CALL FOR PAPERS Journal of Strategic Marketing

Special Issue:

Non-Monetary Social and Network Value:
Understanding the Effects of Non-Paying Customers in New Media

Guest Editors: Linda D. Hollebeek, Ph.D & Roderick J. Brodie, Ph.D

An influential strategic shift is being observed from a conventional one-way paradigm, in which customers are viewed as relatively passive recipients of incoming marketing cues, to an increasingly two-way, interactive perspective, which recognises customers’ proactive, co-creative engagement, behaviours and relationships in crafting their personal experiences with particular brands, products and organizations within broader social networks (Sawhney, Verona and Prandelli, 2005; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Fournier, Aaker and Brasel, 2004).

Within this evolving marketing environment, firms are becoming increasingly focused on facilitating interactions between key stakeholder groups, including customers, specific consumer communities, public organisations, and the general public (Bolton and Saxena-Iyer, 2009). However, while individuals’ interactive experiences and engagement within social networks may represent indirect revenue-generating opportunities they, typically, do not generate monetary value directly. This Special Issue of the Journal of Strategic Marketing seeks to provide insights regarding the nature and dynamics typifying consumers’ non-monetary, social value generated within new media-based social networks, which remain extremely limited in the literature to-date.

The objectives of this Special Issue are to highlight the increasingly important role of non-paying customers to contemporary organisations, the specific dynamics characterising such roles across different sectors, industries and cultures, the ensuing implications of these developments for the development of marketing theory, and the identification of key opportunities and challenges for strategic marketing.

We welcome papers employing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, which may be conceptual, qualitative, quantitative, pluralistic or interdisciplinary in nature, and which provide in-depth strategic marketing implications and future research directions in the area of non-paying customers’ social and networking-based roles. Topics which for this Special Issue may include, but are not limited to, those listed below:

• Theoretical models addressing the engagement and roles of non-paying customers in online and/or offline social networks for private, public and not-for-profit organisations;
• Identification of non-paying customer expressions, characteristics, or engagement across focal (new media-based) online, and (more traditional) offline social networks, or across different industry, sector, cultural or other boundaries;
• Conceptual and empirical frameworks for measuring the role of non-paying customers in generating social or network value within broader networked relationships;
• The development of theoretical models addressing the conversion of an individual from a non-paying, to a paying, customer (or vice versa), and how this may affect specific organisational outcomes such as sales, profitability, etc.
• Analyses quantifying the expected levels of revenue generated, indirectly, by non-paying customer activity within broader social networks;
• Research addressing potential risks and challenges associated with the observed increasing levels of consumer influence and bargaining power (e.g. through user-generated content in specific online social networks);
• Processes and methodologies for stimulating or dissuading the role of non-paying customers in broader social networks for contemporary organisations;
• Issues and challenges in the implementation of organisational tactics and strategies centred on the increasing role of non-paying customers;
• Investigation of key conceptual relationships between specific non-paying customer dynamics (e.g. dissemination of word-of-mouth), and key consequences thereof (e.g. in terms of customer loyalty, etc.).

Submissions are advised to be between 5,000 and 8,000 words in length (including introductory pages, tables and references). Authors are referred to the Journal of Strategic Marketing Author Guidelines in the preparation of their manuscripts. Submissions are to be be made using the Journal of Strategic Marketing ScholarOne Manuscript Central system available at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rjsm (please select ‘Special Issue’ from the drop down menu). The final deadline for the submission of papers is 30 September 2014 with an anticipated Special Issue publication date of March 2015.

Guest Editors:

Linda Hollebeek
Department of Marketing, University of Waikato
Email: lhol@waikato.ac.nz; deseo79@gmail.com (please send correspondence to both addresses)
Tel: +64 21 0390733

Professor Roderick J. Brodie
Department of Marketing, University of Auckland Business School
Email: r.brodie@auckland.ac.nz
Tel: +64 9 373 7599, ext.: 87523

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