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Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently having a dramatic impact on marketing. Future manifestations of AI are expected to bring even greater change, possibly ushering in the realization of the fourth industrial revolution. In accord with such expectations, this paper aims to examine AI’s current and potential impact on prominent service theories as related to the service encounter.

This paper reviews dominant service theories and their relevance to AI within the service encounter.

In doing so, this paper presents an integrated definition of service AI and identifies the theoretical upheaval it creates, triggering a plethora of key research opportunities.

Although scholars and practitioners are gaining a deeper understanding of AI and its role in services, this paper highlights that much is left to be explored. Therefore, service AI may require substantial modifications to existing theories or entirely new theories.

When consumers experience a self-threat that calls their self-concept into question, the ensuing psychological discomfort motivates them to restore their self-perceptions on the threatened attribute. Although consumers can restore a threatened self-perception by consuming products and brands that possess the desired symbolic associations, this study aims to propose that word of mouth can serve to resolve self-threat and restore a threatened self-perception when the brand at the center of a word-of-mouth communication is symbolically congruent with the domain of the threat.

Experimental online survey research was conducted, inducing self-threat, manipulating brand and word-of-mouth conditions and measuring self-perceptions. Data for three studies were analyzed using SPSS and Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro.

Three studies show that spreading word of mouth can restore consumers’ threatened self-perceptions when the brand is symbolically congruent with the threat domain. Word of mouth about a symbolically congruent brand alleviates psychological discomfort, resulting in higher self-perceptions on the threatened attribute. The restorative effect is amplified for lower self-esteem consumers.

Participants in the focal conditions were required to spread word of mouth, which may not be an organic response for all consumers; although not spreading word of mouth is ineffective, other compensatory consumer behavior options exist. The brand option was provided to participants, which allowed for control but may have reduced some of the realism.

Positioning brands to meet consumers’ psychological needs encourages the development of consumer–brand attachments. Brands that resonate with consumers reap the benefits of consumers’ active loyalty behaviors and enjoy stronger brand equity. The present research implies a new way consumers can form brand attachments: by spreading word of mouth to resolve self-threat. As many consumers post detailed, personal information online, this research suggests firms can align their brand messages with relevant identity-related discrepancies.

This research extends the symbolic self-completion compensatory consumption strategy to the word-of-mouth context, showing that consumers can achieve the same restorative effect as consumption by spreading word of mouth. This research also contributes to compensatory word-of-mouth literature by establishing the role of brand meaning.

This study aims to follow a rigorous approach to identify, critically analyze and synthesize 75 papers published from 2000 to 2022.

The study presents a systematic literature review on identity expressiveness (IE), clarifying and expanding what is currently known about the concept.

To synthesize current knowledge on IE, the study uses the overarching framework of antecedents-phenomenon-consequences, using this same framework to identify gaps and future research directions. The findings show individual and brand-related factors such as the need for uniqueness and anthropomorphism as antecedents of IE, and eWOM/WOM, impulse purchases and upgrading to more exclusive lines as consequences of IE.

The study contributes to theory by synthesizing and mapping current understanding of the state of knowledge on the concept of IE while highlighting gaps in the extant literature and paving future research directions for scholars in the field.

The study offers useful insights for practitioners, broadening marketers’ actionable options in identity-based marketing. Marketers can use insights from this study to inform marketing strategy and communication campaigns for different types of brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind and offers an integrative review of the current literature on IE, thus enhancing understanding of the concept, its antecedents and consequences. The study also contributes to knowledge by highlighting future research priorities for researchers in this field of enquiry.

While research on customer gratitude is gaining momentum, there is an absence of a clear conceptualization and operationalization of the construct. This paper aims to provide a grounded theory definition of customer gratitude, develops and validates a gratitude scale to fully capture the comprehensive definition and assesses the scale in a nomological network with antecedents and consequences.

This qualitative study and four quantitative studies examine customer gratitude within service encounters.

Results from all five studies support a three-dimensional definition of customer gratitude that includes affective, behavioral and cognitive dimensions. The quantitative findings show that the three-dimensional gratitude scale offers strong predictive ability of loyalty and relationship continuity and that gratitude maintains its effect on these relational outcomes after assessing other mediating mechanisms (e.g. value).

This research offers an expanded conceptual definition and scale of customer gratitude that conforms to theory and the extant literature. The scale maintains construct validity which is supported in a nomological context of theoretically based antecedents and consequences.

This work advances the emerging gratitude literature by clearly delineating the construct’s domain, measurement and impact on relational outcomes.

Recent evidence on consumer decision-making suggests that highly complex choice scenarios lead consumers to use simplistic decision heuristics, often resulting in suboptimal decision-making. This study aims to investigate the relationships among consumers’ primary information source, patient satisfaction and patient well-being, specifically focused on the search for mental health professionals. The selection of a mental health provider is of interest, because practitioners work from a highly diverse set of theoretical bases, may hold a wide range of different credentials and provide drastically different therapeutic approaches, therefore making the selection complex and difficult for consumers to self-navigate.

Three studies were undertaken, with data sampling from both patients of mental health services and practitioners.

Consumers selecting a provider based on self-performed searches, rather than receiving external input (referrals from physicians, relatives or friends), report lower satisfaction with their mental health provider. In turn, patient satisfaction positively impacts patient well-being. Practitioner data corroborate these findings, revealing that a large percentage of patients stem from a self-performed internet search, though mental health providers recognize that external referrals are likely to lead to better outcomes.

The results reveal the importance of understanding the consumer search and, particularly, the use of the internet as a search tool. The results present several implications for service providers, including the need to identify patients’ primary source utilized within an information search, as it can adversely impact patient satisfaction.

Knowledge sharing is a key part of enterprise knowledge management, which helps to develop and use knowledge-related resources and ultimately achieve organizational goals. This study aims to theoretically discuss and empirically investigate the mechanism by which the intention to share knowledge is influenced by employees’ attitudes, social pressure and job characteristics.

Based on the theory of planned behavior, this study uses primary data collected from technology companies in the Yangtze River Delta region of China based on a longitudinal tracking research method of different variables at two different points in time. The data from 287 questionnaires were investigated by hierarchical regression analysis and processed with SPSS 21.0.

The findings suggest that attitudes toward knowledge sharing, perceived social norms and job autonomy positively affect knowledge-sharing intentions. Job autonomy plays a moderating role in the relationship between perceived social norms and knowledge-sharing intentions. Specifically, job autonomy positively moderates the effect of pro-sharing norms on knowledge-sharing intentions and negatively moderates the effects of subjective norms on knowledge-sharing intentions.

This study brings together employees’ and work-related characteristics to systematically explore the influence of employees’ personal evaluations of knowledge sharing. Additionally, by empirically distinguishing between subjective and pro-sharing norms, the study contributes to a better understanding of the antecedents of knowledge sharing and other voluntary behaviors at the individual level.

Given the economic downturn, the purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between economic perceptions and consumers' motivation to consume for status and if this relationship was moderated by education level.

A stratified random sample of adult consumers in the southeastern USA were surveyed by telephone. The hypotheses were tested utilizing structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that those consumers with a lower level of perceived economic welfare (i.e. see the economy and their family's financial situation as worse this year versus last year) were less motivated to consume for status. Furthermore, this relationship was positively moderated by education. No relationship was found between consumer confidence (i.e. consumers' perceptions of the economy in the future year) and status consumption. The results suggest that those consumers who perceive themselves to be financially better off this year versus last, particularly those more educated, are more motivated to consume for status.

The main research limitation was that the sample skewed to be older, female and Caucasian, though the sample did match Census figures for the critical variable of education. Additionally, the phone response rate was 9 percent, but it is important to recognize that this was for a non-student sample.

The results suggest that marketers, targeting luxury consumers in the current stagnant economy, aim for more educated consumers who see their economic welfare as improving. This implication stems from the research findings revealing that consumers who feel they are recovering economically from the recent economic downturn, especially those with higher education levels, may more likely be status consumers.

With the democratization of luxury there is renewed interest in luxury consumption research. While research suggests there is a relationship between economic conditions and status consumption, few studies have measured consumer economic perceptions in relation to status consumption and none have examined how education may play a moderating role in explaining why people buy luxuries in a tough economic climate.

To develop an understanding of the Millennial Generation's consumption of green products. Specifically, our research sought to address the following two research questions in regard to this generation's consumption behavior: What product attributes have significant effects on purchases of green products? What are the primary reasons for not adopting green products?

A questionnaire was administered to 197 undergraduates at a private university in the southern US. The sample was 59 percent female and ages ranged from less than 18 to 25. Full time students represented 95 percent of the sample.

The findings suggest that when developing marketing communications, marketers may want to devote more attention to recyclability or re-usability, biodegradableness, and positive health effects stemming from eco-friendly product attributes, as these characteristics shared the strongest associations with Millennial intent to purchase green products. The results also indicate that the primary reason Millennials do not purchase green products is the belief that green products are too expensive.

To capture opinions of members of the Millennial Generation, the study used a sample of students at a private university which may not be representative of the entire population of Millennials. Since all participants were enrolled in higher education, there may be some relationship between education and green consumption behavior.

This research offers marketers a richer understanding of this segments' consumption behavior of green products, in addition to highlighting important obstacles marketers need to overcome to transition non-purchasers to purchasers of green products.

Such reports as reach us go to prove that few, if any, attacks on library finances, such as are usually frequent in the municipal budgetting month of February, have been made this year; and that in spite of the fact that local rates have risen to an unprecedented extent throughout the Kingdom. This is our general impression, although librarians are somewhat reticent upon the matter. Last year we appealed for information as to reductions and retrenchments, but received little response; it appeared that the matter was not sufficiently interesting to librarians to make them express their views or state their experiences concerning it. Library finance is in spite of that a vital matter to us all, and the primary need in connexion therewith is accurate information. We therefore venture to repeat our request for news of the kind. It will be used with discretion.