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The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of customer discomfort in service settings when employees and customers who share social incompatibilities, stemming from war, nationalism, religious differences or terrorism, work together in service settings.

The authors engage in triangulation research to understand how Israeli Arabs and Jews experience comfort/discomfort in services. Study 1 uses an experimental design to show how comfort differs when Israeli Jews work with Arabs and Jews in three different service settings. Study 2 employs survey methodology to explore how comfort differs among Israeli Arabs when they work with either an Arab or a Jewish employee. Study 3 uses grounded theory methodology to provide a theoretical framework that explains reasons for customer discomfort occurrence between Israel’s Arabs and Jews, its impact on customers’ attitudes and behaviors and suggestions for increasing comfort.

Israeli Arabs and Jews express various feelings of discomfort when working with each other, and Druze, in service settings. Israeli Jews express higher levels of discomfort when working with Arabs than vice versa, while Israeli Arabs express discomfort when working with Druze employees. Five strategies for increasing customer comfort are defined and developed.

Social incompatibilities prevent many consumers and employees from experiencing comfort during service exchanges; however, managers can alleviate some of the factors that exacerbate customer discomfort.

Managers need to realize that customer discomfort leads to place avoidance and thus should implement strategies to assuage it.

Unabated service situations that result in customer discomfort may lead to customer ill-being, including fear.

This study is the first to explore customer discomfort due to social incompatibilities in depth.

This study aims to investigate and compare the propensity of both Arab and Western customers to bargain in marketing exchange situations in the United Arab Emirates.

The Bargaining Propensity Scale (BPS) developed by Schneider et al. was administered, as part of a self‐administered questionnaire, to a sample of 100 Arab customers and 100 Western customers and their responses to the BPS items were analyzed.

Data analysis shows that both segments – Arab and Western customers – display an overall tendency to engage in bargaining activities, although with slightly different PBS distributions.

The sample contained only 15 Arab women as it was very awkward for the male research assistant to talk to women in public places; very few women would risk being seen in public with strangers.

This study addresses an important marketing issue – the comparative behavior of customers. It is the first to do so in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of senior managers in managing intra-and inter-organizational relationships with key customers and the factors that influence such involvement in a novel context in the Arab Middle East region.

An exploratory qualitative research design was used in which 68 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted in Jordan with endogenous and Western firms.

Top/senior managers play a significant role in Arab business relationships and in creating value for the firms. Their involvement in key accounts is imperative at all levels – strategic, operational, and relational – mainly due to cultural and institutional factors that are unique to the Arab context.

The study is limited to operations in one emerging country situated in a novel setting in one particular region of the world, which is the Middle East.

Arab senior managers’ participation is imperative and should continue with their relatively intense involvement with key accounts. For foreign investors operating in that part of the world, it is highly recommended that senior management have a more a hands-on approach when dealing with the Arab key customer and to focus more on the relational aspect of key account management than on the organizational aspect.

This paper adds to the very limited number of studies on senior management involvement in key account management, making a theoretical and practical contribution and adding insight on how to manage the relationship with the Arab key customer.

This study investigated the association between structural conditions and social incentives and their effect on the ethnic composition of mobile social networks. Regarding structural conditions, we examined the role of the ethnic group’s size, socioeconomic status, and heterogeneity of the city in which the business was located. Regarding social incentives, we investigated the social diversification hypothesis, which expects that residentially and socially segregated minority groups will take advantage of mobile communications to diversify their mobile communication ties with outgroup members.

Two data sets were used. The first was the aggregation of the mobile communication patterns of business customers as measured by one of Israel’s mobile phone operators in April 2010. The database included 9,099 call data records. The second was a data set of the social characteristics of 103 Israeli cities from the Israeli Bureau of Statistics. Both data sets were merged according to the place of residence of each customer.

Israeli Arab businesses in homogeneous Jewish and mixed cities operate in an environment with more structural opportunities to create outgroup ethnic ties than Arab businesses in homogeneous Arab cities. Jewish businesses in ethnically mixed cities have more outgroup mobile ties than comparable businesses in homogenous Jewish cities.

We expand previous models and suggest a structural diversification approach in which ethnic mobile social networks vary across homogeneous and ethnically mixed cities. These variations result in different social incentives as the diversification approach assumed, as well as different structural conditions, as the structural approach indicates.

The purpose of this paper is to develop customer satisfaction indices for the services provided by inspectors in certain departments of Al‐Ain Municipality, the United Arab Emirates.

The methodology is based on customer satisfaction models with SERVQUAL survey input to produce indices of satisfaction and the drivers and outcomes of satisfaction. The survey data were collected via a stratified random sample of the customers who visited Al‐Ain Municipality Customer Service Center (AMCSC) in spring 2008. Structural equation models were fitted to the data and goodness‐of‐fit was assessed.

The customer satisfaction indices and scores of customers’ trust were in the mid‐eighties, indicating high levels of satisfaction and client trust.

The limitations of the current study include the small sample size and the use of one indicator of the latent variable trust. Further research may focus more on prioritizing future efforts, improving quality, and performing cross‐institutional benchmarking.

Opportunities for quality improvements were identified and some recommendations were provided.

Although the results lead to the conclusion that high levels of satisfaction and client trust were attained, there is a room for improvement. The AMCSC has to continuously improve the quality of its services in order to realize its mission.

With US$ 320 bn spent on luxury fashion in the Middle East and a growing digital consumer presence, local start-ups must form an integrated online relationship with millennials in order to recruit and retain a viable customer base. Nonetheless, these elements are yet to be extensively and properly researched as the literature is still scarce vis-à-vis this area.

A mixed qualitative approach was adopted using both in-depth interviews and focus groups. Two qualitative studies were conducted, with a total of 13 elite respondents and 28 consumer respondents from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) using semi-structured interviews. Four focus groups were also conducted in both countries with six participants each group for triangulation of the findings.

The findings enhance current understanding pertaining to Gen Ys' motivations when selecting and engaging online with a luxury fashion start-up brand. The study suggests a detailed strategic framework that can be used in an integrated omni-channel approach. It also discusses the different touchpoints that play a role in influencing luxury consumption across different motivation stages.

The literature relating to digital strategies for luxury fashion start-up brands in the Middle East is still nascent. This study fills a considerable gap in the literature related to such brands that are aiming to stay relevant amidst the growing impact of the digital landscape on luxury fashion brand shoppers in the Middle East.

The strategy of carefully selecting the most important group of business customers for special treatment – for which several terms are in use – has come in for considerable recent attention from both academics and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to examine “strategic account management” at a large telecommunications operator in a developing country (“Arab Telco”).

The paper presents an in‐depth single‐company case study.

The approach to strategic account management employed by Arab Telco shows excellent fit with the recommendations of Western authorities about the implementation of such programs. In particular, there is evidence that the program is being implemented sincerely, with the allocation of additional resources to the strategic account function and the delivery of special treatment to strategic account customers. However, the strategic account program is still relatively immature and the term “key account management” is also in use at Arab Telco; this term refers to many customers who are not of particular strategic significance to the company.

Further research is needed into the impact of culture‐specific factors on the implementation of strategic account management. The transference of Western marketing models to emerging economies offers fruitful scope for additional research.

The paper examines the direct transfer of a well‐known Western management technique – i.e. strategic account management – to a major company in an emerging economy in the Arab world.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of perceived satisfaction with mobile payment applications based on use experience, and subsequent stated expectations on brand loyalty and future use behavior using a theory-based research integrative model of factors that influence Arabs’ intentions to use mobile payment application(s).

A conceptual model was developed using the mixed research method approach. The focus group approach was used for the qualitative study and structural equation modeling for the quantitative study. Primary data were collected online. Participants were 305 Arab consumers from nine countries in the Middle East.

Satisfaction with the quality of mobile payment application(s) increased use experience and enhanced consumers’ expectations, which in turn positively affected loyalty and purchase intentions.

The study encompassed mobile payment application(s) in nine countries rather than focusing on one market, or on one product type and business. The paper did not perform a comparative study between sampled Arab countries, but rather it sees all countries and respondents just as Arabs.

Service providers should build mobile application(s) based on the features of usability, availability, reliability, adaptability, accessibility, responsiveness and security.

This study is one of the first studies that empirically examines mobile payment consumer’s usage behavior from nine countries of the Arab world where there is scarce research on the topic in the region.

This paper aims to investigate how mobile phones can be used to support women’s entrepreneurship in Arab countries. The objective is to explore new ways to close the gender gaps in terms of entrepreneurship in these countries.

The methodology used in this research is an in-depth analysis of the existing literature and recent reports on women’s entrepreneurship and on the adoption and use of mobile phones in Arab countries.

The findings of this research indicate that female Arab entrepreneurs are interested in using mobile phones. However, they have not yet realised the full potential of mobile technology in empowering them beyond its basic use. Several challenges facing women entrepreneurship in the Arab countries were identified. Mobile phones can be used to overcome these challenges.

This research is based on the collection and analysis of secondary data rather than primary data to support the findings.

There is a need for collaboration between telecommunication companies operating in the Arab region and government initiatives to build a solid environment in which female Arab entrepreneurs can operate.

This research provides new insights and recommendations for reducing the gender gaps in terms of entrepreneurship by using new and improved techniques to address women’s needs for economic independence. This will also increase the profit gained by the telecommunication companies operating in Arab countries and bring additional income to this region.