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The purpose of this paper is to conduct an exploratory study of potential business-to-business (B2B) customers that includes an empirical analysis that investigate the effect that customer entertainment has on customer suspicion toward the salesperson, and how those negative attitudes are influenced by the relationship stage and the perceived cost of the event.

Using an experimental design, data were collected from 105 potential customers working in a B2B environment that assessed their attitudes regarding offers of varying levels of customer entertainment across differing stages of the relationship.

Results demonstrate that B2B customers have important perceptions regarding the perceived cost of customer entertainment offers by salespeople. Those evaluations resulted in a positive relationship between customer attitudes of suspicion toward the salesperson and the perceived cost of the entertainment event. However, the stage of the relationship tended to ameliorate suspicious attitudes of customers, although not in a completely symmetrical manner.

Additional testing with larger sample populations would better solidify the existence of the relationships.

This study provides a framework for practitioners that gives direction to the strategic use of customer entertainment such that it acts as a relationship catalyst, and not a relationship poison.

The paper uses a customer perspective to fill a need to better understand the instrumental role of customer entertainment in relationship marketing, and how it interacts with the perceived cost of the event and relationship stage to create differing customer attitudes.

To investigate customer satisfaction with service encounters characterized by an over‐attentive level of service, and the contextual and individual factors moderating the resulting satisfaction scores.

The first of three formal experiments tests the prediction that consumer reactions vary with the margin between actual and expected levels of service. The second examines the influence of the tendency to psychological reactance on participants’ responses to excessive service. The third assesses the effect of a predisposition to suspiciousness on satisfaction scores, in scenarios which, respectively, specify that extremely over‐attentive service or “normal” service are directed at participants personally or is offered to all customers unselectively.

The first experiment found moderately excessive service to be acceptable to most participants but unexpectedly over‐attentive service to affect satisfaction negatively. The second found the negative impact of extremely over‐attentive service to be limited to participants with a greater tendency to psychological reactance. The third found that a high predisposition to suspicion resulted in lower satisfaction levels whether the scenario specified extremely over‐attentive service that was personal or on offer to all, whereas the satisfaction scores of participants with a lower predisposition to suspicion were not affected in those scenarios.

Whereas the relevant literature has focussed on customer reactions to service that falls below expectations, this paper studies service encounters in which it surpasses them. It hypothesizes a counterproductive effect on customer satisfaction and identifies contextual and individual factors that explain and predict that outcome.

Companies often provide preferential treatment, such as free upgrades, to customers. The present study aims to identify a costly consequence of such preferential treatment (i.e. opportunistic behavior) and reveal which type of customer is most likely to engage in that negative behavior (i.e. new customers).

Across two experimental studies, the authors test whether preferential treatment increases customers’ entitlement, which in turn increases their propensity to behave opportunistically. Moderated mediation analysis further tests whether that mediated effect is moderated by customers’ prior relationship with the company.

Preferential treatment increases feelings of entitlement, which consequently triggers customers’ opportunistic behaviors. New customers are more likely to feel entitled after preferential treatment than repeat customers, and hence new customers are more likely to behave opportunistically. Preferential treatment also increases customers’ suspicion of the company’s motives, but suspicion was unrelated to opportunistic behavior.

Future research may focus on other marketplace situations that trigger entitlement and explore whether multiple occurrences of preferential treatment provide different effects on consumers.

Present findings demonstrate that preferential treatment can evoke opportunistic behaviors among customers. The authors suggest that preferential treatment should be provided to customers who previously invested in their relationship with a company (i.e. repeat customers) rather than new customers.

Prior research has focused more on the ways companies prioritize their repeat customers than how they surprise their new customers. The present research instead examines preferential treatment based on customers’ relationship with a firm (i.e. both repeat and new customers) and demonstrates behavioral and contextual effects of entitlement.

Within the service industry, the serviceperson enhances customer loyalty by increasing customer benefits and decreasing customer costs, but is also embedded within and influenced by the organizational context. Thus, the influence of a serviceperson's orientation may differ or even conflict with the organization's orientation. There are two purposes to this paper. The paper first aims to develop a conceptual model that clearly distinguishes between benefit‐ and cost‐based explanations of the effect of the serviceperson. The paper's second aim is to examine the impact of the organization on the serviceperson's ability to foster customer loyalty through interactions with customers.

A survey methodology is used and data gathered from managers and customers. Multi‐group structural equation modeling is employed to test partial mediation and partial moderation theses.

In line with social exchange theory, the paper finds that a serviceperson's customer orientation can reduce customer costs and increase customer benefits. Furthermore, consistent with the literature on strategic orientations, when the serviceperson's organization evinces a low competitive service orientation, it attenuates the direct effects of a serviceperson's customer orientation on customer loyalty, such that the direct effect no longer exists.

The paper shows how multiple direct and indirect pathways connect serviceperson customer orientation to customer loyalty. It also shows how the effect of serviceperson customer orientation on customer loyalty depends on the organizational context and specifically the extent to which the organization embraces a competitive service orientation. The moderating role of organizational context has implications both for social exchange theory specifically and theories of exchange, such as transaction cost analysis more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of offering customer decision authority on customer satisfaction in credence services, and the moderating effects of customer persuasion knowledge and service provider credibility.

A video-based experiment is conducted to achieve high similarity to real service encounters. The video comprises three levels of customer authority while service provider credibility is manipulated. In a subsequent questionnaire, customer response and customer persuasion knowledge are measured.

Results suggest that greater decision authority increases customer satisfaction. However, customer persuasion knowledge and provider credibility together were found to moderate these effects. Offering decision autonomy is most important when source credibility is low and persuasion knowledge is high.

The study setting is an initial healthcare encounter. Other service settings and service provider communication behaviors, such as empathy, responding to customer queries, and length of encounter are not considered in this study but should be further studied.

The study confirms that offering decision authority to customers increases satisfaction only under certain circumstances. Customers are willing to relinquish authority to credible service providers who then direct customer decisions in order to maintain service quality. Offering decision autonomy to customers is suggested when provider credibility is low and customer persuasion knowledge is high.

Analysis of credence service encounters is based on agency theory. Specifically, this study highlights the role of customer (principal) persuasion knowledge, which acts as a qualifier for the principal-agent problem because it alerts the customer to possible persuasion attempts by the service provider, whereas agent credibility eases customer suspicion.

This paper aims to examine the impact of customer perceptions about a salesperson’s combined use of adaptive selling (AS) and selling orientation (SO) on customer trust in the salesperson. Based on insights from attribution theory, the contingency model of salespeople’ effectiveness, relationship marketing and market orientation literatures, the authors analyze the interplay between customer perceptions of salespeople’s AS and SO, and how this affects customer trust. Furthermore, adopting a contingency perspective, the authors investigate how two important situational variables (i.e. length of buyer–seller relationships and importance of purchase for the buyer) affect this relationship.

This study is based on regression analysis with two- and three-way interactions, using survey data from 134 business-to-business (B2B) buyers.

The results indicate that the interplay between AS and SO is negatively related to trust, and that the above situation is attenuated in sales contexts characterized by high purchase importance or enduring buyer–seller relationships.

The empirical findings are based on firms from a single industry. Second, a cross-sectional research design is adopted. Third, the absence of measures of objective performance (e.g. sales) might be regarded as a limitation.

The study suggests that salespeople willing to win customer trust should modify their approach across the relationship life cycle. Similarly, when purchase importance for the customer is low, salespeople interested in building relationships based on trust should combine AS and customer orientation. In contrast, when purchase importance is high, salespeople can only generate more trust by increasing customer orientation/reducing SO. These findings might inspire sales trainers and sales managers in developing training experiences based on adaptation and customer orientation.

The research contributes in several ways to the literature. First, the simultaneous effect of AS and SO on performance (i.e. customer trust) was investigated. Second, the analysis of the interaction between AS and SO was complemented by testing two important boundary conditions residing in the selling situation: purchase importance and relationship length. Third, this study is the first to examine the interplay among AS, SO and selling context outside using customer data from actual B2B sales interactions. Also, it enhances knowledge of the effects of AS on sales outcomes by adding a long-term, relational outcome (i.e. trust) to previous work that tended to focus on short-term outcomes (i.e. sales revenues). Furthermore, by investigating perceived benefits from the point of view of customers rather than sellers, our findings add to previous studies of AS which relied too heavily, or exclusively, on the voice of the seller. Finally, this study shed further light on the role played by SO in affecting customer-based performance.

The substitution of generic prescription medicines for branded medicines is being practiced in most westernised countries, with evidence of a strong focus on evaluating and monitoring its economic impacts. In contrast, the purpose of this paper is to explore the generic substitution experience of customers and pharmacists in a pharmacy practice setting.

The study applied a phenomenological method using the narrative inquiry technique combined with critical event analysis, in order to understand the generic medicine experience as perceived by customers and pharmacists as key substitution actors. Interviews were conducted with 15 pharmacists and 30 customers in Australia, Finland and Italy, using a narrative inquiry technique combined with critical events and metaphors.

The findings show that customers, with poor awareness of generic prescription medicine when offered as a substitute, were likely to become confused and suspicious. Pharmacists related how they felt challenged by having to facilitate generic substitution by educating unaware customers, in isolation from both the prescribing doctor and the government/insurer. They also experienced frustration due to the mistrust and annoyance their customers displayed.

The findings suggest that to increase generic substitution, open dialogue is paramount between all the participants of this service network, along with the development of targeted promotional materials.

Little is known about how customers and pharmacists experience the service phenomenon of generic medicine substitution. This paper explores how the key actors at the point of substitution make sense of the process. Additionally, the methodology provides a technique for obtaining a deeper understanding of both the customer and pharmacist experience of generic medicine, along with insights into how the uptake of generic medicine might be improved.

Employees have traditionally played a major role in the customer ' s service experience. Yet self-service technology (SST) replaces the customer-service employee experience with a customer-technology experience. This paper seeks to use a service-dominant logic lens to gain fresh insight into the consumer experience of SST. In particular, it aims to consider the resources that are integrated when consumers use SSTs, their co-production role and what might constitute value.

The paper presents findings from 24 semi-structured interviews that focus on the everyday experiences of consumers in using SST. Both genders and all socio-economic categories within all adult age groups from 18 to 65+ were included.

There is a danger that organizations embrace SST as an economic and efficient mechanism to “co-create” value with consumers when they are merely shifting responsibility for service production. The paper identifies risks when customers become partial employees and concludes that customers should perceive the value they gain from using SST to be at least commensurate with their co-production role.

The qualitative study was confined to the consumer perspective. Future research within organizations and among employees who support consumers using SST would extend understanding, as would research within the business-to-business (B2B) context. Quantitative studies could measure the frequency and extent of the phenomena the authors report and assist with market segmentation strategies.

The application of service-dominant logic highlights potential risks and managerial challenges as self-service, and consequent value co-creation, relies on the operant resources of customers, who lack the tacit knowledge of employees and are less easy to manage. There is also the need to manage a new employee role: “self-service education, support and recovery”.

The paper draws attention to managerial challenges for organizations to ensure that SST adoption enhances and does not destroy value. Additionally, it highlights the importance of distinguishing between co-production and co-creation.

Service providers often recommend unnecessary and expensive services to unsuspecting consumers, such as recommending a new part when a simple fix to the old will do, a phenomenon known as overprovisioning. The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent consumers tend to defer their decisions should they suspect that sellers are overproviding services to them and they cannot prevent the sellers from doing so (they lack personal control); and how proper market signals can mitigate such suspicions, restore personal control and reduce deferrals.

The paper conducts three laboratory experiments. The experiments expose the participants to hypothetical repair scenarios and measure to what extent they suspect that sellers might be overproviding services to them and they feel that they lack the personal control to prevent the sellers from doing so. Thereafter, the experiments expose them to two different market signals, one conveying that the seller is providing quality services (a repair warranty; quality signal) and the other conveying that the seller is taking away any incentives their agents (technicians) may have to overprovide services (the technicians are paid a flat salary; quantity signal). The paper examines how these quality/quantity signals are able to reduce overprovisioning suspicions, restore personal control and reduce decision deferrals.

The paper has two main findings. First, the paper shows a mediation process at work i.e. suspecting potential overprovisioning by sellers leads consumers to defer their decisions indirectly because they feel that they lack personal control to prevent the sellers from doing so. Second, the paper shows that the quantity signal (flat salary disclosure), but not the quality signal (warranty), is able to mitigate suspicions of overprovisioning, restore personal control and reduce decision deferrals.

The paper suggests that although buyers may rely on quality signals to assure them of superior service, these signals do not guarantee that the quantity of service they are receiving is appropriate. Therefore, sellers will have to send a credible quality signal and a credible quantity signal to the consumers if they wish to tackle suspicions about service overprovision and service quality.

The paper is original in two ways. First, the paper theorizes and tests a mediation process model whereby quality/quantity signals differentially mitigate overprovisioning suspicions, restore personal control and reduce decision deferrals. Second, the paper speaks to the necessity of expanding the traditional signaling literature, designed primarily to detect poor quality hidden in the products/services of lower-quality sellers, to include detecting/solving overprovisioning often hidden in the services provided by higher-quality sellers.

The main purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate the attitude of pharmacists, as small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners, toward new technologies, and more precisely, toward the adoption of mobile apps for mobile health (mHealth). Such apps are generally used to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. This study measures pharmacists’ subjective experiences of mobile apps for mHealth and aims to understand how these pharmacists make sense of these apps.

The study adopted the narrative inquiry technique combined with critical event analysis. Participants' experiences were categorized based on how they viewed new technology tools. Interpretative inductive analysis identified precise aspects of the sense making illustrative of non-adoption or confused adoption of new technologies by pharmacists.

This study investigates to what extent new technology tools such as mobile apps affect retailers and more precisely the reasons why mobile apps are and are not adopted by retailers, as potential users, in the pharmaceutical industry. We identified four aspects of sense making that illustrated non-adoption or confused adoption of new technologies by pharmacists. These aspects are deeply discussed in the paper and are referred to the dimensions of confusion to confidence; suspicion to trust; frustration to education; mistrust to cooperation.

The main limitation of the present study is the limited number of territories investigated. This limitation arose because of the exploratory nature of the available research, which is generally based on case studies, and the lack of clear operationalization of the research available at the time of data collection. Another limitation is that the sample included only SMEs operating in the Italian pharmacy industry.

Many studies have highlighted the opportunities related to new mobile apps in the business-to-business market. Several have investigated customer interest in such new technology. If some contributions have indirectly investigated the acceptance of information technology tools, to the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted to investigate directly and precisely the level of pharmacists' acceptance, use, and willingness to adopt information technology (e.g., mobile apps) for customer service in mHealth and mainly the reasons of non-adoption.