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This paper uses practice theory to strengthen the theoretical relationship between customer engagement (CE) and value cocreation (VCC), thereby demonstrating how customers may become engaged and remain engaged through VCC practices.

The study adopts a problematization approach to identify shared assumptions evident in service-dominant logic (SDL) and CE research. Practice theory, as a higher-order perspective, is used to integrate the iterative and cyclical processes of VCC and CE, specifically through the theoretical mechanism of habitus.

Habitus acts as a customer value lens and provides a bridging concept to demonstrate how VCC and CE are joined via sensemaking processes. These processes determine how customers perceive, assess, and evaluate value, how they become engaged through VCC, and how their experience of engagement may lead to further VCC practice. The temporally bound experiences, states, and episodes are accumulated and aggregated through an enduring customer value lens comprised of habituated dispositions, interests, and attitudes.

This work responds to calls for research to strengthen the theoretical link between VCC and CE and to take account of customers' lived realities and their contextualized experiences. A key suggestion for future research is the use of a rope metaphor to stimulate thinking about the complex, temporally unfolding, and interrelated processes of VCC and CE.

The customer value lens and CE rope are introduced to simplify the complex, abstract, theoretical research on VCC and CE for a nonacademic audience. To understand how customers' value lenses are formed and change, and how a CE rope is strengthened, firms, service designers, and practitioners need to understand sensemaking processes through customer narratives and to use platforms and feedback to support and trigger sensemaking.

This paper provides a theoretical mechanism to explain the iterative and cyclical nature of VCC and CE processes and how accumulation and aggregation occur in these processes. In doing so, it demonstrates that CE occurs by virtue of, and is typified by, sensemaking processes that reproduce and shape a customer's habituated value lens, which perceives, assesses, and determines VCC and thus provides a basis for further customer engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical and practical implications of adopting customer-dominant logic (CDL) of service, focusing on how firms can become involved in the customers’ context.

Inspired by the conceptual discussion of service logic and service-dominant logic, this paper focuses on the conceptual underpinnings of CDL. CDL is contrasted with other service perspectives in marketing; CDL is a marketing and business perspective dominated by customer-related aspects instead of products, service, systems, costs or growth. It is grounded in understanding customer logic and how firms’ offerings can become embedded in customers’ lives/businesses.

The conceptual analysis challenges the prevailing assumptions of key phenomena in service research, including interaction, co-creation, service value and service. The paper presents five essential foundations of CDL: marketing as a business perspective, customer logic as the central concept, offering seen through the customer lens, value as formed and not created and the prevalence of customer ecosystems.

The paper differentiates CDL from other marketing perspectives. Further empirical research is needed in different empirical settings to provide guidelines for adopting the perspective on a strategic and operational business level.

As a firm’s holistic and strategic foundation, marketing is based on understanding how providers participate, at a profit, in customers’ value formation. The paper suggests how firms can successfully conduct business in dynamic markets with empowered customers.

This paper expands marketing and business logic based on customer dominance. It accentuates the importance of understanding customer logic and stresses the presence of providers in the customer ecosystem.

Social network services (SNS) gifting is a new business model, but many SNS providers continue to face challenges as they explore ways to increase their revenues from gifting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors involved in gift giving via SNS platforms.

This study adopts a mixed methods approach through qualitative and quantitative research. In the first stage (qualitative study), the authors extract factors from interviews with users of SNS gifting services. In the second stage (quantitative study), the authors interpret decisional factors explored in the first stage on the basis of customer value theory, develop a research model and empirically test it.

The results show that five factors – convenience of SNS gifting, symbolic representation of SNS gifting, relationship support of SNS gifting, pleasure of SNS gifting, and an SNS gifting norm – directly or indirectly affect SNS gifting decisions.

This study contributes to electronic commerce research by extending the customer value theory and adding to the literature on SNS gifting and gift giving in general.

The study informs SNS providers regarding the promotion of SNS gifting services for revenue generation.

This study is among the first to comprehensively examine decision-making in SNS gifting through the lens of customer value theory.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the foodservice and restaurant literature that has been published over the past 10 years in the top hospitality and tourism journals. This information will be used to identify the key trends and topics studied over the past decade, and help to identify the gaps that appear in the research to identify opportunities for advancing future research in the area of foodservice and restaurant management.

This paper takes the form of a critical review of the extant literature that has been done in the foodservice and restaurant industries. Literature from the past 10 years will be qualitatively assessed to determine trends and gaps in the research to help guide the direction for future research.

The findings show that the past 10 years have seen an increase in the number of and the quality of foodservice and restaurant management research articles. The topics have been diverse and the findings have explored the changing and evolving segments of the foodservice industry, restaurant operations, service quality in foodservice, restaurant finance, foodservice marketing, food safety and healthfulness and the increased role of technology in the industry.

Given the number of research papers done over the past 10 years in the area of foodservice, it is possible that some research has been missed and that some specific topics within the breadth and depth of the foodservice industry could have lacked sufficient coverage in this one paper. The implications from this paper are that it can be used to inform academics and practitioners where there is room for more research, it could provide ideas for more in-depth discussion of a specific topic and it is a detailed start into assessing the research done of late.

This paper helps foodservice researchers in determining where past research has gone and gives future direction for meaningful research to be done in the foodservice area moving forward to inform academicians and practitioners in the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a contextualized local government case study of the application of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in conjunction with the Australian Business Excellence Framework (ABEF) to highlight the importance of a good strategic fit between LSS and organizational objectives before implementation.

A local government council is used in a case study-based approach. Organizational artefacts and documents were used for data collection in conjunction with interviews from senior executives within the organization.

Results indicate that when used in conjunction with the ABEF, LSS provides focus on organizational learning practices embedded within the implementation of continuous improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to discourse regarding the effective application and implementation of LLS in local government.

LSS tools and techniques are known to local government, but are applied in isolation of the overarching LSS framework. This paper emphasizes the importance of comprehensive implementation of these tools, guided by the inclusion of an external contextualized framework (ABEF) in conjunction with the LSS to achieve sustainable continuous improvement.

Business excellence frameworks are widely used in the public sector as a reference/means for improvement. This paper highlights the importance of LSS in operationalizing strategic direction provided by such frameworks and providing the focus on learning practices critical for sustainable improvements.

The assorted piece-wise retail orders in a cosmetics warehouse are fulfilled through a separate fast-picking area called Forward Buffer (FB). This study determines “just-right” size of FB to ensure desired Customer Service Level (CSL) at least storage wastages. It also investigates the impact of FB capacity and demand variations on FB leanness.

A Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool is applied to analyse the warehouse activities and mathematical model is implemented in MATLAB to quantify the leanness at desired CSL. A comprehensive framework is developed to determine lean FB buffer size for a Retail Distribution Centre (RDC) of a cosmetics industry.

The CSL increases monotonically; however, the results concerning spent efforts towards CSL improvement gets diminished with raised demand variances. The desired CSL can be achieved at least FB capacity and fewer Storage Waste (SW) as it shifts towards more lean system regime. It is not possible to improve Value Added (VA) time beyond certain constraints and therefore, it is recommended to reduce Non-Value Added (NVA) order processing activities to improve leanness.

This study determines “just-right” capacity and investigates the impact of buffer and demand variations on leanness. It helps managers to analyse warehouse processes and design customized distribution policies in food, beverage and retail grocery warehouse.

Proposed buffering model offers customized strategies beyond pre-set CSL by varying it dynamically to reduce wastages. The mathematical model deriving lean sizing and mitigation guidelines are constructive development for managers.

This research provides an inventive approach of VSM model and Mathematical algorithm endorsing lean thinking to design effective buffering policies in a forward warehouse.

The current global recession is presenting new and difficult challenges for those customers wishing to consume sustainably and ethically, and the marketers who seek to provide the goods that allow them to do so. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent international marketers can engage consumers with a social conscience and retain their loyalty both during and after the recession.

This paper explores the impact the global recession is having upon consumers and marketers, and considers the evidence surrounding concerns that the demand for ethical products will decline across international markets as the recession deepens.

The discussion acknowledges that while discount retailers are thriving, and customers are trading down, evidence suggests that across international markets a significant number of socially conscious consumers are still exhibiting ethical consumption behaviour. Future marketing opportunities lie in providing consumers with products that will deliver value without compromising their ethical social values.

The paper offers a balanced perspective on the significance of ethical consumers to international marketers. The analysis highlights a number of threats and opportunities that exist in the current global recession, and the discussion is illustrated with several examples of successful marketing ethics in action.

Numerous companies have launched brand pages (BPs) on social networking sites to enhance customer-brand communication, cultivate the customer-brand relationship and promote brand loyalty. This study aims to investigate how BP affordances support social commerce.

The study devises a theoretical model linking the proposed BP affordances (visibility, selectivity, persistence and interactivity) to three customer values (relationship quality, brand experience and smart shopping feeling [SSF]) to encourage brand loyalty and BP endorsement on the part of the customer.

Data collected from 591 respondents support all proposed hypotheses. The model explains high variances in brand loyalty and BP endorsement, indicating that relationship quality plays a more salient role in producing brand loyalty, while SSF plays a more important role in eliciting BP endorsement.

The study is unique in four ways. First, drawing on the lens of affordance, it proposes specific affordances for BPs and offers empirical results for their applicability. Second, by incorporating CDL into the research model, it illuminates the high explanatory power of these proposed BP affordances on the three customer values. Integrating the S-O-R model with the affordance perspective and CDL provides a more complete picture of the BP phenomenon. Third, it extends the reach of existing work by examining BP endorsement in social media as a dependent variable beyond brand loyalty, with SSF included as another source of values to shed more light on the relationships depicted in the model. Fourth, by taking trait competitiveness into account, it sheds further light on relationships between customer values and BP endorsement.

The purpose of this paper is to review customer experience formation (CXF) by first locating and analyzing how researchers approach CXF in the service literature and the theoretical underpinnings of these approaches, and then assessing which approaches are best suited for understanding, facilitating, and examining CXF in today’s service landscape.

This study systematically reviews 163 articles published between 1998 and 2015 in the service field.

This study illustrates how researchers approach CXF on the individual level by applying stimulus- interaction- or sense-making-based perspectives. These reflect researchers’ theoretical underpinnings for how individuals realize the customer experience within environmental, social, and temporal contexts through intermediation. Researchers further apply contextual lenses, including the dyadic and service- or customer-ecosystem lenses, which reflect their theoretical underpinnings for explaining how various actor constellations and contextual boundaries frame individual-level CXF. Finally, this study shows why the sense-making-based perspective, together with a service- or customer-ecosystem lens, is particularly suitable for approaching complex CXF in today’s service settings.

To advance theory, researchers should choose the approaches resonant with their research problem and worldview but also consider that today’s complex service landscape favors holistic and systemic approaches over atomistic and dyadic ones.

This study provides managers with recommendations for understanding, facilitating, and evaluating contemporary CXF.

This study advances the understanding of CXF by systematically reviewing its multiple layers, approaches, and dimensions and the opportunities and challenges of each approach.

The purpose of this paper is to consider a broadened suite of paradigmatic lenses to help better understand customer engagement during and beyond COVID-19. During this period of uncertainty and economic downturn, many customers are questioning their ways of living and being, and thus businesses are engaging customers in new and evolving ways. To appreciate this broadened realm of engagement requires researchers and businesses to embrace existential humanism as an alternative, yet complementary, paradigmatic lens.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors consider three distinct paradigmatic lenses on human (inter)action—economic rationalism, institutionalism and existential humanism—and apply these lenses to deepen the underlying theorizing of the customer engagement concept. Further, the authors illustrate how customers engage with businesses in distinct ways, seeking meaning congruent with the challenges faced during COVID-19.

The authors argue that the common tripartite model of cognitive, emotional and behavioral customer engagement, typically informed by reductionist and unilateral paradigmatic lenses, is insufficient to understand why customers seek to engage with businesses during and after COVID-19.

In providing a broader paradigmatic perspective, the authors make a plea for a stronger consideration and activation of spiritual engagement in marketing. The current COVID-19 environment challenges extant philosophical assumptions of engagement theorizing, which we address by way of existential humanism. The authors contribute through a more differentiated perspective of engagement, accounting for a broader spectrum of human experience. This enables more informed theorizing across levels of abstraction, while emphasizing diverse avenues for future engagement for a time even beyond COVID-19.