Présentation orale #2: Markets, Consumers & Meaning

Quand: jeudi, 12 mars 2026 — 14 h 00–15 h 30
Salle: A.451 — Deloitte

Présentations

1. Samira Benkhelfallah

Titre: Understanding Consumer Co-creation Behavior through a Holistic and Integrative Approach

Résumé: This research focuses on understanding consumer co-creation behavior by adopting a holistic and integrative approach. To this end, a qualitative study was conducted with internal and external stakeholders to collectively explore co-creation behavior. This study makes an original contribution to the existing literature by investigating co-creation in a real-life context. From a managerial perspective, this research provides managers with insights into the opportunity to anchor co-creation initiatives within the organizational structure of the company in order to improve the quality of the service offered.

2. Dania Kyle

Titre: The Secret of Villains: Being Bad is the New Good

Résumé: Often confused with bad boys and antiheroes, villains are continuously defined differently. This paper aims to conceptualize what makes a good antagonist for brands. Four good villain archetypes are defined, along with key characteristics to create their persuasive backgrounds and motives. Good villains benefit a story: they are good for brands, depending on the storyline’s context. Although they break out of the dichotomy between good and evil, they provoke consumers to experience positive feelings for them, such as attachment and love. These compelling characters are a source of loyalty, value, and engagement for brands. Character analyses advance our knowledge in Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and in storytelling techniques, improving the impact of narratives, identity work, emotions, and brand attachment. My conceptualization is the main contribution of this paper, which offers definitions for four antagonist archetypes. These different characters turn into good villains when consumers empathize with their compelling backstories, and once they become emotionally captivated by their biographies, personality traits, behaviors, and powers. CCT researchers and marketers discover the importance of creating good villains and how to incorporate them in transmedia brands: provoking certain emotions can entice positive reactions, increase audiences’ involvement with brands, and promote a larger fan base.

3. Alexis Perreault

Titre: Planning Horizon and Repeated Goal Attainment as Boundary Conditions to the Goal-Gradient Effect in Loyalty Programs

Résumé: Despite their reliance on loyalty programs to foster re-patronage, firms face substantial member disengagement, challenging the applicability of goal-gradient theory, which posits increasing motivation as individuals approach a goal. While prior research provides evidence of this effect within single earn–redeem cycles, little is known about its persistence across repeated reward attainments. Drawing on transactional and survey data from 6,967 airline loyalty program members, 393,033 unique transactions leading to 27,433 goals over a seventeen-year period, this research examines how repeated goal attainment and consumers’ planning horizons jointly shape goal-directed purchase behavior. The findings reveal a pronounced attenuation of the goal-gradient effect: although members accelerate point-earning behavior when approaching initial rewards, this acceleration diminishes and ultimately reverts in subsequent redemptions. Furthermore, planning horizon moderates this dynamic: short-term oriented consumers exhibit sharper declines in accelerative behavior across successive goal cycles. By extending the goal-gradient framework to recurring goal contexts and identifying a theoretically meaningful boundary condition, this research offers new insight into the temporal dynamics of loyalty program engagement and provides actionable implications for reward-structure design.