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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of performance measurement systems (PMS) within the context of digital servitization (DS), especially in collaborations involving multiple actors. The paper adopts a bottom-up ecosystem perspective to gain insights into how companies can effectively manage the complexities of digital transformation in the servitization domain.

This research draws upon a longitudinal case study within the wine and spirit supply chain. It focuses on a logistics company, “GR”, which has promoted a DS strategy to offer advanced services and enhance the competitiveness of the entire ecosystem.

The study offers valuable insights into the evolution of PMS roles throughout the DS journey, promoting cooperation, coordination, collaboration and control among ecosystem actors, thereby facilitating the development of a DS strategy.

The study is focused on a logistics company with unique capabilities and networks. Future research should include a broader range of contexts. Furthermore, our analysis focuses on the initial stages of ecosystem emergence, particularly the initiation and momentum phases. Further research should explore how DS impacts organizations in the following ecosystem phases.

This research offers valuable insights for managers, particularly in the development of DS strategy. It underscores the significance of PMS as key facilitators in crafting DS strategy and in the broader ecosystem evolution. The findings demonstrate that PMS is instrumental across different phases of the servitization process, improving aspects such as performance monitoring, resource allocation, collaboration and communication. Moreover, this study emphasizes the importance for small and medium-sized enterprises manufacturers and logistics firms to build and nurture collaborative relationships with various supply chain stakeholders to successfully implement a servitization strategy. In the wine industry, embracing a multiactor perspective is crucial. The delivery of advanced services necessitates a wide spectrum of knowledge and skills on one hand, and adaptability and flexibility in developing relationships on the other.

The study contributes to the literature on management accounting by exploring the role of PMS in DS. It reveals that PMS acts as a fundamental enabler, promoting seamless coordination and collaboration among various actors involved in DS. This sheds light on the transformative potential of PMS in creating a collaborative environment, where multiple organizations work together to offer value-added services.

The study seeks to explore the intricate dynamics among customer relationship management (CRM) practices, guest satisfaction and loyalty in the hospitality context. Additionally, it aims to examine the moderating influence of guest engagement on the relationships between CRM practices and guest satisfaction and loyalty.

An integrated theoretical framework is developed by incorporating CRM practices and guest engagement into the satisfaction-loyalty framework. Two research instruments were adapted from the literature to assess the perspectives of customers and employees in the hotel industry in Kashmir. The customer survey measured guest satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement, while the employee survey focused on CRM practices, including key customer focus and CRM organization. Data was collected using a pen-and-paper survey with convenience sampling across 10 qualifying hotels, each classified as 3-star or above. A total of 270 matched responses from guests and employees were obtained and analyzed using descriptive analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM), and moderation analysis with SPSS and AMOS software. The study utilized a rigorous data matching process to ensure reliability, with guest-employee pairs verified and cross-checked with hotel records.

The results indicate CRM practices play a pivotal role in shaping guest satisfaction and loyalty. Notably, personalization and a targeted customer approach emerged as the most influential factors in enhancing tourist satisfaction. Similarly, prospecting, personalization, and effective knowledge management significantly contributed to visitor loyalty. The establishment of robust relationships is underscored through collaborative active guest engagement. Furthermore, the study highlights the nuanced relationship between satisfaction and loyalty moderated by guest engagement. High levels of guest engagement amplify the positive impact of satisfaction on loyalty, while lower engagement levels attenuate this effect. Moreover, the moderating influence of guest engagement on the relationships between CRM practices and guest satisfaction and CRM practices and guest loyalty was notably strong at elevated guest engagement levels and relatively weaker at lower engagement levels.

While the study findings encourage organizations to prioritize customer relationship development, hospitality entities must emphasize the adoption of CRM philosophy and robust guest engagement measures. Actively involving guests in co-creating services can yield incremental benefits in terms of attracting, retaining, and effectively serving guests.

This study introduces novel dimensions to the existing CRM framework within the hospitality context, specifically exploring the impact of hotel-specific elements (personalization and prospecting) on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, it innovatively investigates the moderating role of guest engagement in the satisfaction-loyalty relationship, expanding its scope to include the relationships between CRM practices and guest satisfaction and guest loyalty.

Strategy scholars have argued that microlevel behavioral decisions by firms play a disproportionate role in making a firm nimble. Central to this issue is the interplay among several factors, such as actions by individual actors, firm-level decisions and broader changes in the economic environment that lead to a firm being successful in a competitive environment. The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical exploration of microfoundations research and subject the idea to empirical analysis using the constructs of customer orientation, competitor orientation and technology orientation as microfoundations of strategy.

Data collected through a key informant survey of executives were tested through a hierarchical regression analysis.

The results of the study suggest that the microfoundations of strategy are located more in a firm’s customer and competitor focus, rather than a technological orientation. The findings also suggest that that customer orientation is a significant component of firm-level strategy and needs to be incorporated into decision-making in firms.

This study provides a framework that integrates the structural determinants of firm performance with microfoundations theory to refine our understanding of market knowledge capability.

This study explores the configurations of management control systems (MCSs) while taking into account entrepreneurial cognition styles (ECSs) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The objective is to understand the impact of ECS on deployment and identify the various modes of MCS configurations employed by SMEs. The authors draw on and synthesise two theoretical perspectives relating to cognition and management control packages to understand the associations between ECS and MCS employed by SMEs in managing their business. This study was conducted using a quantitative approach that utilises a questionnaire survey to collect cross-sectional data from 150 SMEs. The authors uncovered three cognitive styles: knowing (e.g. preciseness), planning (e.g. organising), and creativity (e.g. innovativeness). Furthermore, five configurations of MCS utilised by SMEs were identified: customer focus, performance monitoring, administrative focus, strategic focus, and development focus. By combining both analyses, the authors discovered three constellations of significant association between ECS and MCS characterised by Cluster 1’s cohesive integration approach, Cluster 2’s revealing strategic approach, and Cluster 3’s multifaceted exploration. The study is significant because it uncovers the complex relationship between ECS and MCS configurations, highlighting their interdependence within the institutional context. Using a cognitive view, the authors explore how the cognitive styles of entrepreneurs facilitated imprinting institutional context into MCS configurations. These insights enable us to envisage that ECS is not mutually exclusive but forms a continuum that provides more plausible explanations that relax the direct universal relationship between MCS configurations and contextual factors.

While existing literature extensively explores manufacturing firms expanding into services, little is known about the modes of servitisation, the means by which they carry it out. This paper concentrates on acquisitions as a mode of servitisation. Post-acquisition integration is when the potential of an acquisition is realised. The paper therefore aims to categorise types of integrations following the acquisition of servitised firms and discusses their consequences for servitisation.

The empirical part of the paper is based on two case studies, each involving the acquisition of servitised firms. Both acquirers changed their integration approach over time.

The paper conceptualises three types of integrations: rhetorical, insulated and transformative integrations, indicating whether and how the acquirer becomes servitised following the integration. These highlight the analysis of integration based on business models and customer orientation in relation to servitisation.

This paper contributes to research on servitisation by emphasising acquisitions as a mode of servitisation and conceptualising three integration types related to business models and customer orientations. Furthermore, the paper highlights how an acquirer's servitisation leads to new offerings targeting new customers, as opposed to strengthening existing relationships.

The research aimed to identify factors influencing customer loyalty in the use of mobile telecommunication services in Vietnam, focusing on two dimensions “attitudinal loyalty” and “behavioral loyalty.”

Based on survey data collected from 820 in two of Vietnam’s major cities users, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the data were processed using SPSS and AMOS software.

The study identified four factors affecting customer loyalty to mobile telecommunication services, with perceived service quality directly impacting both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. Corporate image and perceived switching costs influenced attitudinal loyalty, while trust affected behavioral loyalty. Moreover, perceived service quality indirectly influenced attitudinal loyalty through corporate image and perceived switching costs.

The study only focuses on a limited number of factors influencing mobile telecommunications service user loyalty, its restricted geographical sample from only Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and the simplification of perceived switching costs without considering their various components, such as psychological, financial and procedural costs, which could provide more comprehensive experimental and theoretical insights.

The study reveals that customer loyalty in Vietnam’s mobile telecommunications sector is linked to the relationship between attitude toward the service provider and continued usage behavior, categorizing customer groups into genuine loyalty, latent loyalty, feigned loyalty and disloyalty. It suggests that service providers should focus on improving service quality and cultivating a positive, transparent corporate image to bolster customer trust, foster stable relationships and remain competitive in the market.

The research model combines Oliver’s (1999) theory of loyalty with Aydin and Özer’s (2005) research model, focusing on perceived service quality, corporate image, trust and perceived switching costs, examining their relationships with both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty simultaneously.

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.

This paper aims to explore the negative effect of power distance belief (PDB) on do-it-yourself (DIY) preference. It extends previous studies by delving into the underlying mechanism and identifying three theoretically driven moderators that could mitigate this negative effect.

The paper uses secondary data at the country level and conducts three experiments involving participants from the USA and Germany.

The results suggest that the adverse impact of PDB on DIY preference exists through the underlying mechanism of attitude toward customer power. This negative effect can be mitigated when individuals with high PDB focus on status, find themselves in a position of low power or engage in activities within a private consumption setting.

For DIY companies, this study offers crucial insights into the impact of cultural values on consumers’ DIY preferences. By customizing their marketing communications, companies can resonate with high PDB customers more effectively.

This research enhances DIY literature by introducing novel moderators within a theoretical framework, explaining why DIY preference might be low among individuals with high PDB and suggests ways to attenuate this effect.

The present research sought to analyze the effects of customer delight on both internal and external financial structures of publicly traded, service firms.

Primary (i.e. survey) and secondary (i.e. financial records) data sources were gathered. A total of 685 participants responded to one questionnaire focusing on hotels and another one focused on restaurants, both of which measured levels of customer delight and satisfaction. Financial data were gathered from Center for Research in Security Prices, CRSP/COMPUSTAT.

Results of MANOVA revealed that there was a significant difference in the net profit margin (NPM) based on customer delight. Canonical correlation results exposed a significant correlation between satisfaction and delight combined and the financial performance measures (net profit margin, cash flow margin, return on assets and b-beta) combined.

By delighting their customers, managers will achieve higher profit margins. However, these are not likely to result in improved cash flow margin or return on assets. The effects of COVID-19 can alter yearly returns; thus, longitudinal research is needed to continue testing for the effects on delight on financial performance.

The relationship between delight and financial measures had not been previously determined (notwithstanding a few studies using substitute measures for financial performance). The present study uses actual data from the financial filings to empirically test their relationship to customer delight.

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.