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The purpose of this investigation is to gain insight into parents' perceptions of benefits vs burdens (value) of educational and healthcare service received for their child with ASD. Parents are the main integrators of long-term educational and healthcare service for their child with ASD.

Design/methodology/approach included (1) a sentiment analysis of discussion forum posts from an autism message board using a rule-based sentiment analysis tool that is specifically attuned to sentiments expressed in social media and (2) a qualitative content analysis of one-on-one interviews with parents of children diagnosed with ASD, complemented with interviews with experienced educators and clinicians.

Findings reveal the link between customized service integration and long-term benefits. Both parents and service providers emphasize the need to integrate healthcare and educational service to create holistic long-term care for a child with ASD. Parents highlight the benefits of varied services, but availability or cost are burdens if the service is not publicly provided, or covered by insurance. Service providers' lack of experience with ASD and people's ignorance of the challenges of ASD are burdens.

Ensuring health outcomes for a child with ASD requires an integrated service system and long-term, customer-centric service process because the scope of service covers the child's entire childhood. Customized educational and healthcare service must be allocated and budgeted early in order to reach the goal of a satisfactory service output for each child.

This is the first service research to focus on parents' challenges with obtaining services for their child with ASD. This paper provides service researchers and managers insight into parents' perceptions of educational and healthcare service value (i.e. benefits vs. burdens) received for their child with ASD. These insights into customer-centric perceptions of value may be useful to research and may help service providers to innovate and provide integrated service directly to parents, or indirectly to service providers, who serve children with ASD.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight challenges for service firms communicating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts to customers. Specifically, it focuses on the relationship between ESG metrics and reporting and customer perceptions of social innovativeness.

The empirical material comprises three years of data (2018–2020) covering more than 100 firms from three sources: (1) Social Innovation Index (Sii), which is collected as part of the American Innovation Index (Aii), (2) Bloomberg Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) ESG and (3) Datamaran.

ESG metrics and reporting do not suffice to explain customer perceptions of social innovativeness. Rather, a firm's industry plays the prominent role in affecting these perceptions where service firms are at a disadvantage as customers perceive services as less socially innovative compared to goods.

While ESG metrics and reporting provide important information for investors and regulators, they are not reflected in customers' perceptions of firms' social innovativeness, and services are at a disadvantage relative to goods. Therefore, services researchers and managers must advance their knowledge regarding how to better link ESG metrics and report to customers' perceptions.

The paper offers a first large-scale, cross-industry investigation of how ESG metrics and reporting impact customer perceptions of social innovativeness, leading to a research agenda on communication of ESG.