: companies tend to ask employees or e-reputation agencies to publish bogus opinions and experiences (Ott et al., 2011). The potential erosion of trust in experience-sharing platforms (Munzel, 2013) can involve increasing problems in an era of the sharing economy; as individuals today tend to share much more than their experiences—such as their cars or their apartments and houses—trust and assurance mechanisms provided by virtual platforms and social networking sites are essential. This environment of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption platforms revitalizes electronic reputation and feedback mechanisms, as known from eBay, to help individuals evaluate providers and consumers in peer-to-peer marketplaces (Bolton et al., 2004).

Managerial implications Implications for marketers to enhance the customer experience through a systematic and effective analysis, integration, and management are various. The value of the sharing individuals’ articulations via social media for companies can only be enhanced if marketers understand the idea of social media as places of interactions and conversations. The critical tasks for managers are listening and talking by respecting norms and rules like using the right tone. The first component considers attentive listening to what individuals tell peers and service providers through their online articulations. Customer-to-customer interactions within social media are extremely valuable as they enable marketers to study opinions, experiences, and perceptions related to their brands, services, and products. The insights from those analyses help marketers improve their offerings and customer experiences, better understand perceived advantages of their services compared to the competition, and motivate employees by including the sentiments expressed in social media as goals for the staff’s activities. The development of a team dedicated to monitoring and to analyzing customer-to-customer interaction via social media as discussed in the Nestlé case (cf. Exhibit 3) should be considered. The second factor enables marketers to take a more active role through participation. One of the drivers that push customers to express their experiences online is their quest for support service or to report a problem in order to receive help. As seen in the case of the French sports equipment retailer Décathlon (cf. Exhibit 2), some of the problems customers encounter during early experiences with a product or service can dramatically hinder their general experiences. Timely, sincere, and appropriate responses by adopting the right tone to react and to deal with articulated problems experienced by customers are in those situations essential: these reactions to customerto-customer interactions affect not only the real-time experiences of current customers, but also those of potential future ones.

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Discussion Questions 1. The desire to help other consumers make better-informed buying decisions seems to be paramount in social media such as online review sites. As online reviews from previous customers are very helpful, how would you motivate your customers to share their experiences via your social media channels? 2. A detailed response strategy is a potential means to reduce potentially unfavorable effects of dissatisfying experiences. How should a successful and systematic service recovery response strategy be rolled out in social media? What are success factors? What are traps to avoid? 3. Sharing experiences via social media has several valuable contributions to the success of companies. As a consequence, to motivate their employees to integrate a customer-centric view during the service experience, some companies start to include the overall sentiment within social media as part of their agreement of objectives. What are advantages and potential caveats of this idea? 4. Deceptive online communication such as bogus online reviews written by employees or professional agencies recently received increasing media coverage. What are potential consequences of the potential erosion of trust in different social media and what are potential countermeasures?

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