University of Mannheim

About: University of Mannheim is a education organization based out in Mannheim, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & European union. The organization has 4448 authors who have published 12918 publications receiving 446557 citations. The organization is also known as: Uni Mannheim & UMA.

Effective customer journey design: consumers’ conception, measurement, and consequences

Abstract: Recently, practitioners have begun appraising an effective customer journey design (CJD) as an important source of customer value in increasingly complex and digitalized consumer markets. Research, however, has neither investigated what constitutes the effectiveness of CJD from a consumer perspective nor empirically tested how it affects important variables of consumer behavior. The authors define an effective CJD as the extent to which consumers perceive multiple brand-owned touchpoints as designed in a thematically cohesive, consistent, and context-sensitive way. Analyzing consumer data from studies in two countries (4814 consumers in total), they provide evidence of the positive influence of an effective CJD on customer loyalty through brand attitude—over and above the effects of brand experience. Importantly, an effective CJD more strongly influences utilitarian brand attitudes, while brand experience more strongly affects hedonic brand attitudes. These underlying mechanisms are also prevalent when testing for the contingency factors services versus goods, perceived switching costs, and brand involvement.

New product diffusion models in innovation management—a system dynamics perspective

Abstract: The diffusion of innovations over time is a highly dynamic and complex problem. It is influenced by various factors like price, advertising, and product capabilities. Traditional models of innovation diffusion ignore the complexity underlying the process of diffusion. Their aim is normative decision support, but these models do not appropriately represent the structural fundamentals of the problem. The use of the system dynamics methodology allows the development of more complex models to investigate the process of innovation diffusion. These models can enhance insight in the problem structure and increase understanding of the complexity and the dynamics caused by the influencing elements. This article shows how the traditional innovation models can be extended to incorporate competition and to map the process of substitution among successive product generations. Several model simulations show the potential of using system dynamics as the modeling methodology in the field of new product diffusion models. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.