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Effective customer journey design (ECJD) is considered a key variable in customer experience management and an essential source of brand meaning and pro-brand behavior. Although previous research has confirmed its importance for driving brand attitudes and loyalty, the role of consumer-brand identification as a social identity-based influence in this relationship has not yet been discussed. Drawing on construal level and social identity theories, this paper aims to investigate whether effective journeys and the resulting overall journey experience are equally powerful in driving brand loyalty among customers with different levels of consumer-brand identification.

The present article develops and tests a research model using data from the European and US service sectors (N = 1,454) to investigate how and when ECJD affects service brand loyalty.

Across two cultural contexts, four service industries and 33 service brands, the results reveal that ECJD is a crucial driver of service brand loyalty for customers with low consumer-brand identification. Moreover, the findings show that different aspects of journey effectiveness positively impact the valence of customers’ experience related to those journeys – a process that is ultimately decisive for their brand loyalty.

This study is unique because it generates theoretical and practical knowledge by combining the literature streams of customer journey design, customer experience and branding. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that consumer-brand identification is a critical boundary condition to be considered in the relationship between ECJD and brand loyalty in services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how quality of work life (QWL) influences job satisfaction and to test if gender and organizational type moderate this relationship for Generation Y (Gen-Y).

Questionnaire data were collected from 328 Gen-Y employees in European hospitality businesses. Drawing on generational theory, social role theory and person–environment (P–E) fit theory, the authors discuss how gender and organizational types (i.e. independent vs corporate structures) moderate Gen-Y’s QWL–job satisfaction relationship.

The findings of the paper are as follows: first, gender and organizational type influence the QWL–job satisfaction relationship for Gen-Y. Second, job security does not change job satisfaction levels for female employees while high levels of job security negatively influence job satisfaction for male employees. Third, receiving appreciation at work increases job satisfaction for both women and men but, when receiving little appreciation at work, women remain more satisfied. Fourth, having opportunities to contribute to decisions positively affects Gen-Y’s job satisfaction. Fifth, having the right to say is more important in independent organizations, while the opportunity to realize an employee’s own potential leads to higher job satisfaction in corporate organizations.

The study contributes to the limited empirical scholarly research, adding to a deeper understanding of influencing factors of Gen-Y’s QWL–job satisfaction relationship.