Moritz MinkValue Creation in Business-to-Customer and Customer-to-Customer Relationships

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This book covers two very relevant occurrences of customer relationships: The classical dyadic relationships between providers and its customers (B2C) and the more recent customer-to-customer relationships (C2C). Owing to the tremendous increase in customer connectivity through the web 2.0 and social media, especially the latter is rapidly gaining importance.

As a start, we introduce three quantitative/behavioral characteristics of classical B2C relationships: length, depth, and breadth. We show that they are very useful when assessing the relationships for their further development, because all three are relevant antecedents of additional purchase behavior. The triad is very easy and feasible to apply and managers should use this for the benefit of their CRM.

Subsequently, we address C2C relationships. In doing so, we conceptualize and operationalize the quality of electronic customer-to-customer interaction (eCCIq) in online forums and we show that high eCCIq creates value for both, the provider and its customers. In more detail, high eCCIq has a positive impact on perceived community value, value equity, customer loyalty, revenue per customer, and service productivity. The results justify the multiplicity of existing eCCI platforms and enable providers to more actively apply and purposefully manage online forums for their own benefit.