The Influential Solo Consumer: When Engaging in Activities Alone (vs. Accompanied) Increases the Impact of Recommendations

Information about the social context of consumption is often seen on review websites or social media when consumers sharing word-of-mouth about an experience indicate whether they engaged in the activity solo or with companions. Across a secondary dataset scraped from Tripadvisor.com, five main experiments, and one supplemental experiment, the current research finds that individuals who engage in consumption activities alone can be a more influential source of recommendations than people who engage in these same activities with others.

The Impact of App Crashes on Consumer Engagement

The authors develop and test a theoretical framework to examine the impact of app crashes on app engagement. The framework predicts that consumers increase engagement after encountering a single crash due to their need-for-closure and curiosity, yet reduce engagement after experiencing repeated and concentrated crashes, primarily because of frustration and perceived task unattainability; the recency of crashes moderates these effects. Field data analysis reveals that while a crash truncates a session and reduces content consumption, it increases page views in the following session.

Transforming Products into Platforms: Unearthing New Avenues for Business Innovation

It is impossible for brands to ignore digital platform opportunities. Network effects are one of the strongest sources of power and defensibility ever invented and underlie some of the most valuable businesses in the world. Managers and entrepreneurs can leverage the power of platforms by adding some platform elements to their existing products or services, by distributing their brands via existing platforms or by developing their own new platforms.

Liability of Foreignness in Immersive Technologies: Evidence from Extended Reality Innovations

This study investigates the persistence of the Liability of Foreignness (LOF) in the realm of immersive technologies like Extended Reality (XR), which includes Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Challenging the assumption that digitalization eliminates traditional barriers for foreign firms, we argue that LOF in XR stems from foreign companies' difficulties in providing a "mentally fluent" experience to consumers in foreign markets. Cultural mismatches can disrupt smooth information processing and diminish the effectiveness of XR innovations.

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