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Hairstyling entrepreneurs are experiencing increasing customer demand alongside the market competition. Building commercial friendships are one of their strategies to beat the competition. However, the marketing benefits in terms of loyalty and pricing from this strategy are unknown. Following suggestions from the relationship marketing theory (RMT) that business benefits are gained from commercial friendships, this study aims to use ideas from RMT and those from models proposed by Bove and Johnson (2002) and Han et al. (2008) to examine the impact of hairstylist-client commercial friendship on four dimensions of personal loyalty to individual hairstylists and clients’ willingness to pay a premium price (WTPP).

Quantitative methods were used to collect and analyse data obtained from 562 hairstylists’ clients who had maintained the same hairstylist for 10 months in Johannesburg metropolis. Structural equation modelling using SmartPLS was used to test a conceptual model with eight hypotheses.

The results revealed that commercial friendship positively impacted affective, intention and behavioural personal loyalty dimensions and explained 49%, 47.9% and 46.9% of the variances, respectively. Of the four dimensions of personal loyalty, only behavioural loyalty positively influenced WTPP.

Unlike previous studies’ main focus on business-to-customer relationships and loyalty from a unidimensional perspective, this study contributes by revealing four dimensions of personal loyalty applicable in the haircare service sector. The findings confirm the business benefits suggested by the RMT, by showing that commercial friendship generates clients’ WTPP when they are behaviourally loyal. This guarantees profits and highlights the importance of nurturing close relationships in personal services.

The objectives of this study are twofold: to investigate the impact of service encounter quality dimensions on perceived value, customer satisfaction, and loyalty, and to examine the moderating effect of perceived risk on the relationship of loyalty with perceived value and customer satisfaction in high contact services.

A questionnaire survey was adopted. Data were collected from customers who had used either hairdressing services or health care services in the past three months. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the validity of the measures and structural equation modeling was used to assess the hypothesized relationships.

Technical quality and empathy were found to display a positive effect on satisfaction in both hairstylist and physician samples. Physical environment was found to display a positive effect on satisfaction in the physician sample, but not in the hairstylist sample, and its effect on perceived value was non‐significant in both samples. The results also showed that there was a significant difference between low and high perceived risk groups in both samples with respect to the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty, and the relationship between perceived value and loyalty.

The study was conducted in a professional and relational service context, thus the scope for generalization of the results to other contexts may be limited. Moreover, this study focused on performance risk.

This study provides empirical support for the moderating role of perceived risk in the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty, and the relationship between perceived value and loyalty.

This research investigated the relationship between three elements – core service quality, relational service quality‐ and perceived value – and customer satisfaction and future intentions across four services. The results revealed that core service quality (the promise) and perceived value were the most important drivers of customer satisfaction with relational service quality (the delivery) a significant but less important driver. A direct link between customer satisfaction and future intentions was established. The relative importance of the three drivers of satisfaction varied among services. Specifically, the importance of core service quality and perceived value was reversed depending on the service. A major conclusion was that both perceived value and service quality dimensions should be incorporated into customer satisfaction models to provide a more complete picture of the drivers of satisfaction.

Using primary care physicians, automobile mechanics and hairstylists as the analysed industries, highlights the importance of relationships in the marketing of services. Two key relationship variables, trust and affective commitment, are the focal points for the empirical study. The data suggest that the higher the level of trust and affective commitment in a customer service‐provider relationship, the greater the probability that the consumer will continue the relationship, and the lower the level of perceived risk inherent in the relationship. Also, the findings suggest that females seek more trust and commitment than do males within the service‐provider/customer relationship, and consumers in general place more trust in and are more committed to their doctor and their hairstylist than to their mechanic.

Location has long been touted as an important competitive factor in retailing and services. However, since convenient, high‐traffic locations are costly, an examination of conditions under which locational convenience is more important and those in which it is less important is critical. Supplements the logic of prior research to examine the importance of location as a function of both customer satisfaction with the core service and service type. Finds that a convenient location is critical in more standardized, less personalized services when satisfaction falters, but is not important for less standardized, more personalized services regardless of satisfaction levels. Thus, a convenient location can act as a barrier to defection in more standardized, less personal services such as banks, making it an important strategic factor in minimizing defection when satisfaction with the core service drops. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, locational convenience appears less important to repurchase intentions for less standardized, more personal services such as hairstylists, thus negating its potential as a switching barrier for such services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of customer discomfort in service settings when employees and customers who share social incompatibilities, stemming from war, nationalism, religious differences or terrorism, work together in service settings.

The authors engage in triangulation research to understand how Israeli Arabs and Jews experience comfort/discomfort in services. Study 1 uses an experimental design to show how comfort differs when Israeli Jews work with Arabs and Jews in three different service settings. Study 2 employs survey methodology to explore how comfort differs among Israeli Arabs when they work with either an Arab or a Jewish employee. Study 3 uses grounded theory methodology to provide a theoretical framework that explains reasons for customer discomfort occurrence between Israel’s Arabs and Jews, its impact on customers’ attitudes and behaviors and suggestions for increasing comfort.

Israeli Arabs and Jews express various feelings of discomfort when working with each other, and Druze, in service settings. Israeli Jews express higher levels of discomfort when working with Arabs than vice versa, while Israeli Arabs express discomfort when working with Druze employees. Five strategies for increasing customer comfort are defined and developed.

Social incompatibilities prevent many consumers and employees from experiencing comfort during service exchanges; however, managers can alleviate some of the factors that exacerbate customer discomfort.

Managers need to realize that customer discomfort leads to place avoidance and thus should implement strategies to assuage it.

Unabated service situations that result in customer discomfort may lead to customer ill-being, including fear.

This study is the first to explore customer discomfort due to social incompatibilities in depth.

Distinct difference between professional services and other types of service may increase customer reliance on social aspects of the relationship as a means to increase satisfaction with the service encounter. These services are characterized by one‐on‐one interactions involving repeated, frequent encounters with the same professional service provider and contain differences including: complexity, the intimate nature of exchange, and co‐production of service outcomes by both the client and the service provider. This study investigates the relative impact of technical and functional (social) aspects of professional service relationships on client satisfaction in four different professional services contexts. Findings support the positive impact of social aspects of the relationship on satisfaction in all four contexts, however, the strength of the association varies with context. The more classically professional occupations, like medicine, show a stronger relationship between social aspects of the relationship and satisfaction than less professional occupations, such as hairstyling. Social aspects also affect positive organizational outcomes, specifically positive word‐of‐mouth and re‐patronization intentions, in three of the four contexts.

During service encounters, it has been suggested that emotionally competent employees are likely to succeed in building rapport with their customers, which in turn often leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, these relationships have not been empirically examined. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of customer perceived employee emotional competence (EEC) on satisfaction and loyalty. The paper also examines how and to what extent rapport mediates these effects.

Drawing on the theory of affect‐as‐information, suggesting that emotions inform human behavior, the paper develops a structural model and tests it on a sample of 247 customers in a personal service setting.

Customer perceptions of EEC positively influence customer satisfaction and loyalty. Rapport partially mediates both effects.

The extent to which customers perceive employees as emotionally competent is related to the development of rapport, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. Managers of high‐contact services should therefore pay attention to emotional competence when hiring new employees, and/or encourage and train existing employees to develop this type of competence.

Previous studies have used employee self‐reports or supervisor reports of EEC, both of which have significant limitations when used in service encounters to predict customer outcomes. Furthermore, they essentially capture an employee's potential to behave in an emotionally competent way while service managers are interested in the actual display of emotionally competent behaviors as perceived by customers. Accordingly, to overcome these issues, this study adopts a customer perspective of EEC and uses customer perceptions of EEC to predict customer outcome.

There has been extensive research conducted regarding the identification of evaluative criteria and cues used in selecting products classified as goods, yet there has been little research on products classified as services. Marketing managers accept the notion that there are some controllable and uncontrollable variables in the environment that will impact on the consumer's perceptions of their product offering. If marketers can understand which criteria are used to evaluate a product, in this case a service, and can identify which cues are used to assess the criteria, they will he better able to manage and influence the consumer's evaluations and perceptions of the offering. This study takes an integrated look at the evaluative criteria and cues used by consumers in selecting services.

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of social suffering among a non-random sample of Canadian women working in socially and economically marginalized “frontline” service occupations. Participants identified a number of health concerns that they link to the everyday suffering they endure – i.e. feeling inadequate, incompetent, lonely, self-conscious, disenfranchised or dissatisfied. The complex etiology of these women's suffering bars many from finding appropriate health care. As a result, there are health disparities among our vulnerable populations. While they often articulated a desire for alternative/complementary care, the Canadian health care system does not currently fund these services and many of the women are unable to afford the out-of-pocket costs.