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Customers' role in value creation has changed dramatically over the past few years. Today, many firms view customers as co‐creators of value. Until recently, however, attention to customer integration was mainly directed toward customers' role in a firm's given supply processes. The goal of this paper is to show that processes on the customer side are equally important for the overall success of value creation.

The reasoning for the role of customers is based on a theoretical discussion of customer integration, blueprints and customer scripts. Relating this work to the general problem of transaction costs from information asymmetries, the paper develops a typology of how customer scripts can be applied in various situations.

It is found that customer scripts can have a positive effect on interactive value creation because they enable companies to build a holistic process image for all process participants.

Marketing must rethink its role as an agent of companies. Indeed, in interactive value creation, boundaries blur. However, the results lack broad empirical confirmation.

It is argued that firms must adopt a customer perspective and provide an approach of how to achieve this.

The paper reintroduces scripts in the marketing discussion. In addition, it provides a new typology of situations in interactive value creation.

This study aimed to examine the effect of self-efficacy on job performance through creativity. We predicted that exposure to customer incivility and rigid service scripts will moderate the mediating effect of creativity on the relationship between self-efficacy and job performance.

Survey data were collected from 397 salespersons who were working in a department store in South Korea. The PROCESS macro was used to test the study hypotheses.

The results revealed that the positive relationship between self-efficacy and job performance was partially mediated by creativity. Furthermore, exposure to customer incivility and rigid service scripts weakened the positive effects of self-efficacy on creativity. Finally, customer incivility and rigid service scripts also dampened the positive effects of self-efficacy on job performance through creativity.

Sales organizations should understand that the extent to which self-efficacy improves job performance by enhancing creativity is contingent on the extent to which salespersons are exposed to customer incivility and are required to adhere to rigid service scripts in the workplace.

Our findings paint a more complete portrait of the beneficial effects of self-efficacy. Specifically, they suggest that the development of creativity is an important mechanism that underlies the process by which internal resources enhance job performance and that customer incivility and service scripts weaken this relationship.

Service work is often differentiated from manufacturing by the interactive labor workers perform as they come into direct contact with customers. Service organizations are particularly interested in regulating these interactions because they are a key opportunity for developing quality customer service, customer retention, and ultimately generation of sales revenue. An important stream of sociological literature focuses on managerial attempts to exert control over interactions through various techniques including routinization, standardization, and surveillance. Scripting is a common method of directing workers’ behavior, yet studies show that workers are extremely reluctant to administer scripts, judging them to be inappropriate to particular interactions or because they undermine their own sense of self. This paper examines a panoptic method of regulating service workers, embodied in undercover corporate agents who patrol employee’s adherence to scripts. How do workers required to recite scripts for customers respond to undercover control? What does it reveal about the nature of interactive labor? In-depth interviews with interactive workers in a range of retail contexts reveal that they mobilize their own interactional competence to challenge the effects of the panoptic, as they utilize strategies to identify and adapt to these “mystery shoppers,” all the while maintaining their cover. The paper shows the limits on control of interactive workers, as they maintain their own socialized sense of civility and preserve a limited realm of autonomy in their work.

Boundary‐spanning personnel such as tax preparers, travel agents and hairdressers interface directly with customers. In their unique position, between the organization and customer, these service providers market the service to consumers while they simultaneously carry out operational functions. Both the customer and the provider bring certain expectations to the service encounter. These expectations then shape the perceptions of the service encounter. The research reported uses script methodology to compare the expectations between boundary‐spanning service providers and consumers of the same service. Draws its theoretical foundation from the expectations and scripts literatures. In Phase One, scripts of the service were elicited in order to test hypotheses based on the discovery and comparison of consumers′ and service providers′ subgoals for a typical service encounter (H1). A hypothesis also tested the point at which providers and consumers enter their respective scripts of a typical service encounter (H2 ). In Phase Two, the subgoals mentioned most frequently in Phase One were used as stimuli to elicit the specific actions which comprise the complete script. These complete scripts enabled a comparison of the elaborateness of provider and consumer scripts (H3). The results of Phase One revealed that a portion of consumers′ subgoals for a service encounter are shared by providers of the service while other subgoals are unique, supporting H1. The point of activation of the script differed dramatically between customers and providers, supporting H2. The Phase Two findings provide support for the hypothesis that service providers have more elaborate scripts. Overall, the results support the notion that scripts operationalize expectations. Closes with implications for management and suggestions for future research.

Brands are increasingly considering the use of chatbots to supplement, or even replace, humans in service interactions. Like humans, chatbots can follow certain service scripts in their encounters, which can subsequently determine the customer experience. Service scripts are verbal prescriptions that seek to standardize customer service interactions. However, while the role of service scripts is well documented, despite the increasing use of chatbots as a service mechanism, less is known about the effect, on consumers, of different service scripts presented during chatbot service encounters.

An experimental scenario was developed to test the research hypotheses. Respondents were randomly allocated to scenarios representing a 2 (service interaction: human, chatbot) × 2 (service script: education, entertainment) design. A total of 262 US consumers constituted the final sample for the study.

The findings indicate that when employing an education script, a significant positive effect occurs for human service agents (compared to chatbots) in terms of both satisfaction and purchase intention. These effects are fully mediated by emotion and rapport, showing that the bonds developed through the close proximity to a human service agent elicit emotion and develop rapport, which in turn influence service outcomes. However, this result is present only when an educational script is used.

This paper contributes to the emerging service marketing literature on the use of digital services, in particular chatbots, in service interactions. We show that differences occur in key outcomes dependent on the type of service script employed (education or entertainment). For managers, this study indicates that chatbot interactions can be tailored (in script delivered) in order to maximize emotion and rapport and subsequently consumer purchase intention and satisfaction.

This research aims to investigate the contingent influence of service scripts on the links between service employees’ job demands and customers’ perceptions of discrimination.

Drawing on prior conceptual and empirical work, as well as conservation of resources theory, the authors propose a conceptual model comprising job demands (job stress and role ambiguity) and two dimensions of perceived discrimination.

A unique, dyadic data set reveals that the two focal job demands positively affect customers’ perceptions of discrimination. Service scripts enhance those negative relationships, such that they have resource-depleting and job demand-exacerbating effects.

This study offers the first research to link customer perceived discrimination with employee antecedents. These insights, in turn, have several key theoretical and managerial implications, and they offer directions for further work in this arena.

The role of call-centres during service recovery has attracted much attention in research. However, marketers know less about controlling customers during recovery interactions and consequences of such control. In order to address this gap and empirically ascertain whether service interactions are marked by customer centricity or by employees exerting control over customers, the aim of the authors was to organise an empirical research in two Brazilian call-centres.

The research consisted of direct, open observation and 33 semi-structured interviews with insiders (call-centre managers, supervisors and operatives).

Four key findings emerged during interviews with insiders. First, control over customers may be more widely practiced than assumed in certain sections of marketing academe. Second, such control is viewed positively by call-centre insiders and is sanctioned by management. Third, control does not disempower and demoralise call-centre staff but protects operatives. Finally, control does not seem to unavoidably generate lasting customer dissatisfaction. These findings are incorporated in a framework of call-centre management which incorporates control through scripting.

The discussion calls for the revisit of certain marketing concepts and philosophies, including customer orientation, by demonstrating that control over customers is practised and should not be viewed negatively or avoided altogether in practice and as a topic of analysis. A re-conceptualisation of call-centres as sites of control over customers is proposed.

Control and power are rarely analysed in services marketing. This is one of a few studies that makes sense of providers' (insiders') viewpoints and argues that control may play a constructive role and should be seen as a legitimate topic of services and call-centre analysis. As such it addresses a question of intellectual and practical importance which is rarely discussed and may be viewed as incongruous with an age when customers are assumed to have rights.

One of the key challenges of the Internet as a service delivery channel is how service firms can manage service quality as these remote formats bring significant change in customer interaction and behaviour. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of service quality and adapting these to particularly reflect the remote delivery format of the Internet, this study proposes and tests a service quality model of Internet banking. The research uses participant observation and narrative analysis of a UK Internet banking Web site community to explore how Internet banking customers perceive and interpret the elements of the model. Findings show that the level and nature of customer participation had the greatest impact on the quality of the service experience and issues such as customers’ zone of tolerance, the degree of role understanding by customers and emotional response potentially determined, expected and perceived service quality.

Informed by the role and script theory, this paper aims to explore workforce and customer experiences related to service delivery under the sharing economy. The study is expedient as the sharing economy spreads its disruptive innovation across the hospitality industry.

This paper applies a qualitative approach, sourcing online data from virtual platforms.

The results indicate both positive and negative experiences for customers and the workforce, and the paper highlights the challenges of fragmented service delivery as a result of service delivery mediated through mobile applications.

Food delivery mediated through mobile applications is likely to expand as more households are lured by its convenience. This change has implications for both restaurants and the workforce.

Although a growing number of studies analyse the impact of the sharing economy on the hospitality industry, much of the focus has been on accommodation, and the impact and implications for the food-service segment has not been thoroughly investigated yet.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the critical role that context plays in measuring service quality.

This study replicated an experiment methodology to show that customers perceive an airline service drama as a sequence of scenes. A series of focus groups were then conducted to identify the context-specific set of service quality expectations that customers hold for each of these scenes. Finally, Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), a mathematical modeling technique, was applied to these findings to graphically illustrate how customer expectations for airline service quality vary by service scene.

Results from this study indicate that static measures of service quality are apparently inadequate in explaining customer expectations during more enduring service encounters. The FCA hierarchical model developed in this study revealed profound differences in customer service expectations across the six airline service scenes. These results suggest that more advanced methods for measuring service quality are necessary for service encounters that are longer in duration.

This research brings into question a broad spectrum of research which fails to recognize that customers use different reference points in time to evaluate service quality.

Researchers and practitioners need accurate and reliable measures of service quality but the findings suggests that measurement specificity and diagnostic capability should not be sacrificed in the pursuit of more robust instruments.

This is the first study to empirically demonstrate that customers perceive the airline service encounter as a sequence of scenes. It is also the first study to mathematically model service quality dimensions using FCA.