Guest editorial

Rodoula H Tsiotsou (Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece)
Mark S. Rosenbaum (Department of Marketing, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA)

Journal of Service Management

ISSN: 1757-5818

Article publication date: 18 April 2016

Issue publication date: 18 April 2016

506

Citation

Tsiotsou, R.H. and Rosenbaum, M.S. (2016), "Guest editorial", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-10-2015-0342

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Service Management, Volume 27, Issue 2.

AMA SERVSIG 2014: Services marketing in the new economic and social landscape

Introduction

The theme of SERVSIG 2014 was "Services Marketing in the New Economic and Social Landscape." The term "new" always raises questions because contemporary realities may blur the efficacy of commonly held general theories and frameworks that many researchers hold as sacrosanct. When academics speak of new realities, they are indeed promoting a postmodernism philosophy, which at its essence is a philosophical direction critical of foundational assumptions and the concretization of substantive and general theories. Thus, the goal of SERVSIG 2014 was to question the current landscape and to suggest anew, albeit with the realization that time has somehow influenced the way service industries operate.

The SERVSIG 2014 conference was hosted by the Department of Business Administration of the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, Greece, and chaired by Rodoula H. Tsiotsou in collaboration with the SERVSIG chair, Mark Rosenbaum. SERVSIG 2014 attracted 283 participants from six continents and 33 countries, including Japan, Sweden, Taiwan, UK, USA, France, Finland, Australia, Germany, Barbados, Portugal, Canada, Spain, Chile, United Arabic Emirates, Singapore, China, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Austria, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong, Turkey, Israel, Switzerland, Norway, Egypt, Slovenia, Cyprus, and Greece. Of the 355 abstracts submitted to 17 tracks by academics from 52 countries, 244 were accepted for presentation (69 percent acceptance rate). Most of the papers came from the UK, Greece, Germany, Australia, Finland, and the USA. The conference program was comprehensive, consisting of 211 paper presentations, five Special Sessions (one of which was a "Meet the Editors" session), four keynote speakers, three social events, best paper and highly commended paper awards, and two journal special issues.

The setting of SERVSIG 2014 was Thessaloniki, an idyllic locale for both tourism and postmodernism thought on services. Indeed, Greece's protracted economic crisis has altered services in the country. Service employees have been confronted with massive cuts to their pension plans; both citizens and tourists are encouraged to use cash during their service encounters, and the beauty of the country is counterbalanced by tangible signs of unemployment, construction stoppages, and urban unrest. Surely, thoughts of service quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty fall by the wayside as economic realities lead service providers to think first and foremost about survival in a crisis rather than maximizing customer well-being.

The four papers chosen for this special issue represent postmodern attempts that question current thought. That is, each paper was selected because the authors assumed the risk of discussing how current realities affect today's services.

The authors suggest implications for service management that may seem ironic, or even undoubtedly wrong; however, in today's context, the quixotic is actually a new norm. Overall, these four papers provide evidence that the service discipline's theories and frameworks are not static in nature; rather, they are dynamic perspectives of thought that are influenced by macroeconomic and sociocultural influencers.

When customers exaggerate service failures

The special issue commences with a poignant paper by Harris, Fisk, and Sysalava that questions the adage that "the customer is always right." The paper, titled "Exposing Pinocchio customers: investigating exaggerated service stories," received a Highly Commended Award at SERVSIG 2014. The authors argue that customers routinely exaggerate and embellish stories of service failure to earn possible accolades from their social networks. In other words, misery loves company, and sadness encourages consumers' desire for social connectedness (Gray et al., 2011). Thus, consumers may be innately prone to exaggerate stories of service failures because doing so enhances their social connectedness with others, who in turn want to offer them sympathy, whether real or feigned.

This research calls into question the service discipline's theories related to service recovery and the notion that service providers can neutralize service failures by employing fairness tactics (Tax and Brown, 1998). Are recovery solutions truly fair if customers are innately motivated to exaggerate service failures? Can service managers decipher the truth when customers seem to be embellishing their service failure stories? Or are service organizations permanently at a disadvantage when attempting to enact service recovery solutions, a point that Harris and colleagues allude to in their provocative paper?

Do organizations or customers drive customer loyalty?

The next paper by Tsiotsou, titled "The social aspects of consumption as predictors of consumer loyalty: online vs offline services," scored high on its initial reviews. The paper represents an openly expressed desire to draw on postmodernism philosophy by questioning whether an organization or other customers influence a customer's expressed loyalty to an organization. Too often, service researchers focus on consumer-to-employee, consumer-to-organization, and consumer-to-brand relationships, while largely ignoring the influence of customer-to-customer relationships on a customer's desire to remain connected with an organization.

Tsiotsou confirms Cova's (1997, p. 307) assertion that "the link is more important than the thing" in developing service brand loyalty, and therefore marketing attempts to maximize customer equity are supported, or severely constrained, by feedback from a consumer's social or parasocial (i.e. imagined) network. Tsiotsou contends that social relationships, real or imagined, developed over a consumption community are the raison d'être not only of the community but also of the service experience.

This research suggests that customer satisfaction with service organizations is a function not only of price, product quality, and service quality (Zeithaml et al., 2013) but also of an organization's ability to foster an active consumption community comprised of engaged customers. Perhaps the question that needs to be addressed is which of these drivers have the most influence on consumer behavior. Tsiotsou suggests that the answer is, first and foremost, community.

Half-hearted service recovery

The third paper, authored by Crisafulli and Singh and titled "Service guarantee as a recovery strategy: the impact of guarantee terms on perceived justice and firm motives," won the Best Paper Award at SERVSIG 2014. The paper simplifies a service organization's response to a service failure by putting forth a simple axiom - refund in full or else do nothing. Although this suggestion may seem elementary, the researchers show that in the case of service failures, customers expect a full refund and that, by offering a full refund, service providers may neutralize a negative situation. However, if organizations provide customers with anything less than a full refund, customers' perceptions of the focal organization remain embittered; that is, customer satisfaction is never recovered with a partial refund.

Thus, this research again questions whether service organizations and customers are working in a so-called level playing field, and theories of fairness in service recovery (see Tax and Brown, 1998) are being questioned in today's service environment. Is it always fair for a customer to receive a full refund even if a service failure is not entirely an organization's fault? Organizations may need to accept the reality that they cannot satisfy every customer during a service recovery attempt, as different situations may prevent them from offering full refunds.

Understanding trust and loyalty

The fourth manuscript by El-Manstrly, titled "Enhancing customer loyalty: critical switching cost factors," also received a Highly Commended Award at SERVSIG 2014. The paper questions the discipline's nearly codified concept of trust being an antecedent of loyalty by considering financial switching costs a moderator in the service provider-customer relationship. That is, trust becomes salient in a consumer's mind only when he or she perceives high switching costs. For example, in medical-related services, in which switching costs are high, consumers consider trust a factor that connects them with a service provider. However, in low-involvement services, such as fast-food or gasoline, in which consumers perceive low, if any, switching costs, other than in terms of convenience, it is almost erroneous to deem trust an antecedent of loyalty. Trust in low-involvement low-switching cost situations is not the driver of customer loyalty. Rather, the author posits that a consumer's perception of value is the glue that binds the consumer to the service provider. Consequently, El-Manstrly openly questions the commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing (Morgan and Hunt, 1994) by showing that most consumers do not desire relationships with low-involvement service providers; rather, they simply want to realize value during the service exchange.

El-Manstrly concludes by urging service managers to increase consumers' perceptions of switching costs by lowering prices or offering loyalty programs. However, both options may dilute revenue in the short run, a strategy that few service providers are readily willing to accept. Therefore, although many service providers may tout that their customers trust them and their services, in reality trust is a nonexistent driver of customer loyalty in many service settings.

We hope that readers will find these four papers thought-provoking in their intent to question revered theories and frameworks. In line with a postmodernism approach, each paper questions extant theories and offers new perspectives of the frameworks. It is worth noting that the goal of this issue is not to disqualify the research stream but rather to highlight the truism that current theories and frameworks are not static; rather, they are susceptible to change that we, as researchers, should constantly investigate.

Finally, we would like to thank the reviewers of the papers and their constructive comments as well as the editor of the Journal of Service Management, Jay Kandampully, for his guidance and encouragement in the production process of the special issue.

Rodoula H. Tsiotsou

Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece, and

Mark S. Rosenbaum

Department of Marketing, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA

References

Cova, B. (1997), "Community and consumption: towards a definition of the 'linking value' of product or services", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 31 Nos 3/4, pp. 297-316

Gray, H.M., Ishii, K. and Ambady, N. (2011), "Misery loves company: when sadness increases the desire for social connectedness", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 37 No. 11, pp. 1438-1448

Morgan, R.M. and Hunt, S.D. (1994), "The commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing", Journal of Marketing, Vol. 58 No. 3, pp. 20-38

Tax, S.S. and Brown, S.W. (1998), "Recovering and learning from service failure", Sloan Management Review, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 75-88

Zeithaml, V.A., Bitner, M.J. and Gremler, D.D. (2013), Services Marketing: Integrating Focus Across the Firm, 6th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, NY

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