Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand the underlying mechanism of how consumer-to-store employee and consumer-to-self-service technology (SST) interaction qualities contribute to consumer retail patronage.

A total of 300 surveys for each type of in-store kiosk were used for the data analysis. The proposed model was analysed using structural equation modelling.

This study suggests a direct link from SST usage frequency to perception of SST service quality. Also, retail patronage intentions were positively influenced by both interpersonal service quality and SST service quality, and SST usage intentions were positively affected by retail patronage intentions. Lastly, three causal links were shown to be dissimilar between the two types of in-store kiosk: interpersonal service quality-retail patronage intentions, SST service quality-retail patronage intentions, and SST service quality-SST usage intentions. The remaining links were similar for both types of in-store kiosks.

Previous empirical work on this topic has mostly been limited to investigations of service quality of either a human- or a technology-based service option. In contrast, the current study incorporates both interpersonal service quality and SST service quality as critical factors affecting retail patronage intentions and thus provides an important opportunity to advance the understanding of consumer-to-store employee and consumer-to-SST interaction qualities and their contribution to consumer retail patronage.

This study aims to develop and examine a model that links the foreigner service orientation, defined as indigenous consumers’ preference for service environments popular among foreign versus local consumers, to both foreigner and local comfort in intercultural service encounters.

The authors collected cross-sectional survey data from 516 indigenous consumers in Qatar.

According to the findings, although foreigner comfort is positively related to their service orientation, local comfort is negatively related to foreigner service orientation. The results further indicate that the relationships are intensified when cosmopolitanism or collective narcissism is high and when consumers are alone in the service setting.

Service firms can use the findings of this research to create a meaningful service environment based on consumers’ orientation to the in-group and out-group.

The examination of the foreigner service orientation addresses the possibility that consumers might prefer foreign consumers to local ones in service environments. This research also addresses the dearth of research on customer-to-customer intercultural service encounter.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and test customer perceptions of four types of value co-creation (VCC), explore VCC a priori condition of relatedness, operationalized as commercial friendship, examine customer voluntary participation in VCC through initiation (customer vs company), and the influence of these factors on relational outcomes of VCC: satisfaction, loyalty and trust.

A scenario-based 2×2×4 experimental design was set in a destination resort context: weak vs strong commercial friendship, customer vs company co-creation initiation and four types of VCC. The 248 resort guests were equally and randomly assigned to experimental conditions. Multivariate analysis of variance and repeated measures analysis of variance was utilized.

Results demonstrated that customers perceived VCC processes differently. Co-creation of experience and co-recovery outcomes had significantly higher relational outcomes when compared to co-creation of marketing and co-innovation. Experiencing stronger commercial friendship, as customer–company relatedness and being invited to co-create resulted in stronger customer relational outcomes.

The core theoretical contribution of this study is the comparative analysis of customer perceptions of four distinctly different types of VCC: co-innovation, co-creation of experience, co-creation of marketing and co-recovery. A priori conditions of relatedness and co-creation initiation were established as antecedents of VCC processes among customers and service providers. When a service provider initiates VCC, it can positively affect customers’ relational outcomes of satisfaction, loyalty and trust.

Building meaningful relationships between consumers and service brands has received significant attention. This paper aims to explore how brand love in services – a relationship between the consumer and the service brand – is created through relationships between the consumer and other people. Specifically, we explore how brand love is created through the social relationships consumers form with other consumers.

This conceptual paper synthesizes the literature on consumer-brand relationships, brand community, social support and service providers, psychological ownership and brand love in the context of services.

This paper suggests that consumers love brands that are meaningful to them. Brands can become more meaningful to consumers by facilitating interpersonal connections and helping consumers define their identity. The connection between social relationships with other consumers and brand love is mediated by the consumer's level of perceived membership in the community. For some consumers, perceived membership grows to the point of becoming perceived psychological ownership of the community, where the consumer feels a sense of responsibility for the brand's and the community's well-being.

This paper advances theoretical understanding of how brand love operates in services and how it can be enhanced through services’ management.

Nowadays, companies are seeking to create meaningful and long-term relationships with their customers. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of parasocial and social aspects of consumption in building trustworthy and loyal relationships in both offline and online services.

Two studies were conducted using the survey research method. The first study collected data from 285 soccer fans, and the second study collected data from 298 Facebook consumers.

The study confirms the proposed model and suggests that parasocial and social relationships act as significant antecedents of service brand loyalty in both offline and online services.

This is the first study that examines parasocial and social relationships in tandem and their role in developing loyal relationships with service brands. It also confirms that social relationships in a service setting play a significant role in predicting brand trust and loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to devise a comprehensive framework of the emergent shopping experience as the result of the combination of store access and the use of communication technologies, particularly social media.

The paper builds on a set of 20 semi-structured interviews to London-based young consumers aged 18-23 and adopts an exploratory approach aimed at understanding the broad relationship between retailing and social media use.

The findings highlight how an intensive use of social media and digital communication technologies emerges as an integral part of the shopping experience inside and outside the store.

Drawing upon the notion of the “experience economy,” scholars and practitioners are actually pushed to reconsider the role of traditional shopping as in-store experience that is evolving fast as an effect of the continuous progress into communication technologies. This concept contributes to knowledge development by linking research in retail with work in the area of consumer culture.

Marketers and retailers should consider that the shopping experience is no longer limited to the physical point of sale. This means that retailers should be able to provide a shopping experience that is natively networked.

The authors identify the emerging “networked experience” of shopping, which derives from the consumers’ widespread usage of new communication technologies to collect information, their willingness to share part of this information with others, while creating new digitally mediated relationships with retailers.

This paper highlights the potential of social activism – defined as a public act that aims to challenge the status quo by bringing alternative views or narratives to the debate – in transformative service research and proposes a future research agenda.

This paper builds upon a review of social activism in the management and communications literature to identify its potential for social change in service (eco)systems.

This paper outlines three ways in which social activism can influence companies (external activism, internal activism, and activism as practice) and illustrates how they can be used to advance transformative service research in selected priority areas.

This paper develops a future research agenda and suggests research questions that could guide scholarly inquiry at the intersection of social activism and transformative service research.

For managers and policy makers, this paper highlights how social activism can influence companies' attempts to drive social change.

This paper is among the first to link social activism and transformative service research and highlight novel research opportunities at their intersection.

This study, according to the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication and the technological revolution of the last decade, aims to investigate the online CSR communication of the SMEs.

According to the study's purpose and character, the data are collected from the websites of SMEs. The firms are chosen randomly from a database of a web portal for SMEs. The websites in the sample are examined in order to explore the nature and the extent of information on CSR activities and style of presentation.

The findings showed that the number of SMEs with CSR information on their websites is very low. The SMEs do not use the potential of their websites to their advantage in terms of the quantity and style. However, the study offers an overview of different CSR activities and communication styles of these activities.

The research used a sample from an SME web portal database with the result that it makes it difficult to generalize the results but they are in coherence with the results of similar studies.

The study enriches the extant literature and provides future research areas as well as insights and basic principles for managerial use for better usage of the web. Online CSR activities that organizations may find interesting and hints to improve websites for a better style and image of good corporate citizenship are also discussed.

The study explores in the Turkish context the current situation of online CSR communication and shows that even the SMEs are increasingly concerned with communicating ethically and responsibly to the diversity of stakeholders through the web.