B2B customer referencing in a community of practice context: Conceptualizing legitimating mechanisms in the health technology sector
研究了健康技术行业中，卖家如何利用实践社区（客户同行群体）的相似性、权威性和客观性三种机制，让客户引用活动获得合法性，从而更有效地影响潜在客户。
The phenomenon of customer referencing entails sellers engaging with existing customers to influence new potential customers. In a business-to-business (B2B) setting, this has typically been studied through the lens of the reference communication activities of sellers. However, the role of the customer peer community (to which both existing and new potential customers belong) and the mechanisms through which this community legitimates the seller's customer referencing activities have largely been neglected in the literature. To address this shortcoming and build on customer referencing knowledge, we draw on the community of practice (CoP) literature and empirically explore the legitimating mechanisms for customer referencing and how sellers can harness these mechanisms. Our multiple case study is based on 32 interviews with sellers and customers from the health technology sector. The findings uncover three CoP-driven mechanisms: similarity, authority, and objectivity. We develop a conceptual model based on these mechanisms, which sellers can harness to gain legitimacy for their customer referencing. We discuss the implications of the conceptual model and detail how sellers should focus on planned customer referencing tactics to facilitate peer-to-peer interactions in a customer CoP context.