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This research addresses the critical challenge of fostering customer loyalty within the highly competitive landscape of the insurance industry. The study investigates the interplay between customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the influence of technology and service quality in the context of insurance services and in periods of crisis.

A quantitative research approach was employed, utilizing a structured questionnaire distributed among diverse insurance customers in Lebanon during crisis conditions. The data were analyzed using SPSS-Amos, incorporating descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM).

This research emphasizes the crucial role of customer satisfaction in fostering loyalty in the insurance sector, especially during crises. High satisfaction levels, influenced by user-friendly online platforms, positively correlate with increased customer loyalty. Technology plays a vital role in maintaining and improving satisfaction, making it a key driver during challenging times. Positive interactions between service quality and satisfaction further highlight the multifaceted impact of technology on shaping customer loyalty.

The research findings provide valuable insights with practical implications for insurers aiming to boost customer loyalty. The study recommends strategic investments in critical areas like claims processing, customer service, communication strategies, digitalization initiatives, and employee training. The study provides insights applicable particularly to insurance companies navigating crisis conditions.

This research contributes both to academic understanding and practical applications by shedding light on the distinctive challenges and opportunities faced by insurers in cultivating customer loyalty within the insurance industry during crisis. The elucidations provided serve as a foundation for developing targeted strategies to address these challenges and to leverage opportunities for enhanced customer loyalty.

How does business model design play a role in enabling manufacturing firms’ services? This study aims to investigate the impact of two distinct types of business model design, namely, efficiency-centered business model design (EBMD) and novelty-centered business model design (NBMD), and their effects in balanced and imbalanced configurations, on two types of services: product- and customer-oriented services.

Using matched survey data of 390 top managers and objective performance data of 195 Chinese manufacturing firms, this study uses hierarchical regression, polynomial regression and response surface analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results show that while EBMD positively affects product-oriented services, NBMD positively affects customer-oriented services. Both types of services exert a significant influence on firm performance. Furthermore, the degree of product- and customer-oriented services increases with an increasing effort level with a balance between EBMD and NBMD. Asymmetrical, imbalanced configuration effects reveal that the degree of product-oriented services is higher when the EBMD effort exceeds the NBMD effort, and the degree of customer-oriented services is higher when the NBMD effort exceeds the EBMD effort.

This study enriches the understanding of designing business models to facilitate service growth in manufacturing firms, ultimately benefiting firm performance. In addition, exploring balanced and imbalanced configurations of EBMD and NBMD offers new insights into business model dual design research.

This study explores how predictor variables (value congruence and customer–AI-assisted exchanges) lead tourism businesses to meet customer needs through contactless technology and enhance their willingness to pay more.

The research model was designed from the perspective of consumer-brand relationships and acceptance of AI device use. This study collected and analyzed 647 valid questionnaires using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach.

The findings indicate that value congruence and customer-AI-assisted exchanges (CAIX) affect intimacy. Intimacy affects satisfaction and the willingness to pay more for contactless technological services. Moreover, brand trust and sensory brand experience play a role in moderating contactless technological services.

Effective interactions between customers and AI-assisted services significantly contribute to overall satisfaction. When AI systems can understand and respond appropriately to customer queries, needs, and preferences, they enhance customer experience and satisfaction levels, increasing overall customer satisfaction with AI services.

A significant increase in the number of private sector banks has intensified the level of competition in the Indian banking industry (IBI). This increase in the number of banks has a considerable impact on the existing players, which calls for prioritizing customer satisfaction (CS) and enhancing bank reputation (BR). Our study seeks to investigate the enablers of CS and BR in the IBI.

The study adopted a cross-sectional design for gathering responses from retail bank customers across the selected banks through a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized to evaluate direct and indirect linkages among the identified constructs by examining mediating and moderating effects.

The study puts forward crucial antecedents of CS and BR. The findings exhibit that perceived trust (PT) and relationship commitment (RC) magnify CS and BR, respectively, while CS amplifies repurchase intention (RI). The study advances that BR and CS partially mediate between the underlying constructs. In addition, fairness and risk exhibit moderating effects between CS and customer repurchase intention (CRI) and BR and CRI.

The study illustrates the crucial enablers of BR, CS and CRI that may assist banking professionals in enriching customer experience and holding on to their customers.

There is a shortage of research on RC, service innovation (SI) and BR in the IBI. Accordingly, our study builds on the prior studies by considering these constructs using a comprehensive conceptual framework by extending the application of signaling theory (ST) in the banking domain and scrutinizing the dual moderating effects of fairness and risk.

The purpose of this study is to identify the structural determinants of e-returns service interactions, examine their impact on online shoppers' loyalty and propose returns service interventions from an interactive marketing perspective to facilitate consumer interaction and repeat purchase intentions with e-retailers.

This study empirically tests the research hypotheses based on cross-sectional survey data collected from Chinese online consumers who experienced interactions during the product returns process.

E-return service interaction includes three determinants: access support, friendly interaction and communication support. These interactions positively impact ease of return, returns satisfaction and customer loyalty. Returns satisfaction is a key mediator in the relationship between return service interaction and loyalty. Access support and friendly interaction have both direct and indirect effects on loyalty, while communication support has only an indirect effect.

This study contributes to understanding e-returns service interaction by analyzing its structural determinants, providing a robust scale foundation and analytical framework for future empirical research. Additionally, this study explores the driving role of e-returns service interaction in forming e-customer loyalty, offering a theoretical basis for the service recovery function of e-returns service interaction. It enriches the application of service recovery theory and relationship marketing theory in the field of interactive marketing.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of innovation in e-service delivery on trust and loyalty of Indian customers in the banking sector.

The stated relationships were drawn on the grounded theories by developing a conceptual model. Purposive sampling technique was used to collect the data from 400 bank customers who were availing the e-innovation services.

The findings of the study reveal that e-service innovation has a direct impact on e-service delivery and trust. The existence of a positive relationship between e-service delivery, trust and loyalty in the banking sector of India has also been found.

The findings of the study would help the practitioners and experts in the related fields to understand and adopt the innovative management practices in financial services in developing country like India.

Continuous e-innovation can create a distinct competitive advantage and avert the risk of vanishing from the market. The study contributes in terms of e-service innovation and e-service delivery in the banking sector in India. The impact of e-service innovation on banking outcomes begins with e-service and trust, these factors positively influences e-service innovation. Furthermore, e-service innovation exerts a positive effect on e-service delivery, trust and loyalty, thereby improving organizational value.

To build long-term relationships and gain a competitive edge, marketers need to provide customers with unique and distinct experiences that they cannot find in other companies. According to the literature, after-sales service helps to achieve these goals. By modeling the linkages between after-sales service, service quality, customer attitude and purchase intention, this study aims to understand how customers perceive after-sales service in decision-making in kitchen appliance industry.

Through purposive sampling, 324 respondents, primarily female, answered a structured questionnaire about their perception of after-sales service for kitchen appliance products. Previously well-established, validated scale measures from the extant literature were used. The responses were gathered using a seven-point Likert scale.

According to the findings, after-sales service quality is vital in kitchen appliance buying decisions. Accordingly, the higher the quality of service perceived by the customer, the more favorable the brand's attitude and purchase intention will be. Additionally, brand reputation was found to be an essential moderator between customer attitude and purchase intention, suggesting that the reputation of the kitchen appliance brand plays a positive and significant role in consumers’ purchase intentions.

It is well known that after-sales service plays a crucial role in current business scenarios, but empirical research on kitchen appliances has been scarce. This study aims to fill a void in the existing literature by investigating the relationships between after-sales service, after-sales service quality, customer attitude and purchase intention in the domain of kitchen appliances.

The purpose of this study was to examine the mediating effect of three coping strategies (i.e. active, expressive, and denial coping) in the relationships between service failures (i.e. high- and low-contact service failures) and negative behavioral intentions (i.e. switching intention).

The critical incident technique (CIT) was used to identify the conceptually categorized service failure types in the fitness industry, and then confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were performed to examine the mediating effect of coping strategies among high-contact service failure and switching intention (study 1) and the mediating effect of coping strategies among low-contact service failure and switching intention (study 2).

While the mediating effect of coping strategies was significant in the relationship between high-contact service failures (study 1) and negative behaviors (i.e. switching intention and complaints), it was not significant in the relationship between low-contact service failures (study 2) and switching intention. Out of the three coping strategies, the impact of active coping was significant.

This study extends the understanding of the mediating effect of coping strategies in the relation between high- and low-contact service failures and switching intention.

This paper aims to develop an alternative perspective on marketing informed by service scholarship to resolve marketing’s challenges as a discipline and practice.

This paper is conceptual and builds on the ongoing debate regarding marketing’s challenges and on service research to develop a new alternative marketing perspective and model, which could contribute to reforming marketing.

An analysis of the current understanding of marketing showed that the discipline’s myopic focus on activities, which disregards what marketing is as a phenomenon, is the primary reason for the prevailing problems and failure to reform marketing. Based on research into service logic (SL), the paper demonstrates that a higher level view of service can be characterized as the provision of help to the users of goods and services to ensure that these goods and services deliver meaningful assistance in their lives and work. This suggests that the ultimate objective for marketing is to make firms meaningful to the users of their goods and services.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, since this paper is the first to conceptually develop a perspective on marketing and a corresponding model informed by service scholarship, more conceptual and empirical research is necessary. Developing the new meaningfulness-based perspective and model for marketing brings a new approach to the process of resolving marketing’s current troubled situation.

The meaningfulness approach to marketing enables customer-centered marketing strategies to be implemented. Such strategies include both demand-stimulating and demand-satisfying programs.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to examine marketing’s troubled situation from a service research and SL perspective.

Co-creation of services (CCOS) is a collaborative strategy that emphasises customer involvement and their expertise to increase the value of the service experience. In the service ecosystem, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in value co-creation. Therefore, this study is undertaken to empirically uncover how AI can empower CCOS.

The source data were collected from 305 service provider respondents and quantitative methodology was applied for data analysis.

New service development augmented with AI provides tangible value to service providers while also providing intangible value to supportive customers. With AI, service providers adapt to new innovations and enrich additional information, which eventually outperforms human-created services.

AI adoption for CCOS empowerment in service businesses brings “service-market fit”, which represents the significant benefits wherein customers contribute to creativity, intuition, and contextual awareness of services, and AI contributes to large-scale service-related analysis by handling volumes of data, service personalisation, and more time to focus on challenging problems of the market.

This study presents theoretical concepts on AI-empowered CCOS, AI technological innovativeness, customer participation in human-AI interaction, AI-powered customer expertise, and perceived benefits in CCOS, and subsequently discusses the CCOS empowerment framework. Then, it proposes a novel conceptual model based on the theoretical concepts and empirically measures and validates the intention to adopt AI for CCOS empowerment. Overall, the study contributes to novel insight on empowering service co-creation with AI.