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Future service interactions are anticipated to use humanoid robots in a society that is shifting to a digitalized era. Currently, it is evident that many businesses are replacing service interactions with self-service technologies (SSTs). This movement creates substantial societal changes that researchers have not paid sufficient attention to comprehend. In this setting, the purpose of this study is to examine the social drivers that influence customer mobility toward co-creating value via SSTs. The study also seeks to discover variations in customers' willingness and capacity to adopt SSTs.

To fulfill the research aims, a qualitative technique was adopted, with semistructured interviews conducted with 25 SST users from varied demographic backgrounds. To recruit individuals for the study, a nonprobabilistic purposeful sampling technique was adopted, with the goal of employing information-rich instances. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

The study identified eight social drivers that are important in the customer transition toward co-creating value with SSTs. According to the study, SSTs are characterized as a social trend in which adoption is accepted (social norm) and modifies social connections in a new direction. Using SSTs has evolved into a socializing tool that gives people social acknowledgment. Some people see SSTs as social pressure, putting them at a disadvantage if they do not adopt. People, on the other hand, acquire sufficient social support and independence to use SSTs. Customers were categorized into four groups depending on their willingness and ability to embrace SSTs: trendsetters, dreamers, old-fashioned and stragglers.

In practice, service providers can use this knowledge to successfully promote their SSTs and create enhanced client experiences through technological interfaces.

The study adds new knowledge by identifying social determinants in customer shifts toward SSTs, a phenomenon that has not been studied previously, and it adds to marketing theory by proposing a typology to group customers based on their ability and willingness to embrace SSTs.

This study examines the impact of customer value creation on hotel performance. Customer value is seen as a multi-phase and multi-party process that combines hotel and tourist perspectives while also integrating the participation of frontline employees. The study also investigates financial performance (FP) and customer-based performance (CBP).

Data were collected from Morocco through multiple-informant design surveys to explore three perspectives related to three actors involved in the process, that is, the managers, the employees and the tourists. The hypotheses were tested with SmartPLS4.

The findings reveal that customer value positively and significantly impacts not only the FP of hotels but also the CBP. The results highlight a sequential relationship in which each actor drives the subsequent phase to definitively enhance the hotel's performance. The results further show significant mediation effects in the customer value sequence. Moreover, the results show a significant and positive effect of CBP on FP.

Theoretical and managerial implications of the research are discussed and future important researches are drawn from the study limitations.

Managers must be aware that frontline employees and guests are crucial for creating customer value, which enables to improve their performance. The results highlight that hotels should motivate and involve frontline employees in value propositions (VP) development. Furthermore, the guests are the final arbiters of value who drive hotels' performance. Moreover, for additional FP, managers are required both to deliver superior value and create loyal customers.

This study mostly confirms previous findings and highlights a sequential relationship among three phases involving three actors of customer value. However, it reveals more reasonable and robust results in the mediation effect of the value offering (VO) between the VP and the perceived value-in-use (PVI). This study is also the first to provide evidence on the mediation effect of the PVI between the VO and the CBP.

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.

Machine learning (ML) techniques are increasingly important in enabling business-to-business (B2B) companies to offer personalized services to business customers. On the other hand, humans play a critical role in dealing with uncertain situations and the relationship-building aspects of a B2B business. Most existing studies advocating human-ML augmentation simply posit the concept without providing a detailed view of augmentation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how human involvement can practically augment ML capabilities to develop a personalized information system (PIS) for business customers.

The authors developed a research framework to create an integrated human-ML PIS for business customers. The PIS was then implemented in the energy sector. Next, the accuracy of the PIS was evaluated using customer feedback. To this end, precision, recall and F1 evaluation metrics were used.

The computed figures of precision, recall and F1 (respectively, 0.73, 0.72 and 0.72) were all above 0.5; thus, the accuracy of the model was confirmed. Finally, the study presents the research model that illustrates how human involvement can augment ML capabilities in different stages of creating the PIS including the business/market understanding, data understanding, data collection and preparation, model creation and deployment and model evaluation phases.

This paper offers novel insight into the less-known phenomenon of human-ML augmentation for marketing purposes. Furthermore, the study contributes to the B2B personalization literature by elaborating on how human experts can augment ML computing power to create a PIS for business customers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate consumers' emotional responses to artificial intelligence (AI) defeating people. Meanwhile, the authors investigate the negative spillover effect of AI defeating people on consumers' attitudes toward AI companies. The authors also try to alleviate this spillover effect.

Using four studies to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, the authors use the fine-tuned Bidirectional Encoder Representations from the Transformers algorithm to run a sentiment analysis to investigate how AI defeating people influences consumers' emotions. In Studies 2 to 4, the authors test the effect of AI defeating people on consumers' attitudes, the mediating effect of negative emotions and the moderating effect of different intentions.

The authors find that AI defeating people increases consumers' negative emotions. In terms of downstream consequences, AI defeating people induces a spillover effect on consumers' unfavorable attitudes toward AI companies. Emphasizing the intention of helping people can effectively mitigate this negative spillover effect.

The authors' findings remind governments, policymakers and AI companies to pay attention to the negative effect of AI defeating people and take reasonable steps to alleviate this negative effect. The authors help consumers rationally understand this phenomenon and correctly control and reduce unnecessary negative emotions in the AI era.

This paper is the first study to examine the adverse effects of AI defeating humans. The authors contribute to research on the dark side of AI, the outcomes of competition matches and the method to analyze emotions in user-generated content (UGC).

The purpose of this study is to revisit brand performance metrics (BPMs) (brand affinity, brand content and knowledge, brand image, brand ethics and brand value) and evaluate the moderated mediation effect of relationship quality (mediator) and relationship duration (moderator) in brand performance and customer loyalty relationship in an Indian banking context.

The research model was tested in the Indian banking sector. The primary data was collected from the 1,000 account holders of five Indian public and private banks. The data was analysed and validated using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modelling and the Hayes process were used for testing the hypotheses.

The study results established BPMs as a four-dimensional structure comprising brand affinity, brand content and knowledge, brand image, brand ethics and brand value. The BPMs significantly positively impact relational quality (RQ) and customer loyalty. Further results also prove the existence of moderated mediation effect on BPMs and customer loyalty link and portray that the impact of BPMs on customer loyalty is mediated by the RQ and influenced by relationship duration.

The study is confined to the Indian banking sector. It did not examine the dimension-wise impact of brand performance indicators on RQ and customer loyalty. Future research is required to explore their influence in banking and other sectors.

The study findings suggest that to enhance brand performance, banks need to follow excellence in every conduct, take immediate actions against inappropriate behaviour, consistently update their relevant and valuable contents (news, videos, white papers, e-books, case studies, FAQ’s, photos, etc.) on their websites and also introduce loyalty schemes to reimburse customers’ interests with some substantial benefits such as rebates, discounts, annual gifts and extraordinary or additional services. These strategies can pave the way for enhancing long-term quality relationships between customers and their service providers and increasing customer loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is a maiden attempt to assess the effect of BPMs on customer loyalty in the presence of RQ and at the value of relationship duration/length. Besides, the study results also prove the existence of moderated mediation effect and portray that the impact of customer equity and relational benefits on customer loyalty is influenced by relationship duration and mediated by RQ.

This paper aims to investigate how firms such as Xerox, which have transitioned to a digital servitization business model, bridge relational asymmetry. It continues the theme of sustainability from the traditional three pillars—environmental, economic and social sustainability—to relational in terms of the quality of the relationship between the service provider and the customers.

Using an exploratory method, qualitative data from the case of Xerox, a pioneering company that embraces servitization business models, has been gathered. The combination of exploratory archival and literature searches allows for a more in-depth understanding of servitization and how it bridges (or does not bridge) the relational asymmetry.

The results reveal that a relational dimension is inherent in the servitization business model, whereas in order to achieve sustainability, it must leverage transparency, which may be either an enabler or an impairing factor. A borderline for a transparent relationship that distinguishes these two parameters is established.

The study's single-case firm was limited to Xerox as an industry forerunner and could only represent mature and multinational enterprises.

With the purpose of providing high-quality service, this exploratory paper gives managers rational insight into whether and when it is sustainable to fill the relational asymmetry between them as service providers and their customers.

From the relational asymmetry perspective, the authors shed light on the aspect of transparency, which is a pivotal cause of any asymmetric relationship. Through the case of Xerox, the study further sheds light on the dual effect of transparency, which could either be an “enabling” or an “impairing” factor. Putting it together, the use of interaction as a basis for co-creation is at the crux of the emerging reality.

This paper examines servitization from a new perspective, proposing that the relational asymmetry bridged by servitization will determine the future of organizations that differentiate themselves through quality relationships.

Using the analogy of “If you build it, they will come” from the movie Field of Dreams, this study aims to draw on relational signaling and commitment–trust theories to examine the role of different types of trust (cognitive, affective and relational) in the relationship between relational-encounter quality and customer loyalty to service employees and to the organization in the case of an integrated casino resort. The study confirms that building it (trust), they (customers) will come to the casino exhibited in their loyalty to casino hosts and their affiliated casinos.

The study was conducted with very important person (VIP) customers who have a designated VIP host to provide them with personal services at an integrated casino resort in Macau. The questionnaire was distributed to the respondents by VIP hosts using WeChat and Tencent QQ.

The study shows that different types of trust (cognitive, affective and relational) play a significant mediation role in the relationship between relational-encounter quality and the customers’ loyalty to the hosts and their affiliated casinos.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the roles of different types of trust (cognitive, affective and relational) in the relational encounter between casino hosts and VIP customers and provides insights into the link between service employees and their firm through the nurturing of the service encounter with the firm’s key accounts.

Advances in material agency driven by artificial intelligence (AI) have facilitated breakthroughs in material adaptivity enabling smart objects to autonomously provide individualized smart services, which makes smart objects act as social actors embedded in the real world. However, little is known about how material adaptivity fosters the infusion use of smart objects to maximize the value of smart services in customers' lives. This study examines the underlying mechanism of material adaptivity (task and social adaptivity) on AI infusion use, drawing on the theoretical lens of social embeddedness.

This study adopted partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), mediating tests, path comparison tests and polynomial modeling to analyze the proposed research model and hypotheses.

The results supported the proposed research model and hypotheses, except for the hypothesis of the comparative effects on infusion use. Besides, the results of mediating tests suggested the different roles of social embeddedness in the impacts of task and social adaptivity on infusion use. The post hoc analysis based on polynomial modeling provided a possible explanation for the unsupported hypothesis, suggesting the nonlinear differences in the underlying influencing mechanisms of instrumental and relational embeddedness on infusion use.

The formation mechanisms of AI infusion use based on material adaptivity and social embeddedness help to develop the business strategies that enable smart objects as social actors to exert a key role in users' daily lives, in turn realizing the social and economic value of AI.

This study advances the theoretical research on material adaptivity, updates the information system (IS) research on infusion use and identifies the bridging role of social embeddedness of smart objects as agentic social actors in the AI context.

An emerging body of literature has pinpointed the role of supply chain structure in influencing the extent to which supply chain members disclose information about their internal practices and performance. Nevertheless, empirical research investigating the effects of firm-level relational embeddedness on network-level transparency still lags. Drawing on social network analysis, this research examines the effect of relational embeddedness on supply chain transparency and the contingent role of digitalization in the context of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information disclosure.

In their empirical analysis, the authors collected secondary data from the Bloomberg database about 2,229 firms and 14,007 ties organized in 107 extended supply chains. The authors employed supplier and customer concentration metrics to measure relational embeddedness and performed multiple econometric models to test the hypothesis.

The authors found a positive effect of supplier concentration on supply chain transparency, but the effect of customer concentration was not significant. Additionally, the digitalization of focal firms reinforced the impact of supplier concentration on supply chain transparency.

The study findings contribute by underscoring the critical effect of relational embeddedness on supply chain transparency, extending prior literature on social network analysis, providing compelling evidence for the intersection of digitalization and supply chain management, and drawing important implications for practices.