Strategic Tripod in Internet-Enabled Market: Consumer Self-Construal Level, Consumer Involvement, and Firm Resources: An Abstract

The construal level theory and the idea of consumer involvement are two important topics in contemporary consumer research, yet few studies have previously examined their interaction, especially in the online context. Current trends indicate that internet-enabled markets play a pivotal role in a firm’s revenue generation. The alignment of the customer’s perceived value (i.e., value to customers) and firm value (i.e., value from customers) is also of extreme importance in creating consumer value, consumer satisfaction, loyalty, and a firm’s ultimate profitability (Kumar and Reinartz 2016). Thus, it is time to investigate the interaction among consumer self-construal level, consumer involvement, and firm resources in the context of internet-enabled markets.

Extant research suggests that the proliferation of online markets where millions of sellers and buyers exchange with each other is mainly supported by websites run by third-party companies (such as Singh and Kundu 2002). It is through websites that, regardless of actual resources owned (limited or adequate), individual sellers (i.e., one-person seller) compete with their firm counterparts, and unknown sellers (i.e., entrepreneurs, small brands) compete with well-known sellers (i.e., famous brands) or even with big companies.

All firms have limited resources; only those that can effectively allocate these resources will achieve profitability and sustainability. To this end, firms must adopt appropriate strategies and develop the corresponding marketing tools in order to enhance consumer engagement. It is our interest to study the strategic implication stemming from the dynamics among consumer self-construal level, consumer involvement with a website, and firm resources of sellers on the website. Notably, our initial assumptions that drive this paper are (1) that consumer self-construal level affects consumers’ information processing of sellers and products; (2) that consumer involvement with a website does not indicate consumer involvement with any sellers on the website, given there are millions of substitutes; and (3) that outperforming firms/individuals compete with their counterparts by successful manipulation of marketing strategies that are contingent on their products, resources, and consumer characteristics.

We develop our propositions by drawing on the construal-level theory, literature on consumer involvement, and the resource-based perspective. Enabled by contemporary technology and marketing analytics, we argue that hypotheses could be further developed from our propositions and could be tested using real-time behavioral data pulled from third-party platforms (such as amazon.com), data from complementary surveys, and interviews of sellers on these platforms.