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Customers' co-design behavior is an important source of knowledge for product innovation. Firms can regulate the focus of information interaction with customers to set goals and motivate their co-design behavior. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and construal level theory, the authors build a research model to study whether the fit between the regulatory focus of firms' task invitations (promotion focus vs prevention focus) and their feedback focus (self-focused vs other-focused) can enhance co-design behavior by improving customers' experiences (perceived meaning, active discovery and perceived empowerment).

The authors conducted two online between-subjects experiments to validate the proposed research model.

The two online experiments reveal that customers' experiences are enhanced when the feedback focus is congruent with the regulatory focus of the firm's task invitations. Specifically, self-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the prevention focus context. Other-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the promotion focus context. Moreover, customers' experience significantly and positively affects co-design behavior (i.e. co-design effort and knowledge contribution).

This work provides theoretical and practical implications for firms to improve the effectiveness of information interaction with their customers and eventually ensure the sustainability of co-design.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major sales strategy and process changes as many interactions migrated from face-to-face to virtual environments. The nature of the interactions changed, and sales firms, the sales function and salespeople created new processes to excel in virtual environments. As sales processes evolve further, this paper aims to focus on understanding the enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes. In addition, this study seeks to understand the characteristics of enduring shifts and how they are distinct from temporary shifts.

This qualitative analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the sales organizations and salespeople over the period from the start of the pandemic to early 2022. The authors interviewed 66 sales professionals from different countries and industries to better understand the temporary and enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes, adopting ad inductive and narrative approach.

There are four major findings. First, four key themes emerged: increased digitalization, resistance to digitalization, sales process changes and sales organization transformation. Second, changes are classified as temporary, permanent and accelerated changes. Third, some proposed changes were not supported. Finally, five findings were found that were not discussed in previous literature.

This paper finds distinctive findings that offer additional valuable insights that connect to and extend existing literature. These include emerging themes, classification shifts, unsupported proposed changes and unique findings.

With focus on Uganda, this study assessed the factors influencing agro-food micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) innovations. Kampala, Wakiso, Mukono and Jinja districts were the locations of the research.

Primary cross-sectional data was collected using structured questionnaire for a sample of 521 agro-food MSMEs in Uganda. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used to examine the data in SPSS.

The findings indicate that MSME innovation levels were usually high, at roughly 80%. The presence of rules that encourage innovation and reward creative people would enhance innovation that is customer-focused. On the other hand, policies and principles that encourage innovation and the conduct of internal product and process improvement research would promote system-focused innovation.

Encouraging agro-food MSMEs to develop policies that support innovation would improve the overall level of innovation, while building the capacity of agro-food MSMEs to conduct product and process improvement research would increase the level of systems-focused research.

This study assessed the drivers of innovation in agri-food MSMEs in a developing country. The uniqueness of this study is in assessing the effects of innovation support services on customer-focused and systems-focused innovations.

This study aims to develop an empathetic and user-centric customer support service design model. Though service design has been a critical research focus for several decades, few studies focus on customer support services. As customer support gains importance as a source of competitive advantage in the present era, this paper aims to contribute to industry and academia by exploring the service design model.

The study adopted a theories-in-use approach to elucidate mental models based on the industry’s best practices. In-depth interviews with 62 professionals led to critical insights into customer service design development, supported by service-dominant logic and theory of mind principles.

The ensuing insights led to a model that connects the antecedents and outcomes of empathetic and user-centric customer service design. The precursors include people, processes and technology, while the results are user experience, service trust and service advocacy. The model also emphasises the significance of the user’s journey and the user service review in the overall service design.

The model developed through this study addresses the critical gap concerning the lack of service design research in customer support services. The key insights from this study contribute to the ongoing research endeavours towards transitioning customer support services from an operational unit to a strategic value-creating function. Future scholars may investigate the applicability of the empathetic user service design across cultures and industries. The new model must be customised using real-time data and analytics across user journey stages.

The empathetic and user-centric design can elevate the customer service function as a significant contributor to the overall customer experience, loyalty and positive word of mouth. Practitioners can adopt the new model to provide superior customer service experiences. This original research was developed through crucial insights from interviews with senior industry professionals.

This research is the original work developed through the key insights from the interview with senior industry professionals.

This study aims to identify the impact of intellectual capital (IC) on the bank’s performance using a cross-country approach with India and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using the Skandia navigator model (SNM).

This study uses a mixed-methods research approach by taking financial and non-financial measures to assess the impact of the IC on the bank’s performance using the SNM. The study implies an analysis of the data from the top ten banks in India and twenty banks in GCC countries. The selection was done based on the volume of the bank’s business for three years (2019–2020, 2020–2021 and 2021–2022).

The research has three main findings: there is a positive impact of IC on the bank’s performance; amongst the factors of SNM, there is a direct impact of human capital and customer focus on the performance of the selected banks in both India and GCC countries; and the other factors of SNM such as structural capital and process focus, renewal and development focus also affect the selected banks.

The outcomes of the research may be useful for policymakers in India and GCC countries, as it identifies IC components that have a significant impact on the bank’s performance. This might enable them to develop policies that foster such factors, which, consequently, will improve the performance of the banks in the selected countries.

This study is an attempt to fill the gap in the existing literature on IC and bank’s performance for two different types of countries using the SNM.

This study aims to use cognitive appraisal theory to explain how organizational disruption influences the development of envy resulting in unethical selling practices, turnover intentions and a reduction in customer orientation that causes disruption to impact customer relationships. This research helps to address drivers of salesperson envy, the potential disruptions to customer relationships and the required need to invest in psychological resources to offset these negative effects.

A total of 211 salespeople were surveyed to test the hypotheses. First, the measurement model was validated using a confirmatory factor analysis. Next, the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling AMOS 27. Mediation and moderated mediation were tested using the bootstrap method. Estimands were created within AMOS to test the indirect and interaction effects in the full model. A post hoc analysis further informed the findings.

The results show that the development of envy increases under conditions of organizational disruptions, leading to potential customer disruptions through turnover intentions, unethical selling behaviors and a reduction in customer orientation. In addition, the mediation analysis shows that envy drives the relationship between organizational disruption and unethical selling, turnover intentions and customer orientation through fully mediated relationships. Finally, the interaction effects between organizational disruption and psychological capital show high levels of psychological capital help to decrease the development of envy, thus reducing unethical selling behaviors and turnover intentions while increasing customer orientation.

The study provides practitioners with insights into how to reduce envy by investing in the psychological capital of their salesforce. The study also provides suggestions for handling disruptions and managing envy to prevent actions that act to damage customer relationships.

Salespeople are likely to encounter organizational disruption. Sales managers need to be prepared to manage the outcomes of organizational disruption as it impacts the sales force. Understanding how disruptions impact customer relationships through envy is an important yet under-explored topic. This research adds to and expands the sales literature using cognitive appraisal theory to help address drivers of salesperson envy and its potentially negative impact on customer relationships and shows the required need to invest in psychological resources to offset these negative effects. The study also helps expand the recent focus on worldwide disruptions by adopting another context for disruption stemming from organizational disruption.

Prior research examining cultural effects on customer service expectations has primarily used more generic Western cultural theory on an aggregate scale or with only a single variable to draw conclusions on a customer’s underlying reasoning for buying a service. This study aims to focus on culturally distinct clusters within non-Western nations, specifically exploring within-cluster differences in service expectations within the Confucian Asia cluster.

This study developed a measurement model of Chinese cultural values and service expectations, consisting of a three and five-factor structure, respectively. Data from a sample of 351 diners were analysed using SmartPLS software. The data was compared with similar studies within the Confucian Asia cluster to understand the culture effect on service expectations and within-cluster variations.

The findings underscore the varying importance of cultural values in shaping customer service expectations, emphasizing their relative, rather than equal, significance. The study provides insights into potential within-group differences in customer service expectations within the same cultural cluster – without losing sight of the fundamental cultural heterogeneity of the Confucian culture.

Managers should leverage the distinct cultural values of their operating country to gain insights into diverse customer groups, predict their behaviours and meet their needs and expectations.

This study offers valuable insights to both service management scholars and practitioners by focusing on culturally distinct clusters of non-Western nations and exploring their effects on variation in service expectations within these clusters.

In demand-driven markets, customer value, sometimes called perceived use value or consumer surplus, is defined by the customer rather than the firm. The value a firm can appropriate, its profits, is driven by the customer’s willingness to pay for the value they receive, adjusted by costs. This paper introduces a conceptual framework that helps understand value creation and appropriation in demand-driven markets and shows how to influence them through strategic decision-making.

This paper uses an axiomatic approach combined with an extended analytical formulation of the jobs-to-be-done framework to contextualise demand-driven markets. It mathematically derives implications for managerial decision-making concerning selecting customer segments, optimising customer value creation and maximising firm value appropriation in a competitive environment.

Rooting strategic decision-making in the jobs-to-be-done framework allows distinguishing between what customers want to achieve (goal), what product attributes need to be satisfied (opportunity space/constraints) and what value creation criteria related to features are important (utility function). This paper shows that starting from a job-to-be-done, the problem of identifying which customer segments to serve, what product to offer and what price to charge, can be formulated as an optimisation problem that simultaneously (rather than sequentially) solves for the three decision variables, customer segments, product features and price, by maximising the value that a firm can appropriate, subject to maximising customer value creation and constrained by the competitive environment.

Applying the derived results to simultaneously deciding which customer segments to target, what product features to offer and what price to charge, given a set of competing products, allows managers to increase their chances of winning the competitive game.

This paper shows that starting from a job-to-be-done and simultaneously focusing on customers, product features, price and competitors enhances firm profitability. Strategic decision-making is formulated as an optimisation problem based on an axiomatic approach contextualising demand-driven markets.

This research aimed to fill several gaps in the tipping literature which has overlooked the server's perspective in identifying and understanding variables that influence a tip amount and therefore where they concentrate their efforts during the service encounter. Furthermore, the extant literature has theorized how or why certain variables influence the tip amount, but these studies fail to capture insight from server's which would supplement the theory and provide a more in-depth understanding of the mechanisms at play.

This study adopts a grounded theory approach using semi-structured one-on-one interviews with tipped restaurant employees who were identified and selected using snowball sampling. Content analysis is employed to code and categorize the data.

The content analysis revealed five categories where servers focus their time and effort to earn tips: service quality, connection, personal factors, expertise and food quality. The server's personality was identified as a variable the tipping literature has largely ignored as a determinant of the tip amount. Server's shift their style of service for groups of eight or more people, and for regular customers, who must dine in the restaurant at least once per week. Lastly, despite the many drawbacks associated with working for tips, servers would not want to replace it with any other method of compensation.

This is the first qualitative study focused on understanding the server's role in the service exchange relationship since McCarty et al. (1990) study. The results provide new insights on the often-studied variables from the tipping literature.

The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.