A digital family affair: Do family firms' characteristics enhance consumers' willingness to pay?

ABSTRACT

Communicating the familiness of the firm allows family businesses to leverage a strategic resource the idiosyncratic characteristics of the family firms. Drawing on the ontological perspective of the nature of family firm, this study investigates the effect of family firms' characteristics on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for family firms' products in an online environment. The study presents a novel context of analysis investigating the mediating effect of frequency of purchase and peer-to-peer online reviews in the digital channel. Results offer support for a direct effect of the family firms' characteristics on consumers' WTP and validate the total effect of mediation of frequency of purchase and peer-to-peer online reviews. The findings provide intriguing implications for practitioners. Defining the antecedents of consumers' WTP for family firms in the online channel shall be helpful for managers to create more efficient communication and marketing campaigns, with the effect of deploying more customer-centric revenue management techniques.