Search results

Collaborative consumption, such as car sharing, specifically implicates customer-to-customer interaction, which must be regulated by service providers (companies, peers and self-regulating communities), comprising different challenges for business organizations. While in conventional business relations, consumers are protected from undesirable customer behavior by laws, regulations (power) in the context of collaborative consumption are rare, so that trust becomes more relevant. It is the purpose of the study to investigate possible mechanisms to prevent undesirable customers in collaborative consumption.

In between subject designs, samples of 186 and 328 consumers filled in experimental online questionnaires with vignettes. Analyses were made of differences among car sharing companies, private persons and car sharing communities in terms of the power of providers, trust in providers and trust in other users of the shared goods, undesirable customer behavior and consumer–provider relations.

Companies, private persons and self-regulating communities differ in terms of perceived power and trust. Participants specifically perceive mainly coercive power with the car sharing company, but with the private person and the community, reason-based trust in other users is perceived as prevalent. Nevertheless, undesirable customer behavior varies only marginally over the models.

The present study is the first to investigate measures to prevent undesirable customer behavior over different collaborative consumption models. This enables appropriate identification of market segments and tailoring of services. The study identifies opportunities for companies in contrast to private persons and self-regulating communities and, in doing so, provides important stimulation for marketing strategy and theory development.

This research aims to grasp hotel guests' motives and potential benefits sought when interacting with other guests, service personnel and residents and examines how these benefits can contribute to the total guest experience.

Mixed methods are adopted for the purpose of this study comprising individual interviews and a questionnaire survey.

Five groups of advantages emerge from individual interviews, including friendliness in interaction, social benefits, information acquisition, curiosity gratification and hospitality services. In the survey, which gathers 326 questionnaires, this study reveals that the five types of benefits derived from hotel guests' interactions could be further categorized into two dimensions: civility (e.g. friendliness and social) and utility (e.g. information, curiosity and service). The study confirms that four out of five potential or expected benefits from this personal interaction is significantly associated with the total hotel experience.

Respondents of this study are culturally homogenous; as a result, multi-cultural settings should be considered for future research.

Tourism and hospitality literature on people's interaction is mostly center around social aspects of interaction. The current study comprehensively explores all expected utilities of interaction, occurring in all sorts of interactions (e.g. customer-to-resident and customer-to-service personnel). Specifically, the findings of this study uncover the underlying factors which prompt the tourists to interact with other people in a lodging setting and examine the relative importance of those underlying factors to the total lodging experiences.

There is an ongoing challenge to map the efficacy of e-retailing strategies in building both value co-creation opportunities for online customers and customer value for companies. Based on the service-dominant (S-D) logic, an integrative model is provided that connects the impact of convenience and personalisation strategies (CPSs) on an e-retailer's performance – by offering co-creation opportunities and customer engagement.

The survey instrument is validated and the model is tested with data from active online customers using a novel methodology that blends artificial neural network (ANN) analysis with partial least squares (PLS) in both the measurement model and the path analysis.

The findings robustly support the model and yield evidence of the contribution of CPSs in effective value propositions, the interface between the S-D logic and customer engagement, and the direct effect of customer engagement on tangible forms of value for companies.

This study is the first scholarly effort to provide a comprehensive understanding of how and why CPSs can maximise customer value for the e-retailer, while simultaneously testing the customer value/engagement interface with a new blended ANN-PLS method.

Recent service studies suggest focusing on the service triad consisting of technology-customer-frontline employee (FLE). This study empirically investigates the role of service robots in this service triad, with the aim to understand the augmentation or substitution role of service robots in driving utilitarian and hedonic value and ultimately customer repatronage.

In study 1, field data are collected from customers (n = 108) who interacted with a service robot and FLE in a fast casual dining restaurant. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test hypotheses about the impact of service robots' anthropomorphism, social presence, value perceptions and augmentation opportunities in the service triad. In study 2, empirical data from a scenario-based experimental design (n = 361) complement the field study by further scrutinizing the interplay between the service robot and FLEs within the service triad.

The study provides three important contributions. First, the authors provide empirical evidence for the interplay between different actors in the “customer-FLE-technology” service triad resulting in customer repatronage. Second, the empirical findings advance the service management literature by unraveling the relationship between anthropomorphism and social presence and their effect on perceived value in the service triad. And third, the study identifies utilitarian value of service robots as a driver of customer repatronage in fast casual dining restaurants.

The results help service managers, service robot engineers and designers, and policy makers to better understand the implications of anthropomorphism, and how the utilitarian value of service robots can offer the potential for augmentation or substitution roles in the service triad.

Building on existing conceptual and laboratory studies on service robots, this is one of the first field studies on the service triad consisting of service robots – customers – frontline employees. The empirical study on service triads provides evidence for the potential of FLEs to augment service robots that exhibit lower levels of functional performance to achieve customer repatronage. FLEs can do this by demonstrating a high willingness to help and having excellent interactions with customers. This finding advocates the joint service delivery by FLE – service robot teams in situations where service robot technology is not fully optimized.

Against the theoretical backdrop of the embeddedness and the resilience literatures, this paper investigates if and how SMEs' planning for adversity affects firms' performance.

The paper develops hypotheses that investigate the link between the risk management of immigrant-led and native-led SMEs and their performance and draw on novel data from a survey on 900 immigrant- and 2,416 native-led SMEs in 5 European cities to test them.

Immigrant-led SMEs are less likely to implement an adversity plan, especially when they are in an enclave sector. However, adversity planning is important to enhance the growth of immigrant-led businesses, even outside a crisis period, and it reduces the performance gap vis-à-vis native-led businesses. Inversely, the positive association between adversity planning and growth in the sample of native entrepreneurs is mainly driven by entrepreneurs who have experienced a severe crisis in the past.

This paper empirically uses planning for adversity as an anticipation stage of organizational resilience and tests it in the context of immigrant and native-led SMEs. Results support the theoretical reasoning that regularly scanning for threats and seeking information beyond the local community equips immigrant-led SMEs with a broader structural network which translates into new organizational capabilities. Furthermore, results contribute to the process-based view of resilience demonstrating that regularly planning for adversity builds a firm's resilience potential, though the effect is contingent on the nationality of the leaders.

This study examines the dualities of digital services – that is, how customers’ favorite everyday digital services can positively and negatively contribute to their well-being. Thus, the study describes the meanings of favorite digital services as part of customers’ everyday lives and the types of well-being to which such services can contribute.

We used a qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews conducted in 2021 to collect data from 14 young adults (22–31 years old) who actively used digital services in their daily lives.

Our findings revealed that customers’ favorite everyday digital services can contribute to their mental well-being, social well-being, and intellectual well-being. Within these three dimensions of well-being, we identified nine dualities of digital services that describe their positive and negative contributions: (1) digital escapism versus digital disruption, (2) digital relaxation versus digital stress, (3) digital empowerment versus digital subjugation, (4) digital augmentation versus digital emptiness, (5) digital socialization versus digital isolation, (6) digital togetherness versus digital exclusion, (7) digital self-expression versus digital pressure, (8) digital learning versus digital dependence, and (9) digital inspiration versus digital stagnation.

These findings suggest that everyday digital services have the potential to contribute to customer well-being in various aspects – both positively and negatively – accentuating the need for service providers to decipher the impacts of their offerings on well-being. Indeed, understanding the relationship between digital services and customer well-being can help companies tailor their services to customers’ needs. Companies that prioritize customer well-being not only benefit their customers but also create sustainable growth opportunities in the long run. Further, companies can use the derived information in service design to develop marketing strategies that emphasize the positive impacts of their digital services on customer well-being.

Although prior transformative service studies have investigated the well-being of multiple stakeholders, such studies have focused on services related to the physical and healthcare domains. Consequently, the role of everyday digital services as contributors to customer well-being is an under-researched topic. In addition, the concept of well-being and its various dimensions has received limited attention in previous service research. By investigating everyday digital services and their multidimensional contribution to customer well-being, this study broadens the perspective on well-being within TSR and aids in refining a more precise conceptualization.

This paper aims to explore the current and future roles of augmented reality (AR) as an enabler of omnichannel experiences across the customer journey. To advance the conceptual understanding and managerial exploitation of AR, the paper aims to synthesise current research, illustrating how a variety of current applications merge online and offline experiences, and provides a future research agenda to help advance the state of the art in AR.

Drawing on situated cognition theorising as a guiding framework, the paper reviews previously published research and currently deployed applications to provide a roadmap for future research efforts on AR-enabled omnichannel experiences across the customer journey.

AR offers myriad opportunities to provide customers with a seamless omnichannel journey, smoothing current obstacles, through a unique combination of embedded, embodied and extended customer experiences. These three principles constitute the overarching value drivers of AR and offer coherent, theory-driven organising principles for managers and researchers alike.

Current research has yet to provide a relevant, conceptually robust understanding of AR-enabled customer experiences. In light of the rapid development and widespread deployment of the technology, this paper provides an urgently needed framework for guiding the development of AR in an omnichannel context.

This paper's purpose is to develop a meaning-based framework for customer loyalty by examining how consumers make sense of customer loyalty through meanings and metaphors.

A qualitative study based on in-depth interviews and focus group data in the retail context was conducted with Finnish customers. The data were analysed with qualitative data analysis techniques such as the constant comparative technique.

The empirical findings comprise eight loyalty meanings characterised by two dimensions. The first dimension is reflexive vs. routinised, and the second dimension is private vs. social. The loyalty types are dimensionalised through four metaphors: loyalty as freedom of choice; as being conventional and binding; and as belongingness.

The findings improve the way customer loyalty currently is understood in the retail setting. The paper proposes that customer insight that utilises thick data can be used to grasp loyalty meanings. These data are rich in context and detail, and they take into account customers' everyday lives. Utilising thick data in the form of storytelling fuels customers' meaning-making related to customer loyalty, potentially enriching their relationship with the retailer.

Customer loyalty has been driven largely by a transactional and company-centric perspective. This article presents an alternative view of customer loyalty that accounts for the variety of meanings that customers may assign to their loyalty-related thoughts and behaviours.

This study proposes a model that influences customer citizenship behavior during COVID-19, and empirically tests the effects of fast-food restaurant customers' perceptions of justice (price and procedural justice) on trust; trust on satisfaction and loyalty; and trust, satisfaction and loyalty on customer citizenship behavior. Furthermore, it was questioned whether there was a disparity between customer expectations based on the restaurant's image and consumption experience.

The data were gathered from customers of fast-food restaurants in the shopping centers in Turkey. The data set, which included 437 valid questionnaires, was subjected to CFA for validity and reliability, SEM analysis for hypothesis and paired sample t-Tests for the research questions.

The findings of the study indicate that perceived justice affects customer trust, which, consequently, affects customer loyalty and satisfaction during the COVID-19 period. Findings also demonstrate that, while customer loyalty and trust increase customer citizenship behavior, customer satisfaction alone is insufficient to increase customer citizenship behavior. The study also shows that during the COVID-19 period, fast-food restaurants should have raised awareness of employees’ fair behaviors toward the customers and provided additional services to differentiate themselves in the market. Also, it indicates that customer expectations related to price, cleanliness and professional appearance of staff are not met after taking service.

No research has been found in the literature focusing on the expectations, justice, trust, satisfaction, loyalty and citizenship behaviors of fast-food restaurant customers in the COVID-19 pandemic process. Therefore, the results can fill the gap in relevant literature by testing the relationships between justice, trust, satisfaction, loyalty and citizenship during the pandemic and provide inferences for fast-food business owners.

This paper analyzes previously unmeasured effects of a response to a service incident called “benevolent” within the customer –firm relationship.

A questionnaire was administered to telecommunication customers in a Western European country, and the model was estimated using partial least squares (PLS).

This study shows that the customer–firm relationship is surprisingly affected by the response to expected incidents that the customer interprets as acts of benevolence or opportunism. This research also shows that the firm's incident response interpreted as benevolence or opportunism has an effect that merely positive or negative events do not. Acts of benevolence response towards an incident positively affect customer–firm relationship quality, and expectations of such acts may lead to an upward spiral in customer commitment.

While benevolence trust has been proposed and studied before, the response to incidents interpreted as benevolent or opportunistic and their consequences have been under-studied, hence exhibiting a research gap.

在公司與顧客之間的關係的範疇內, 公司對服務事故所作的被稱為仁慈的反應的影響不曾被測量; 本研究擬就該反應的影響進行分析和探討。

研究以問卷方式進行¸ 對象為一個西歐國家裏的電訊服務客戶。研究人員使用偏最小平方法作估算, 設計有關的模型。

研究結果顯示、若顧客對公司就預期的事故所作的反應看作是仁慈的話, 又或相反地視為是投機主義所驅使的, 則公司與顧客之間的關係會出人意表地受到影響。研究結果亦顯示、顧客的仁慈、抑或是投機主義的闡釋和理解所帶來的影響, 與單純積極正面事件或消極負面事件所帶來的影響是不一樣的。公司對事件仁厚的回應會給予顧客之間的關係的質量帶來正面的影響; 而且, 對這種回應的預期、或會給客戶承諾帶來螺旋上升。

對仁厚之信賴曾被提出並作探討。唯對被視為仁慈的或機會主義作祟的反應所作的研究則不足, 這方面實存研究缺口。