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This study aims to answer the following question: How can customer readiness be instrumental in non-technology-based service delivery?

Using a field study, this research examines the role of customer readiness in customer participation in non-technology-based service delivery and its indirect effects on such customer outcomes as perceived service quality, customer satisfaction and customer willingness to recommend.

The results show that customer readiness is a second-order construct. It has a significant impact on customer participation in service delivery, which in turn impacts three key service outcomes: customer perceived service quality, customer satisfaction and customer willingness to recommend. Four factors influencing customer readiness (consumer previous experience, consumer desire for control, consumer perceived risk and customer organizational socialization) are also empirically evaluated.

Some limitations of the study are related to sample size and use of a type of services. The research tested 13 hypotheses with a limited sample size in one context. A better representation of the population and a more generalizable outcome require more representative samples and studies in various contexts such as banking, hotel services or health care services. This study demonstrated the importance of customer readiness for effective participation in non-technology-based service delivery; it does not address the impact of customer readiness on participation in the context of technology-based services. Future research may also shed light on when and why customers choose technology-based services versus non-technology-based services.

Effective customer participation in service delivery can, and should, benefit from boosting customer readiness.

This research shows the impact of customer readiness on non-technology-based service delivery, more specifically, the impact of customer readiness on customer participation in this type of service delivery. Customer readiness has been found to be beneficial in the provision of technology-based services; yet, its role in the provision of non-technology-based services has not been thoroughly evaluated.

The widespread use of information and communication technologies enables consumers to obtain and share information whenever they feel the urge. With the advent of review websites and forums, companies and business owners may find themselves victims of consumer cyber aggression, which can hurt a company badly. This study aims to explore why consumers would engage in cyber aggression against companies, and to that end, it examines consumers’ ethical orientation and other possible drivers of cyber aggression.

To examine how ethical orientation affects consumers’ intention to engage in cyber aggression, a scenario-based 2 × 2 (deontological: moral/immoral × teleological: good result/bad result) between-subject experimental design is used. Moreover, 26 possible drivers in related literature are identified and included in a questionnaire administered to 226 college students.

The results show that adult consumers’ deontological and teleological evaluations significantly affect their ethical judgment about engaging in cyber aggression, which further impacts their intention to perpetrate an act of cyber aggression. Moreover, the study identifies six factors contributing to cyber aggression engagement as follows: personal aggressiveness, ease of perpetration, internet negativity, personal gains, helping the company and recreation.

Cyber aggression is generally viewed as interpersonal violence among adolescents. This study views cyber aggression from a different perspective and it is one of the few studies to look at adult consumers’ motivations to engage in cyber aggression against companies. The findings of this study can help firms understand why their customers attack them online, and understanding that will enable businesses to formulate more effective responses to attacks.

Studies on customer satisfaction and loyalty have focused on brand rather than product. It is not that brand is not important, but the process of loving a brand starts with a product. Customers appreciate products by themselves, independent of the brand, as shown in their pursuit of satisfaction and development of loyalty. Such appreciation seems to be prominent regarding innovative products when compared to traditional products. This paper aims to investigate this issue and provide a product‐brand typology.

The paper takes the form of empirical research on a partial application of the typology.

Results show that the relationship satisfaction‐loyalty is significantly present when evaluating products alone albeit a weaker presence than when evaluating brand alone. Such unequal presence is corroborated in both traditional (bottled wine) and innovative (electronic) products even though it is much stronger in innovative products. The relationship satisfaction‐loyalty is also present when evaluating product and brand combined, indicating that there is an intermediate position between product and brand. In contrast, the literature treats brand and product‐brand as being in the same category thereby diminishing the importance of a useful difference between brand and product‐brand.

There are practical consequences of applying the typology and examining the findings. The relationship satisfaction‐loyalty starts with the product, includes the product‐brand, and culminates with the brand. This process is significantly more important regarding innovative products, such as electronics, as compared to traditional products such as wine.

This study introduces a typology underscoring the pursuit of satisfaction and development of loyalty in three conditions of product presence versus brand presence, that is, product alone, brand alone, and product and brand combined.

Consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives when compared to consumer responses to corporate abilities (CA) have been elusory. Relevant empirical research on the subject shows unclear results. The objective of this research is to examine key antecedents to consumer social responses (CnSR), in particular, the comparative effects of CSR initiatives and CA in the consumer purchasing behavior.

A choice‐based conjoint model was applied to quota consumer samples from two disparate countries (USA and Peru) in the shoe industry.

The results demonstrate that some CSR initiatives, such as companies' environmental commitments, along with some CA, such as product quality, significantly explain the nature of consumer responses and a trade‐off effect on consumers' willingness to pay for a product. The differences between the two countries, and those expected for gender and age, strengthen the relationships tested.

Implications for CSR policies, limitations of the findings, and considerations for future research supplement the contribution.

Trade‐off measures between traditional product features, that depend on CA, and CSR product features, that depend on CSR initiatives, are used to show why consumers prefer CSR products to other products.

Foreign direct investment by Latin American companies in the USA is growing and significant. Yet, the characteristics of and trends in these investments, and the strategies used by these companies to either enter or exit the USA as well as to maintain their presence are little understood. This paper explores and illustrates the entry, maintenance, and exit strategies exemplary companies from Latin America use when they become involved in US markets. A sample of Mexican companies that concentrate in manufacturing industrial goods and prefer partnerships as the entry mode to US markets is used. In addition, this paper describes the patterns of direct investment, asset ownership, gross product, and intra‐firm B‐to‐B trade of Latin American companies in the USA.

This study’s aim is to investigate whether offering a co-production opportunity as a choice or as the only means of service rendering influences customer value creation and satisfaction. This research incorporates two empirically supported sources of co-created value, relational and economic, and it investigates a new dimension of co-created value, individual value. The study focus supports the need for more empirically based guidance for the management and design of co-creation processes.

A 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design was utilized to test the choice/no-choice condition. Data were collected through a survey of 214 respondents who were selected on the basis of their familiarity with the context of the experimental scenarios.

The results show that co-production as an option for service rendering has a stronger positive impact on value creation than does the context when co-production is necessary. Choice was found to positively influence relational and economic value. Value creation was found to mediate the choice and satisfaction relationship. Individual value had the strongest relative impact on satisfaction but was not significantly related to choice.

Designers and managers of co-production-enabling processes can enhance customer and organizational outcomes simply by offering customers a choice when considering whether or not to engage in co-production.

This originality of this study lies in the supporting evidence found for the influence of choice on value creation and the empirical corroboration for individual value creation as a source of co-created value. The on-line context of this study in this context is also novel.

The purpose of this paper is to explain student loyalty beyond its customary relationship with student satisfaction by including two relational variables, trust and commitment, two cognitive traits (service familiarity and communication) and one affective trait (opportunism) as moderators of the impact of trust and commitment on loyalty.

Two relational constructs (trust and commitment) are employed to improve the loyalty model and key comparisons are performed to know if career, cohort and sourcing school generate differences in the explanation of student loyalty.

Results show that the explanation chain that starts with student satisfaction but continues with the development of student trust and the reaching of student commitment culminates with student loyalty. The moderators (student opportunism, service familiarity, communication, age and available income for education) significantly contribute to the explanatory power of the model. Career is a meaningful differentiator in reaching student loyalty as are student cohort and the type of high school from which the student came.

This is one of first empirical studies on university student loyalty. Future research could test the same or new hypotheses using different samples and contexts.

University policies may benefit from the inclusion of norms regarding relational processes and outcomes such as the value of trust in the interactions and systematic recognition and awards assigned to student commitment achievements.

The explanation chain of customer loyalty was successfully applied to student loyalty, and strengthened with the addition of meaningful moderating variables.

Esta investigación tiene como objetivo explicar la lealtad del estudiante más allá de su relación habitual con la satisfacción del estudiante al incluir dos variables relacionales, confianza y compromiso, dos rasgos cognitivos (familiaridad con el servicio y comunicación) y un rasgo afectivo (oportunismo) como moderadores del impacto de la confianza y Compromiso de lealtad.

Se emplean dos construcciones relacionales (confianza y compromiso) para mejorar el modelo de lealtad y se realizan comparaciones clave para saber si la carrera, la cohorte y la escuela de recursos generan diferencias en la explicación de la lealtad de los estudiantes.

los resultados muestran que la cadena de explicación que comienza con la satisfacción del estudiante, pero continúa con el desarrollo de la confianza del estudiante y el logro del compromiso del estudiante culmina con la lealtad del estudiante. Los moderadores (el oportunismo de los estudiantes, la familiaridad con el servicio, la comunicación, la edad y los ingresos disponibles para la educación) contribuyen significativamente al poder explicativo del modelo. La carrera es un diferenciador significativo para alcanzar la lealtad de los estudiantes, al igual que la cohorte del estudiante y el tipo de escuela secundaria de la cual provino el estudiante.

Este es uno de los primeros estudios empíricos sobre la lealtad de los estudiantes universitarios. Las investigaciones futuras podrían probar las mismas o nuevas hipótesis utilizando diferentes ejemplos y contextos.

Las políticas de la universidad pueden beneficiarse de la inclusión de normas con respecto a los procesos y resultados relacionales, como el valor de la confianza en las interacciones y el reconocimiento sistemático y los premios asignados a los logros de compromiso de los estudiantes.

La cadena de explicación de la lealtad del cliente se aplicó con éxito a la lealtad del estudiante y se fortaleció con la adición de variables moderadoras significativas.

The single-site case study described herein is part of a two-year professional development (PD) initiative aimed at helping teachers from an urban elementary (K-8) school learn how to implement explicit, transactional comprehension strategy instruction across grades using culturally relevant books. This paper aims to describe the urban elementary teachers’ successes and challenges in their first-year implementation of providing culturally relevant literacy instruction.

Three types of qualitative data were collected: researchers’ anecdotal notes during the professional learning sessions; teacher focus groups; and teachers’ blog reflection entries.

The findings revealed that the PD for culturally relevant literacy instruction resulted in teachers’ heightened awareness of how identities and social subjectivities are negotiated in and through culturally relevant discourse, the implicit and explicit bias in the school curriculum. Finally, PD served as a catalyst for facilitating students’ and teachers’ racial and cultural identity development.

The findings of this study suggest that culturally relevant books which incorporate the students’ background may aid in student engagement because students are able to draw upon their culturally acquired background knowledge to better comprehend texts. Thus, to engage, motivate, affirm and promote students’ literacy success, teachers need to possess knowledge of their students’ race and culture, as well as their background, language and life experiences.

The findings of this study suggest that culturally relevant books which incorporate the students’ background may aid in student engagement because students are able to draw upon their culturally acquired background knowledge to better comprehend texts. Thus, to engage, motivate, affirm and promote students’ literacy success, teachers need to possess knowledge of their students’ race and culture, as well as their background, language and life experiences.

Teachers and teacher educators must reflect on, question and critique their own work in preparing teachers to enter today’s schools as critical, reflective educators. The types of children’s literature that are selected and introduced to students play an important role in dismantling technocratic approaches to literacy instruction and strengthen one’s understanding of one another. Teachers must select books that challenge assumptions and speak of possibilities for change.

Culturally relevant pedagogy that includes culturally relevant children’s literature holds promise for improving literacy instructional and assessment practices and school experiences for culturally and linguistically diverse students, especially in environments where high-stakes testing is emphasized. It is one way to imagine a better schooling experience for students that affirms identities and honors and sustains diversity. For culturally relevant pedagogy to be a reality in education, stakeholders must be on board, including students, parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers.

The growing displacement of theory and other forms of wide-ranging knowledge of social phenomena by empirical research methods in economics is widely noted by economists and historians of economic knowledge. Less attention has been devoted, however, to understand the materialization of such changes in the scientific practices. This article studies the recent transformations in the epistemological practices at CEDE, a research center in Colombia. I use a machine learning technique called Topic Modeling, interviews to CEDE researchers, and exegesis of papers to characterize a shift in the production of knowledge in microeconometrics at CEDE during the years 2000 and 2018. I explain this shift by characterizing two sets of epistemological practices that implies a recent tendency to disdain research that cannot make a “strong” causal inference.

Environmental sustainability is quickly becoming one of the most critical issues in industry development. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review through which the author can provide various research areas to work on for future researchers and provide insight into Industry 4.0 and environmental sustainability.

This study accomplishes this by performing a backward analysis using text mining on the Scopus database. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) was used to analyze the corpus of 4,364 articles published between 2013 and 2023. The authors generated ten clusters using keywords in the industrial revolution and environmental sustainability domain, highlighting ten research avenues for further exploration.

In this study, three research questions discuss the role of environmental sustainability with Industry 4.0. The author predicted ten clusters treated as recent trends on which more insight is required from future researchers. The authors provided year-wise analysis, top authors, top countries, top sources and network analysis related to the topic. Finally, the study provided industrialization’s effect on environmental sustainability and the future aspect of automation.

The reliability of the current study may be compromised, notwithstanding the size of the sample used. Poor retrieval of the literature corpus can be attributed to the limitations imposed by the search words, synonyms, string construction and variety of search engines used, as well as to the accurate exclusion of results for which the search string is insufficient.

This research is the first-ever study in which a natural language processing technique is implemented to predict future research areas based on the keywords–document relationship.