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The purpose of this paper is to examine how customers derive value (functional, emotional, social and epistemic value) from the design aesthetics of mobile banking applications and then form intention to adopt mobile banking. Furthermore, this research investigates the moderating effect of happiness, which is predicted – and showed – to strengthen the effects of design aesthetics on value.

A survey using screenshots of mobile banking applications was administered to a sample of 281 bank customers. Data were analysed using SmartPLS.

The results show that design aesthetics have a positive effect on functional, emotional, social and epistemic value. In turn, these value dimensions positively affect intention to adopt mobile banking. The findings also demonstrate that happiness moderates the effects of design aesthetics on these value dimensions.

This work can be useful to designers of banking applications and other practitioners to improve their policies and strategies related to mobile applications.

This research represents an initial attempt to examine how customers derive functional, emotional, social and epistemic value from design aesthetics in mobile banking. In addition, this research demonstrates that happiness moderates – and more specifically strengthens – the effects of design aesthetics on customer value. The results provide a theoretical contribution to the importance of value in customer decision making, and in the current case, in the seldom-researched area of mobile banking.

The purpose of this paper is to enlighten the position of the customer as a driver to achieve the public–private partnership’s performance. It demonstrates that the customer exceeds being a target.

The paper is a literature review on the value for money, the performance prism in the PPP context, the service quality, the customer experience as well as the co-creation.

The PPP success goes through the end-users’ satisfaction regarding their experience quality. The improvement of the customer experience goes through the co-creation, conceding so to the customer, already a target and the mission of a co-creator. In this manner the performance of the PPP project is strengthened, the customer’s satisfaction increases to attain the PPP success. The co-creation through the customer experience succeeds in fulfilling the performance prism and hence constitutes a key success factor of the PPP.

The relationships identified from the literature review which build up our conceptual model need to be empirically tested.

It is important that customers, as key stakeholders, appear in the performance measures of the PPP project. This paper can be used as a theoretical base and conceptual framework explaining their integration in such business.

Although the performance measures in the PPP consider the customer satisfaction a priority, its achievement remains a hard task and not as conspicuous for the PPP managers. The paper attempts through the co-creation based on the customer experience to conciliate between the PPP’s performance and the customers’ empowerment. Furthermore, the paper defines a new form of PPP: the public–private customer partnership.

The purpose of this study is to reconcile the deterministic and the knowledge management approaches to investigate a framework that provides an explanation of the sales force automation (SFA) practices’ impact on salespersons’ performance through the organizational absorptive capacity in the African pharmaceutical industry.

An exploratory study was conducted to understand SFA uses in the pharmaceutical industry; then a total of 186 medical representatives were sampled and partial least squares analysis was performed.

The results identified the positive impact of organizational absorptive capacity on SFA use. In addition, the use of the SFA positively influenced the salespersons’ performance. Finally, age plays a positive moderating role in the relationships between use of SFA as a tool for internal coordination between actors and salespersons’ performance.

This research could be useful for managers of pharmaceutical laboratories to SFA use as a tool of coordination between the actors, as a tool of management of the customer relationship and as a tool of management knowledge.

In contrast with the existing studies dealing with deterministic approach when studying the use of SFA, this study exploited the reconciliation between deterministic and knowledge management approaches to propose a conceptual framework dealing with the relationship between the SFA use, the organizational absorptive capacity and the salespersons’ performance in the pharmaceutical industry. This research proposed and tested a framework adapted to the African context.

Applying the stimulus–organism–response model, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of design aesthetics (stimulus) on adoption and recommendation intentions (response) of mobile banking applications through the mediating role of perceived usefulness and trust (organism). Importantly, this research further examines the moderating effect of persuasion knowledge, which attenuates the effects of design aesthetics on perceived usefulness and trust.

A survey is conducted with the help of panellist among a sample of 213 bank customers who are not yet users of mobile banking. Data are analysed using the PROCESS macro.

The results show that design aesthetics positively influence perceived usefulness and trust. These variables, in turn, positively affect adoption and recommendation intentions of mobile banking applications. Interestingly, the findings also demonstrate that persuasion knowledge moderates the effects of design aesthetics on perceived usefulness and trust, as well as their mediating effect.

Because the results demonstrate that persuasion knowledge weakens the effects of design aesthetics on perceived usefulness and trust, the originality of this research rests upon its reconsideration of the “what is beautiful is good” effect and the questioning of the supremacy of this effect. These results provide insights for academics to better explain and increase adoption and recommendation intentions. Moreover, the results can help banking practitioners to improve their policies and strategies pertaining to mobile banking applications.

This paper aims to explore and conceptualize service recovery as an organizational capability. It proposes a new construct labeled knowledge-enabled recovery effectiveness (KERE).

Measures capturing the KERE construct were developed through domain identification, item pool generation using focus group interviews with managers involved in complaint management and content expert validation.

A first pool of 73 items was generated and then reduced to 37 items. Focus group interviews confirm the theoretical relevance of the KERE construct. Recovery culture, recovery process and internal recovery resources are the different components of a firm’s knowledge that serve as inputs, or as a source of a firm’s service recovery capabilities.

A quantitative study is needed in future research to assess the KERE’s construct structure and validity.

Managers may use the proposed scale to foster effective and relevant marketing strategies by setting clear policies that consider service recovery as a knowledge-based activity rather than a control targeted activity.

This research demonstrates the mutual dialogue between service recovery and knowledge-based capabilities. Also, it proposes a new concept labeled KERE and a raw scale to further understand firms’ aptitude in service recovery.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of customer knowledge-enabled innovation (CKEI) and suggests a scale for its eventual measurement. The process of the scale development is presented in detail following the Churchill (1979) paradigm. CKEI is defined as the capacity of the organization to introduce new products and services on the basis of effective management of customer knowledge. It reflects the degree to which the company is endowed with the expertise of managing properly customer knowledge in order to enhance innovation.

The CKEI raw scale is mainly composed of 57 items. In an effort to purify the scale measurement, test and validate its psychometric specificities, two surveys were administrated among two independent samples. Respondents were new product managers or marketing managers. One manager per firm was interviewed. The convenience sampling method was applied.

The CKEI scale has been intended to be uni-dimensional. It encompasses three main facets: the integrative capacity of the firm, the structural capacity and the internal management capacity. The developed scale is valid and highly reliable (composite reliability=0.90; variance extracted=0.5). After exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, a pool of ten items was retained for the eventual measurement of the CKEI scale.

CKEI has been tested in a Tunisian context; continued refinement of the proposed CKEI scale is, undoubtedly, possible and even desired, based on further research in other business environments. Such refinements and modifications could necessitate the inclusion of new items, or the deletion of original ones. In some cases, the hypothesized factor structure may need modifications. To keep abreast with the ever-changing business environment, the paper strongly urged to incorporate these relevant aspects in the scale into the future research, so that a valid measure of CKEI can be ensured on an ongoing basis.

The scale is offered to provide managers with a practical tool for the evaluation of their forces and weaknesses in managing customer knowledge in organizations. It is considered as a barometer allowing them to adjust and to modify continually their innovation strategies focusing on the intellectual capital management.

CKEI is a new concept that is introduced in this research as a knowledge-based capability which helps companies to sustain competitive advantage. The relevance of the CKEI is that it is considered as a dynamic capability integrating both innovation and customer knowledge management theories.

This paper aims to focus on the advertising agency‐firm relationship and aims at understanding and analysing its dynamics. In particular, it digs deep into the reasons behind success and failure of the relationship and attempts to unveil their determinants. This investigation is deemed important because a breaking of the advertising agency‐firm relationship is costly for both parties.

An exploratory study is conducted among partners of the relationship in a Tunisian small to medium‐sized business context. In‐depth interviews were conducted among key executives from the ad agency industry and from clients. Content analysis made it possible to extract factors related to ad agency performance, others related to client management, and still others related to interactive processes involved in the relationship.

Results led to the development of a theoretical framework summarising the three components of the relationship. These are performance of the ad agency, internal policy of the firm, and interpersonal factors. This framework is deemed relevant for both ad agencies and firms in understanding the dynamics of the relationship and in managing eventual conflicts.

The originality of the research lies in the fact that it focuses on the interactive aspects of the relationship and takes into account not only the role of the advertising agency but also that of the client in developing and maintaining such a relationship. This approach allows one to unveil areas of convergence and areas of divergence between both parties' roles perceptions.

The objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of information technology in service recovery performance through the exploration of its influence on service recovery performance components and determinants.

A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative data was adopted since the main research question of “How can information technology enable successful service recovery?” has not been examined in the complaint management literature. Data were collected through in‐depth interviews with key executives working in the Tunisian banking sector.

Drawing on the knowledge‐based view (KBV), the authors develop a general framework to understand the differences in service recovery performance (SRP). The research shows that various knowledge‐based resources such as customer orientation (CO), internal orientation (IO), and information technology (IT) complement one another to impact on SRP. Ignoring the complementarities of these resources in assessing SRP can seriously underestimate the impact of IT on the knowledge assets that are embedded in the firm recovery competency. This distinctive business competency is labelled knowledge enabled recovery effectiveness (KERE).

Given the exploratory nature of this study, these preliminary results need quantitative research to refine theory and measurement of service recovery capabilities and for future validation of the proposed framework.

The findings provide important implications for the effective design and the automation of complaint management and for the intervening mechanisms that govern the IT business value.

The paper examines the issue of complaint management from a knowledge based view and calls for the need to consider specific customer relationship management (CRM) areas as a set of knowledge based activities.

This study aims to understand trust meanings, determinants and manifestations in supply chains (SCs) operating in an emerging market context. It also aims to improve our knowledge about the role of trust and the mechanisms by which it operates in establishing and maintaining relationships between firms in SCs.

This study adopts an explanatory approach. In‐depth interviews with 30 key informants were conducted. Informants were chief executive officers or marketing managers in firms operating in different economic sectors. Firms varied in size and ranged from small businesses to large companies.

The study results showed that trust could evolve through four building processes: calculative‐based process, predictive‐based process, intention‐based process, and identification‐based process and that trust meanings and determinants vary with the trust form. Moreover, the study revealed that determinants related to the trustor also have an influence on the trust form and its evolving process. On the other hand, it was found that risk taking, preference for the partner, fewer formalized controls, offers of assistance and psychological security are the main manifestations of trust. This supports the point of view of the twofold facets of trust: perceived trustworthiness and trusting behaviors.

Because of the complexity of the trust phenomenon, and the research approach adopted, the findings may not be generally applicable. Further quantitative studies are needed to test the proposed framework.

Given the globalisation of markets and the widespread increase in international collaborative partnerships, the study sheds some light on how Tunisian managers conceive trust, which factors they perceive most important to develop trust, and how they behave to signal their trust towards a partner. These insights can be very helpful for foreign investors who are willing to invest in this emerging market and to implement a supply chain management approach with Tunisian partners.

This paper fulfils an identified need, not only to better understand the phenomenon of trust in SCs, but also to carry out more studies in situ. Indeed, the rapid development of the global economy has made it more important than ever before for managers from different cultures to understand how their business partners conceive and manage the interpersonal aspects of business relationships.

The present paper aims to propose a measurement scale of the customer knowledge enabled innovation (CKEI) capability.

Data were generated on the basis of in‐depth interviews with managers and was analysed using the “Sphinx” software.

A pool of 60 items is proposed for the eventual measurement of the CKEI capability.

The proposed measurement scale is still raw. Further research is needed in order to test its psychometric features as well as to validate its relevance into a general model of customer knowledge management and innovation.

Organizations need to measure the degree to which they are endowed with the capability of managing effectively customer knowledge in order to foster innovation. The CKEI scale is considered as a barometer allowing organizations to evaluate to what extent they are endowed with the capacity of co‐creating value with their customers. The proposed CKEI scale is believed to provide managers with the opportunity to regularly monitor their innovative capability and be close to their customers.

The CKEI capability is proposed as a new construct focusing on integrating both innovation and knowledge‐based capabilities literatures. The CKEI measurement scale is believed to extend these literatures and to add knowledge to these areas of research..