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This study aims to identify and elucidate on the different forms and antecedents of customer misbehaviour in the service industry of the emerging country particularly India.

This study adopts a bibliometric analysis approach using bibliophagy software and thematic analysis to reveal four themes: “forms of customer misbehaviour”; “antecedents of such misbehaviour”; “changes in the personal and work behaviour of employees and management”; and “measures to reduce customer misbehaviour”. These are combined and interrelated to extant theories and empirical data to ultimately produce a comprehensive model on the subject.

This study finds the antecedents and analyses different forms of customer misbehaviour from Asian customer perspectives. A thematic output is provided which policymakers and other researchers can use to develop various policies and which other related research could use as inputs in the area or consumer behaviour and emerging countries.

This study contributes to the field of behavioural studies, especially in the Asian context. Policymakers and future researchers can use these findings to understand different customer-related issues from Asian customer perspective. However, the focus on the Indian consumer market as an emerging country in Asia limits the applicability and generalizability of the study for all emerging countries.

The originality and value of this study is related to its pioneering use of bibliometric and thematic analysis from the Asian service context. The value of such research work is associated with both scholarly and executive implications. Regarding the latter, this study examines the myopic nature of uncivil behaviour and helps service firms to understand and manage its different forms, conclusively also providing practicable executive directions on the problem.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This study explores employee well-being in casinos, and finds that the economic benefits of working in a casino are offset by a highly challenging social, physical and psychological work environment and the psychological stress of handling customers who become aggressive when they lose. Casinos that want to retain skilled employees should look to improve employee satisfaction by reducing emotional stress and creating a more positive work environment.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

E-commerce companies use dark patterns to manipulate customer decisions to survive in the crowded online market and make profit. Although some online customers are aware of the dark patterns, they cannot overcome such manipulations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify and model the barriers to overcoming dark patterns using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM).

Barriers to overcoming dark patterns were identified from the extant literature and were validated by a panel of 18 domain experts. In the modeling phase, TISM technique was used to identify the relationships between the barriers and assign priority to the barriers. Finally, the barriers were plotted and classified into three categories.

User unawareness, trust in brands and normalization of aggressive marketing were found to be the highest priority barriers. Whereas, designer bias, user fatigue, short-term user benefits and design complexity were identified as the most challenging barriers because they have least dependence over the other barriers.

Because TISM results are based on the opinion of domain experts, other statistical techniques could be applied for validation.

This study would educate online customers, while assisting online user communities and regulatory bodies to devise strategies to overcome dark patterns. Additionally, business managers could use the study’s findings to encourage designers to embrace ethical design methods as a competitive advantage.

This study contributes to the research as it is first of its kind to examine the link between dark pattern barriers.

E-commerce companies often manipulate customer decisions through dark patterns to meet their interests. Therefore, this study aims to identify, model and rank the enablers behind dark patterns usage in e-commerce companies.

Dark pattern enablers were identified from existing literature and validated by industry experts. Total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) was used to model the enablers. In addition, “matriced impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classement” (MICMAC) analysis categorized and ranked the enablers into four groups.

Partial human command over cognitive biases, fighting market competition and partial human command over emotional triggers were ranked as the most influential enablers of dark patterns in e-commerce companies. At the same time, meeting long-term economic goals was identified as the most challenging enabler of dark patterns, which has the lowest dependency and impact over the other enablers.

TISM results are reliant on the opinion of industry experts. Therefore, alternative statistical approaches could be used for validation.

The insights of this study could be used by business managers to eliminate dark patterns from their platforms and meet the motivations of the enablers of dark patterns with alternate strategies. Furthermore, this research would aid legal agencies and online communities in developing methods to combat dark patterns.

Although a few studies have developed taxonomies and classified dark patterns, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has identified the enablers behind the use of dark patterns by e-commerce organizations. The study further models the enablers and explains the mutual relationships.

Discount grocery stores (DGSs) are attractive food supply chain (FSC) channels because many cost-conscious Indians use them for monthly needs. Despite capacity, DGSs must address customer concerns about store crowd densities and improve their COVID-19 preparedness. The purpose of this study is to learn how retail operations strategies can improve customer experience and how stores can benefit.

The study looked at a case study where retail operations are run more efficiently, and the customer experience is enhanced by standardizing and customizing customer transactions. The potential benefits that customers and retailers might anticipate are then statistically verified. Next, the potential benefits were examined to determine which ones from customers’ and retailers’ views should be prioritized to increase satisfaction.

The case situation analysis in the study demonstrates how DGSs can improve their retail operations to reduce customer wait times and provide greater convenience. The study also provides practitioners with potential benefits to pursue from the perspectives of retailers, customers and both retailers and customers.

This study requires many past transactions and can be considered an extension of the current study, so it does not capture floor space and capacity improvements.

This research can help FSC retailers compete with upstream supply chain partners and customers in omnichannel retailing. By improving DGS retailer capacity and customer experience, this study can benefit all FSC stakeholders.

Although there are numerous potential benefits that practitioners can pursue, the current study suggests that practitioners focus on those that can improve retailer and customer satisfaction.

Drawing on the social presence theory, this study aims to explore how supplier–customer social media interactions influence supplier observers’ trust in the customers and what mechanisms contribute to variation in trust experience.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese suppliers using WeChat for business-to-business interactions. Data were analyzed in three steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

Findings reveal that varied trust is based not only on the categories of social presence of interaction – whether social presence is embedded in informative interactions – but also on the perceived selectivity in social presence. Observer suppliers who experience selectivity during social and affective interactions create a perception of hidden information and an unhealthy relationship atmosphere, and report a sense of emotional vulnerability, thus eroding cognitive and affective trust.

The findings contribute new understandings to social presence theory by exploring the social presence of interactions in a supplier–supplier–customer triad and offer valuable insights into business-to-business social media literature by adopting a suppliers’ viewpoint to unpack the mechanisms of how social presence of interaction positively and negatively influences suppliers’ trust and behavioral responses.

Despite extensive research on the detrimental work-related impact of customer mistreatment, there has been limited investigation into the outcomes that encompass both positive and negative connotations (i.e. unethical pro-organizational behavior [UPB]). This study aims to test whether, how and when daily customer mistreatment leads to hospitality employees’ daily UPB.

This study conducted a two-phase daily diary study. In the first phase, participants completed measures of their sense of power and provided demographic information. During the subsequent two-week period, participants completed questionnaires twice daily. The analysis included data from 87 hospitality employees, with 781 surveys remaining. This study performed multilevel analyses using Monte–Carlo simulations.

This study revealed that hospitality employees experiencing daily customer mistreatment exhibited heightened perceptions of status threats, resulting in increased daily UPB. The moderating effects of employees’ sense of power were found to be significant in both direct and indirect relationships.

Hospitality managers should recognize that customer mistreatment can threaten employees’ social status and result in daily UPB. To protect employees, implementing daily training programs is essential. Moreover, hotels and managers should provide HR management/recognition programs and empowerment initiatives to boost employees’ sense of power and counteract the harmful effects of customer mistreatment on their status.

This study makes contributions to the existing literature on customer mistreatment by establishing a positive relationship between daily customer mistreatment and daily UPB through the mechanism of status threat. Furthermore, thise study highlights the importance of enhancing hospitality employees’ sense of power as a protective factor against the negative consequences of customer mistreatment.

This study aims to assess the effect of job insecurity, customer incivility and work–life imbalance on Lebanese bank employee workplace well-being (EWW), while investigating the moderating role that positive and negative affect might have.

Quantitative data was collected from 202 respondents and analyzed using structural equation modeling system through IBM SPSS and AMOS.

Results revealed that each of the independent variables has a negative, statistically significant effect on Lebanese bank EWW. The positive affect and the negative one are shown to have a moderating effect that lessens and boosts, respectively, these negative effects.

The study adds to the literature on EWW while highlighting the high-power distance and collectivist society that the research took place in.

Limitations include the sample size that was hoped to be larger, in addition to the self-reporting issue and what it entails in the data collection process.

The study has many practical implications, including the validation of a questionnaire in a developing Arab country, hence providing a reliable tool for researchers. HR specialists should lean toward applicants with positive affect, ensuring that their workplace is occupied by members with enhanced resilience. Furthermore, employers should support their employees’ professional growth, thus, boosting their employability during turmoil and consequently making them less vulnerable in times of economic recession.

The study’s unique context, depicted in the harsh economic and financial crisis, makes the findings on EWW of a high value.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interactive effects of a firm’s strategic sustainability orientation (SSO) and customer relationship capital (CRC) on sustainable product design practices (SPDP).

The authors examine the interactive effects of two firm resources, namely, SSO and CRC, as they relate to SPDP, using survey data from 132 manufacturers in Malaysia.

The findings show that the effect of SSO on SPDP is stronger when CRC is low, than otherwise. The authors also find that the interactive effects of the firm-level resources stated above are stronger when customer pressures (CPs) are higher than when they are low.

The authors contribute to the literature by studying the effects of firm-level strategic resources and their interactions as they relate to SPDP. An important limitation of this research is the usage of single-source data and single-period data.

Managerially, this research provides new insights into how organizations should respond to CPs while understanding the counterintuitive but disabling effects of customer relationship assets.

The findings are important to society because most of the environmental impact arising from the production, consumption and disposal of products is a direct consequence of decisions made at the product design stage and an unintended consequence of the marketing decision-making processes that underlie marketing strategy formulation that fails to recognize ecosystems impact as a standard decision influence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to study the effects of firm-level strategic resources and their interactions as they relate to SPDP.

Although service researchers have long suggested that customer mistreatment adversely impacts service employees' outcomes, statistical integration of current empirical findings has been lacking. This meta-analysis aims to review and statistically synthesize the state of research on the relationship between customer mistreatment and service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.

The authors included 221 effect sizes of 135 independent samples from 119 primary studies (N = 47,964). The authors used a meta-analytic approach to quantitatively review the relationship between customer mistreatment and service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Meta-analysis structural equation modeling was used to explore the mediation mechanism of service employees' affective outcomes on the relationships between customer mistreatment and employees' attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Meta-regression was applied to explore the impact of contextual-level moderators (i.e. service provider type and service delivery mode) on these relationships. Furthermore, we compared the effects of customer mistreatment with the effects of other organizational-related factors on some commonly measured employee outcomes.

The results show that customer mistreatment has a significant negative impact on service employees' affective outcomes (i.e. negative emotions), attitudinal outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work engagement and turnover intention) and behavioral outcomes (i.e. job performance, surface acting and emotional labor). Additionally, service employees' negative emotions mediate the association between customer mistreatment and employees' job satisfaction, turnover intention, surface acting and emotional labor. Furthermore, the relationships between customer mistreatment and service employees' negative emotions and job performance are influenced by a contextual-level moderator (i.e. service delivery mode).

The authors contribute to the literature by providing robust meta-analytic estimates of the effects of customer mistreatment on a variety of service employees' affective, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, as well as the different magnitudes of the effect sizes between customer mistreatment and other job-related and personality-related factors by quantifying the true variability of the effect sizes. The authors draw on current theories underpinning customer mistreatment to test a theoretical model of the mediation mechanism of service employees' affective outcomes (i.e. service employees' negative emotions) on the relationships between customer mistreatment and employees' attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. The authors explore the effects of two contextual-level factors (i.e. service provider types and service delivery mode) related to the service delivery context that may account for the variability of effect sizes across empirical studies.