Search results

The focus on ongoing customer relationships is the most distinctive aspect of relationship marketing. To date we still have a poor understanding of the role played by interpersonal‐related factors in gaining and developing customer loyalty. This paper explores the impact of interpersonal relationships (both with a firm employee and with another customer) on customer satisfaction and loyalty towards the firm. Based on a review of different streams of research, the paper develops and empirically tests an original multi‐level and multi‐subject model. The findings show that customer‐to‐employee and customer‐to‐customer relationships contribute differently to the development of customer loyalty. Finally, the paper discusses managerial implications and directions for future research.

Creating superior customer experience quality is important to firm success, but the link between customer experience quality and customer-to-customer interaction quality – a critical component of customer experience quality in mass service settings – has seldom been spotlighted. This paper aims to propose and test a theoretical model of the relationship among three types of customer-to-customer interaction quality (friend-interaction, neighboring customer-interaction and audience-interaction) and customer experience quality. They also examine these variables’ effects on customer citizenship behavior in mass service settings.

The authors collected data through a self-administered survey. The proposed relationships were tested using structural equation modeling.

Friend-interaction and audience-interaction quality perceptions significantly influence customer experience quality, with neighboring customer-interaction quality perception significant only for low communication quality. We find that enhancing customer experience quality is crucial to promoting citizenship behavior in mass service settings.

Neighboring customer-interaction quality perception has a significant effect on customer experience quality, particularly in a low communication quality situation. Therefore, service marketers should provide effective neighboring customer-interaction management schemes to enhance experience quality together with friend-interaction and audience-interaction management schemes when customers experience low communication quality. Additionally, service marketers should focus on enhancing communication quality only when anticipating low neighboring customer-interaction quality.

The findings highlight the effects of three types of customer-to-customer interaction quality on customer citizenship behavior through experience quality perception in mass service settings, and the effect of neighboring customer-interaction quality perception on customer experience quality, moderated by communication quality.

To empirically examine the development and influence that customer‐to‐customer interactions (CCI) have in a high personal contact setting.

Using responses from patrons of different hair salons, the role that salon atmospherics had on the formation of CCI was assessed. Then, the relative influence of CCI on satisfaction with the firm, loyalty to the firm and firm word‐of‐mouth, in a model of service outcomes, was examined.

Results indicate that atmospherics do influence CCI, which in turn is a strong predictor of loyalty to the firm and positive word‐of‐mouth.

Care should be taken when generalizing these findings to other service settings. It should be noted that all female respondents were generally more educated and had higher incomes than the general population.

This study suggests that positive perceptions of atmospherics will lead to positive CCI effects. If managers determine that they would like to enhance the quality of CCI, they should incorporate changes to the physical settings that enhance the type of interactions they desire.

In terms of how to assess CCI, the authors provide a simple four‐item scale which can be used by managers to assess the degree in which their customers interact and the effect that the interaction has on their experience.

Creating superior customer satisfaction has been considered one of the keys to the firm's success and hence, the antecedents of customer satisfaction have been examined numerous times. However, the link between customer satisfaction and peer‐to‐peer quality, which is deemed a critical component of customer experience quality, has not been spotlighted despite its importance. The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a theoretical model of the relationship among outcome quality, interaction quality, peer‐to‐peer quality, and customer satisfaction as well as these variables’ impacts on customer loyalty.

To test the model, the authors conducted a survey and collected self‐administered data for data analysis. The proposed relationships were then tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings indicate that outcome quality, interaction quality, and peer‐to‐peer quality perceptions significantly influence customer satisfaction, which, in turn, greatly influences customer loyalty. This study shows that outcome quality, interaction quality, and peer‐to‐peer quality should be considered pivotal elements in creating customer satisfaction and that customer satisfaction should be treated as a strategic variable to enhance customer loyalty.

The present study examines the role of familiarity as a moderating variable, finding that outcome quality has a significant influence on customer satisfaction only when patients are familiar with services provided by a hospital. That is, the influence of outcome quality on customer satisfaction becomes greater as customers become more familiar with hospital services, which are characterized as credence services. The finding is noteworthy in that it expands our understanding of the relationship between outcome quality and customer satisfaction.

This paper aims to identify new directions for research into customer‐to‐customer interaction (CCI). It also aims to examine thematically the main achievements of two decades of CCI research.

Consultations both with CCI experts and with experts from a selection of management fields were undertaken. A selective literature review, based on an extensive search of the CCI literature, was conducted.

A large number of opportunities for future investigation are identified. A significant quantity of CCI literature is revealed. CCI is shown to be conceptually quite complex. Convincing evidence supports the claim that CCI has now joined the mainstream of services marketing.

For service management researchers, a number of service management topics, such as service recovery, SST, e‐service, and ergonomics, are shown to have CCI‐related aspects worthy of research attention. For service managers, the emphasis on showing the relevance of CCI, and the possibilities for influencing CCI, should encourage them to incorporate CCI considerations into their strategic and operational plans.

The wide‐ranging proposals for future research into CCI will undoubtedly stimulate investigation of many new avenues of CCI. Service management researchers are provided with a concise, thematic guide to the most influential CCI literature; the article contributes to the service‐dominant logic literature by broadening the discussion of the customer as an operant resource.

This study aims to examine the relationship among nonverbal customer-to-customer interactions (CCIs), positive and negative emotions, customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions.

The conceptual model that was developed using the stimulus-organism-response theoretical framework was tested using a sample of 583 consumers.

The results show that kinesics and paralanguage positively affect customers’ positive emotions while proxemics, paralanguage and physical appearance negatively influence their negative emotions. Further, both positive and negative emotions are found to have significant impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions.

Theoretically, this study not only contributes to the existing servicescape and customer experience literature but also expands nonverbal interaction research in the hospitality management field. However, results may have limited generalizability to other service settings and other cultural contexts.

This study is one of the first to investigate the impact of nonverbal CCIs on service experiences.

In the contemporary hospitality industry, superior customer experiences are essential in gaining customer loyalty and achieving a competitive advantage. However, limited research addresses this subject. The purpose of this study is to advance scholarly research on customer experience management (CEM) in the hospitality field by providing a comprehensive overview of the key elements of CEM, a framework for managing customer experience and a rich agenda for research.

An extensive literature review produces a comprehensive overview of the existing knowledge of CEM. A synthesis of previous literature reveals the need for additional, contemporary information sources. The study is, therefore, supplemented by invited commentaries on CEM from senior scholars and hospitality managers.

The proposed model takes a holistic perspective on managing a positive customer experience, through collaboration among marketing, operations, design, human resources and strategy, in association with technology and social media.

The literature review and commentaries from leading experts reveal six areas for further research on CEM in the hospitality industry.

This study provides a comprehensive, systematic review of CEM literature and detailed understanding of the mechanisms for managing customer experiences in the hospitality industry. It integrates state-of-the-art CEM knowledge in the generic business context, along with principles of hospitality management, and advances CEM research by emphasizing the need for collaboration among marketing, operations and human resources.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why other‐customer misbehavior has a negative influence on customer satisfaction with the service firm.

Data for this study were gathered by retrospective experience sampling.

There are several important findings that can be obtained from the results. First, people consider another customer's failure to be the firm's responsibility when they perceive that the failure is under the firm's volitional control (i.e. controllability attribution). This controllability attribution leads to customer expectations of compensation for recovery from dissatisfaction. Second, stability attributions about other‐customer failures were not found to be significantly related to the firm's responsibility. Third, the severity of the other‐customer failure experience bears no relation to the customer's service recovery expectation, but it is negatively related to satisfaction. Finally, the customer's evaluation of service is not only affected by the other‐customer misbehavior, but also by how employees react to situations when other customers are unruly or potentially disruptive.

Providing employees with the appropriate coping and problem‐solving skills for working with problem customers is a key issue for service providers. More importantly, employees should be trained to help the affected customers, to alleviate any bad feelings caused by the other‐customer's misbehavior.

The paper suggests that employees in a service‐providing firm may need to act as “police officers” to ensure that all their customers behave appropriately.

Most customers want to interact, whether on social networks or on company websites. This study aims to examine the relationship between customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction and value, considering the roles of social anxiety and the retail environment.

This paper presents three written-scenario experimental studies, where C2C interaction and the retail environment are manipulated, and social anxiety levels are measured. The settings and the measures are changed across the experiments to increase the results’ validity.

A three-way interaction among C2C interaction, social anxiety and retail environment has impacts on experience value and other value-related variables (satisfaction and positive mood). In the offline retail environment, as social anxiety levels increase, the effects of C2C interaction on these variables become weaker. In the online retail environment, as social anxiety levels increase, these effects become stronger.

This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it investigates the downside of positive C2C interactions when considering social anxiety and the retail environment where they occur. Second, this paper amplifies the literature about value by extending it to other consumers who can affect the service experience. Finally, this study explores online C2C interaction in a retail environment, an aspect that has been neglected in the research about online interactions.

This paper suggests strategies to manage C2C interaction for customers of varying levels of social anxiety in offline and online retail environments to maximise value for them.

This paper challenges the widespread idea that a positive C2C interaction always leads to value. By considering social anxiety and the retail environment in C2C literature, this paper explains why and when it is a false notion.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of identity-based relationships, customer brand identification and peer identification, in driving customer outcomes including customer experiential hedonic value, social influence and repurchase intentions through the effects on value co-creation among customers and competitor brand hate, while taking into consideration the moderating impact of individualism.

The study integrates social identity theory, identity-based marketing perspective and self-construal theory to develop relationships. The data comprises a web-based survey of customers in the USA and was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Customer brand identification and peer identification are drivers of value co-creation among customers, which leads to favorable outcomes at the customer and brand levels. Customer brand identification drives customers to hate competing brands, which, in turn, motivates customers to exert social influence in favor of their brand and to hold additional repurchase intentions. Customer brand identification and peer identification play different roles in motivating customers to co-create value with their fellows and drive customers to feel hatred toward competing brands contingent on customer individualism.

Customer brand identification and peer identification play different roles in engaging customers in value co-creation with their peers and competing brands have with their rivals. Individualism self-construal holds a dual role when interacting with customer identification. The study fills multiple gaps in the literature by examining additional effects of customer brand identification and peer identification and exploring a relatively new dimension of the value co-creation process, as well as the role of customers in the competition between brands.

Brands need to view customers who identify with them as socially active customers capable of participating in value co-creation with other customers and engaging in the rivalry faced by the brands. Moreover, brands are required to build and nurture relationships that are based on social identification to encourage customer brand identification and peer identification which results in favorable customer and business outcomes.

This study examines the effects of two forms of customer identification on value co-creation between customers and competitor brand hate. In addition, it identifies the dual moderating role of customer individualism on the effects of both social identification forms. The study fills multiple gaps in the literature by understanding new aspects of customer identification, value co-creation and brand hate.