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Robots are predicted to have a profound impact on the service sector. The emergence of robots has attracted increasing interest from business scholars and practitioners alike. In this article, we undertake a systematic review of the business literature about the impact of service robots on customers and employees with the objective of guiding future research.

We analyzed the literature on service robots as they relate to customers and employees in business journals listed in the Financial Times top 50 journals plus all journals covered in the cross-disciplinary SERVSIG literature alerts.

The analysis of the identified studies yielded multiple observations about the impact of service robots on customers (e.g. overarching frameworks on acceptance and usage of service robots; characteristics of service robots and anthropomorphism; and potential for enhanced and deteriorated service experiences) and service employees (e.g. employee benefits such as reduced routine work, enhanced productivity and job satisfaction; potential negative consequences such as loss of autonomy and a range of negative psychological outcomes; opportunities for human–robot collaboration; job insecurity; and robot-related up-skilling and development requirements). We also conclude that current research on service robots is fragmented, is largely conceptual in nature and focused on the initial adoption stage. We feel that more research is needed to build an overarching theory. In addition, more empirical research is needed, especially on the long(er)-term usage service robots on actual behaviors, the well-being and potential downsides and (ethical) risks for customers and service employees.

Our review focused on the business and service literature. Future work may want to include additional literature streams, including those in computer science, engineering and information systems.

This article is the first to synthesize the business and service literature on the impact of service robots on customers and employees.

Dyadic interactions between customers and service providers rarely occur in isolation. Still, there is a lack of systematic knowledge about the roles that different types of nontechnological third parties – that is, other customers, pets, other employees and other firms – can adopt in relation to customers and service providers during encounters. The present study aims to unravel these roles and highlight their implications for customers, service providers and/or third parties.

This research relies on a systematic review of literature in the Web of Science using a search string pertaining to the research study’s objectives. In total, 2,726 articles were screened by title and abstract using clear inclusion and exclusion criteria, thereby extracting 189 articles for full-text eligibility. The final sample consisted of 139 articles for coding and analysis.

The analyses reveal that other customers, pets, other employees and other firms can adopt five roles: bystander, connector, endorser, balancer and partner. Each role has different implications for customers, service providers and/or third parties. Additionally, the five roles are associated with distinct constellations of the customer, the service provider and the third party. These roles and constellations are dynamic and not mutually exclusive.

This research contributes to the service encounter literature by providing a thorough understanding of the various third-party roles and their implications for customers, service providers and/or third parties during encounters. As such, this research sheds light on the conditions under which third parties become “significant others” in service encounters and identifies avenues for future research.

The context of marketing and service research is rapidly changing as a result of advances in academic research and business practice. This has implications for our understanding of customer value. The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on customer value given today’s context (including recent advances such as technologies, human contact, collaborative consumption, service ecosystems and transformative service research); to revise Holbrook’s value typology; and to propose a research agenda.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service and marketing literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, this paper presents an evolved view on customer value which accounts for recent advances in academic research and business practice. Second, this paper updates Holbrook’s value typology by revising existing value types as well as identifying additional value types; and offers guidelines for measuring and modeling customer value. Third, this paper proposes a research agenda to guide and stimulate future value research.

This paper provides an update on customer value, which is one of the most fundamental concepts in service and marketing research. This updated perspective has been approved and applauded by Morris B. Holbrook, one of the founding fathers of value research.

Transformative value is a central tenet of transformative service research (TSR) because it affects individual and community well-being, quality of life and sustainability. Although transformative value plays a significant role in well-being, the literature suffers from a lack of sound interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks that delineate how transformative value is created in services throughout the service consumption process. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and role of service communications during the various stages of the service consumption process to enable the creation of transformative value for people and the environment.

To achieve the above goal, the authors integrate agenda-setting theory (media theory) combined with framing and relational dialectics (communication theories) as well as TSR.

In line with the objectives of the study, the authors propose an integrative framework named Transformative Value Creation via Service Communications (TVCSC) that explains how firms set their transformative corporate agendas through their dialectics with consumers, society and media. This transformative agenda is reflected in the marketing mix of their services (7Ps) as communicated with various means, physically and digitally (sales/frontline personnel, advertising, CSR, social media and website). Recommendations for a transformative marketing mix are provided. Furthermore, TVCSC illustrates how value is co-created in all customer–firm interactions via relationship dialectics throughout the service consumption process to result in transformative value outcomes.

The proposed framework identifies several research gaps and provides useful future research directions.

This is the first comprehensive framework that explains how transformative value is created through the various communications in services and is the outcome of value co-creation interactions of the service consumption process.

This paper aims to propose that the literature on customer engagement has emphasized the benefits of customer engagement to the firm and, to a large extent, ignored the customers’ perspective. By drawing upon co-creation and other literature, this paper attempts to alleviate this gap by proposing a strategic framework that aligns both the customer and firm perspectives in successfully creating engagement that generates value for both the customer and the bottom line.

A strategic framework is proposed that includes the necessary firm resources, data, process, timeline and goals for engagement, and captures customers’ motives, situational factors and preferred engagement styles.

The authors argue that sustainability of data-driven customer engagement requires a dynamic and iterative value generation process involving customers recognizing the value of engagement behaviours and firm’s ability to capture and passing value back to customers.

This paper proposes a dynamic strategic value-creation framework that comprehensively captures both the customer and firm perspectives to data-driven customer engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a concept of service system well-being by presenting its collective conceptualisation and ten key domains.

Service system well-being domains were established using multi-level theory and a qualitative case study research design. To validate the domains initially developed from the literature, 19 in-depth interviews were conducted across two case studies that represented the service systems of a hospital and a multi-store retail franchise chain. A multi-stakeholder approach was used to explore the actor’s perspectives about service system well-being. Key domains of service system well-being were identified using deductive categorisation analysis.

The findings found evidence of ten key domains of well-being, namely strategic, governance, leadership, resource, community, social, collaborative, cultural, existential and transformational, among service system stakeholders.

Service system well-being is a collective concept comprising ten domains that emerged at different levels of the service system. The propositions outlined the classification of and interlinkages between the domains. This exploratory study was conducted in a limited service context and focussed on ten key domains.

Service managers in commercial and social organisations are able to apply the notion of service system well-being to identify gaps and nurture well-being deficiencies within different domains of service-system well-being.

Based on multi-level theory, the study is the first to conceptualise and explore the concept of service system well-being across multiple actors.

Besides the direct physical health consequences, through social isolation COVID-19 affects a considerably larger share of consumers with deleterious effects for their psychological well-being. Two vulnerable consumer groups are particularly affected: older adults and children. The purpose of the underlying paper is to take a transformative research perspective on how social robots can be deployed for advancing the well-being of these vulnerable consumers and to spur robotic transformative service research (RTSR).

This paper follows a conceptual approach that integrates findings from various domains: service research, social robotics, social psychology and medicine.

Two key findings advanced in this paper are (1) a typology of robotic transformative service (i.e. entertainer, social enabler, mentor and friend) as a function of consumers' state of social isolation, well-being focus and robot capabilities and (2) a future research agenda for RTSR.

This paper guides service consumers and providers and robot developers in identifying and developing the most appropriate social robot type for advancing the well-being of vulnerable consumers in social isolation.

This study is the first to integrate social robotics and transformative service research by developing a typology of social robots as a guiding framework for assessing the status quo of transformative robotic service on the basis of which it advances a future research agenda for RTSR. It further complements the underdeveloped body of service research with a focus on eudaimonic consumer well-being.

Companies increasingly opt for co-creation by engaging customers in new product and service development processes. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the customer experience in co-creation situations and its determinants.

The conceptual framework addresses the customer experience in co-creation situations, and its individual and environmental determinants. To examine the degree to which these determinants affect the customer experience in co-creation situations, the author starts by proposing and testing a multidimensional co-creation experience scale (n=66). Next, the author employs an experiment to test the hypotheses (n=180).

Higher levels of customer role readiness, technologization, and connectivity positively affect different co-creation experience dimensions. The impact of these dimensions on the overall co-creation experience, however, differs according to customers’ expectations in terms of co-creation benefits. Therefore, the author concludes that the expected co-creation benefits determine the importance of the level of customer role readiness, technologization, and connectivity for the co-creation experience.

This research generates a better understanding of the co-creation experience by providing insight into the co-creation experience dimensions and their relative importance for customers with different expectations in terms of co-creation benefits. Additionally, this research addresses the implications of customer heterogeneity in terms of expected co-creation benefits for designing co-creation environments, thereby helping managers to generate more rewarding co-creation experiences for their customers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of masculine identity in generating value destruction and diminished well-being in a preventative health service.

This research used five focus groups with 39 Australian men aged between 50 and 74 years. Men’s participation in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program informed the sample frame. In total, 12 Jungian male archetypes were used to identify different masculine identities.

Thematic analysis of the data revealed three themes of masculinity that explain why men destroy value by avoiding the use of a preventative health services including: rejection of the service reduces consumer disempowerment and emasculation, active rejection of resources creates positive agency and suppressing negative self-conscious emotions protects the self.

Limitations include the single context of bowel cancer screening. Future research could investigate value destruction in other preventative health contexts such as testicular cancer screening, sexual health screening and drug abuse.

Practical implications include fostering consumer empowerment when accessing services, developing consumer resources to create positive agency and boosting positive self-conscious emotions by promoting positive social norms.

This research is the first known study to explore how value is destroyed in men’s preventative health using the perspective of gender identity. This research also is the first to explore value destruction as an emotion regulation strategy.

This tribute to Dr Pierre Eiglier, who passed in February 2020, was prepared for the “17th International Research Conference in Service Management 2022” in La Londe les Maures, France. Tribute is defined as, “an act, statement, or gift intended to show gratitude, respect, or admiration”.

Sampled Pierre's publications; consulted the 1993 Journal of Retailing “Special Services Issue” on the evolution of the field; collected reflections from another founder and two of Pierre's former doctoral students who have helped co-chair the La Londe conference and drew from my own interactions with Pierre over the years at La Londe.

In the mid-1970s, Pierre was one of the first to specify the unique characteristics of services vs products, and the implications and introduced, with Eric Langeard, the “servuction” (service production) model, highlighting customer participation in the servuction process and determinants of the service experience. Pierre continually applied a synthesis of systems thinking, researcher–practitioner interaction, and interdisciplinary/cross-functional perspectives.

Pierre's contributions came at a time when marketing practice was geared largely toward products/goods, yet the service sector was growing. Pierre's pioneering framing, along with other founders, of service attributes, service models, and the service experience had much-needed implications for services marketing practice.

This detailed tribute to a service field founder is, regrettably, quite original; too rare. There is value in revisiting these founding contributions which often were broader and more interdisciplinary in perspective than now.