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The success of many high‐contact services depends on customers' compliance with providers' instructions. While existing service marketing literature urges increased attention to customer compliance, there is, to date, little research investigating its role of compliance in service settings. Based on social cognitive theory, this study aims to fill this important research gap, developing and testing a model to explore the antecedents and consequences of customer compliance in high‐contact service settings. Service friendship is included as a mediator between the antecedents and compliance. Two control variables, relationship duration and contact frequency, were also included in the model.

A research framework is proposed to suggest the antecedents and consequences of both service friendship and customer compliance. Extant research from various research streams is reviewed, deriving 11 hypotheses. Data collected from customers of high‐contact service industries are examined through structural equation modeling.

Results show that the service provider's social skills, customer orientation, and expertise are positively related to service friendship and customer compliance, which in turn affect customer satisfaction and anticipated future interaction. The control variables are also both positively associated with service friendship and anticipated future interaction.

This research represents an early attempt at explaining what affects customer compliance in high‐contact service settings. Future research directions are discussed, with emphasis on incorporating customer characteristics, service interaction characteristics, and employee viewpoints to better understand service friendship and compliance in different service settings.

Customer compliance is a vital component of high‐contact service interactions between employees and customers. Service managers should encourage the formation of customer compliance in conjunction with service friendship to achieve better service outcomes.

This study represents the first study in the service marketing literature to establish a model that explains the mechanism of customer compliance in general service settings. The addition of two control variables representing relationship quantity also enhances the originality and contribution of this study.

The purpose of this study was to examine the mediating effect of three coping strategies (i.e. active, expressive, and denial coping) in the relationships between service failures (i.e. high- and low-contact service failures) and negative behavioral intentions (i.e. switching intention).

The critical incident technique (CIT) was used to identify the conceptually categorized service failure types in the fitness industry, and then confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were performed to examine the mediating effect of coping strategies among high-contact service failure and switching intention (study 1) and the mediating effect of coping strategies among low-contact service failure and switching intention (study 2).

While the mediating effect of coping strategies was significant in the relationship between high-contact service failures (study 1) and negative behaviors (i.e. switching intention and complaints), it was not significant in the relationship between low-contact service failures (study 2) and switching intention. Out of the three coping strategies, the impact of active coping was significant.

This study extends the understanding of the mediating effect of coping strategies in the relation between high- and low-contact service failures and switching intention.

Employee learning is imperative in the dynamic service environment; yet, much is still unknown about its strategic importance. The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of learning by focusing on the strategic importance of learning goal orientation (LGO) in customer-contact employees in service industries characterized with high customer contact.

This paper adopts the multi-method approach by conducting two studies in the high-contact service sector. Study 1 is a large-scale, multiple-respondent survey that investigates the associations between LGO and its antecedents and performance outcomes. To supplement study 1, study 2 embraces case studies that identify the managerial supportive practices and outcomes of customer-contact employees’ learning behaviors.

The results of study 1 demonstrate that employees’ affective organizational commitment does not yield higher-quality services unless the service employees are learning oriented. The findings of study 1 also indicate that management commitment to service quality has positive effects on both LGO and affective organizational commitment. In study 2, the results reveal the practical methods that managers can employ to effectively promote such activities.

This research offers novel insights into research on learning by showing the strategic importance of LGO to enhancing high-contact service firms’ performance and the practical means of fostering LGO in customer-contact employees.

This study aims to develop and test a service‐based demographic framework for studying service quality perceptions. Specifically, the effect of level of service contact and key demographic variables of age, gender and income on service quality perceptions is examined.

A total of 224 customers of high‐ and low‐contact passenger transport services were surveyed using a self‐administered questionnaire.

The findings indicated that service quality perceptions differed according to the level of contact inherent to the service. Consumer age was also found to affect service quality perceptions; however, no differences in service quality perceptions on the basis of gender or income were found.

The results of the study enhance the understanding of service quality perceptions and provide useful insight for the management and delivery of service quality. Overall, the results suggest that managers in the train travel industry need to take the level of contact as well as the views of certain demographic segments into account if they want to maximize perceived service. Demographics provide managers with a means of determining which segments of the market are feasible in terms of achieving greater market penetration. The findings of this study show the importance of considering variables relating to individual characteristic or the service itself when investigating service quality.

Prior research has not examined empirically whether service quality dimensions vary on the basis of service type; thus, this paper contributes to knowledge in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore conceptually and examine empirically the impact of market competitiveness on employee satisfaction, service quality, and customer satisfaction in high‐contact service industries.

An empirical study was conducted in high‐contact service shops in Hong Kong. Dyadic data were collected from 210 high‐contact service shops and were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results confirm that market competitiveness has a direct impact on service quality, not employee satisfaction. The findings also reveal that service quality affects customer satisfaction, which in turn leads to employee satisfaction, forming a “quality‐customer satisfaction‐employee satisfaction cycle”.

The results recommend that firms take a long‐term perspective towards investment in understanding the competitiveness of the market. Such an understanding helps managers identify and implement appropriate quality‐improvement activities, such as establishing quality standards, providing appropriate job description to service employees, and adopting a customer‐oriented strategy, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction in a cyclic manner.

This study contributes to a detailed understanding of how service firms should strategically respond to market competitiveness.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for further understanding the risks embedded in co-creation services in high-contact service transactions. It delineates behavioral and economic perspectives focusing on agency costs, risk behavior, compensation structure and provides a context in which information is processed.

Following an extensive review of the literature, propositions are advanced that relate an agent’s risk behavior to information processing, compensation and the propensity to engage in co-creation. These propositions provide a complementary context for understanding risks in the co-creation process.

The propositions detail how a service agent’s information processing can be enhanced if the customer’s expected utility from transactions is maximized by managing the agent’s risk behavior and earnings potential. A compensation structure that balances fixed base and variable pay can motivate risk-taking and the agent’s propensity to engage in co-creation.

This paper extends the understanding of agency risks in the co-creation of hospitality services that integrates economic and behavioral perspectives with information processing. Theoretical implications include a broader context of the risks underlying co-creation. Practical implications relate to how earnings potential could be maximized by considering the agent’s risk behavior and the expected utility arising from such transactions.

Many small-to-medium sized service shops (e.g. jewelry shops, fine-dining restaurants etc.) operate in a unique service environment. They often face customers in transit (i.e. transient delivery) and with minimal information of their preferences (i.e. high uncertainty). This study investigates how such shops create service experience to customers by focusing on three constructs, namely, customer orientation, management commitment to service quality and quality of leader-member exchange in service systems with the uncertain and transient nature. Building on a systems approach of service experience design, the authors examine all possible effects (main effects and two-way and three-way interaction effects) on customer experience. Specifically, to frame the two-way and the three-way interaction effects, the authors adopt the contingency and configuration approaches, respectively.

This study employs a multiple respondent approach involving managers, employees and customers to collect data from 225 service shops in Hong Kong. Hierarchically moderated regression analysis is employed to analyze the collected data.

Contrary to our initial conceptualization, most of the direct effects and two-way interaction effects among the three constructs are insignificant. The authors do, however, uncover a significant effect of the three-way interaction term. The authors analyze the results from the configuration perspective.

The finding suggests that the configuration approach is necessary to determine the configuration concerning how design elements align with one another to generate an integrative effect on customer experience. The authors conclude that for high-contact services of the transient and high-uncertainty type, all three constructs must operate simultaneously to evoke favorable customer experience. Customer experience is holistically developed in a service system with high-uncertainty and transient nature, requiring simultaneous alignment across a range of design choices among those involved in service delivery (manager, employee and customer).

The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in the literature by extending the service profit chain (SPC) model and testing the validity of the proposed model in high-contact service contexts rather than by testing the key elements of the SPC in regard to a single business.

The study uses the exploratory factor analysis to identify a set of observables to use in representing the relationships included in the proposed extended model and employs the structural equation modeling to test the eight proposed hypothesis.

The study shows that the best-fit structural model supports the notion that employee internal service quality drives employee satisfaction that drives employee loyalty and employee productivity. In addition, employee productivity is shown as partially mediating the relationship between employee satisfaction and employee loyalty.

The results presented in this study have managerial implications and shed light on the importance of operational factors in the service industry, in particular high-contact services.

The integration of operations management and SPC still remain limited in the literature. Therefore, the study extends the SPC by integrating other operational factors, namely, employee productivity and internal service quality, and tests its validity in high contact services where the prolonged contact between the customer and the service system creates more opportunities to influence a customer’s perception of service quality.

This paper presents an exploratory study to understand the distinctive quality dimensions of high-contact Professional Service Firms (PSFs) and develop a conceptual model for Quality Management (QM). The paper is based on empirical evidences from multiple cases in leading Indian law firms.

The paper adopted an exploratory, multiple, embedded and comparative case study design. The empirical evidence from multiple case studies in 10 law firms (data includes 42 individual interviews, archival records, field notes) was used to explore the QM dimensions for PSFs.

The results showed that QM in PSFs is a multifaceted and continuous process rather than a straightforward and episodic one. The findings reveal three distinctive dimensions of QM for PSFs: managing the firm's image; managing the client-firm interaction and support processes and; managing the perceived value of service outcome. Further, the results showed a significant variation in the design of QM practices in a relatively homogenous group of PSFs (law firms). This reflected the influence of personnel and organizational characteristics on the QM.

The research is based on evidences collected from 10 Indian law firms and the research design is exploratory in nature. The future research is suggested in terms of extending the scope and research design.

The insights obtained from the paper have implications for managers working on the design of service operations and particularly service quality in high-contact PSFs similar to law firms. While the study does not prescribe a standard design of QM systems for PSFs, it seeks to foster the thinking of managers by helping them conceptualize the broad quality-control checkpoints and quality attributes specific to PSF settings

The academic research in the management of professional service quality is dominated by conceptual/theoretical models for customer evaluation of service provider's performance and the issue of operationalization of QM in PSFs is still needs further investigation. This paper contributes to the theory of service operations management (SOM) by focusing on the structure of QM systems in PSFs.

This paper aims to investigate how changes in technology and gender roles have changed Generation Y’s (Gen Y) perception of the gender of services from previous studies. Although the past 20 years have seen substantial changes in service delivery methods in addition to changes in the traditional roles of gender and households, in many ways, businesses continue to deliver products and services to their customers using traditional marketing techniques.

Survey data were collected using a sample of 190 responses.

Results indicate that consumers will consistently identify services as having gender, that consumers will rate service gender consistent with the perceived typical consumer of a service and that consumers will rate service gender consistent with the gender of their front-line employee. Online/automated services are also gendered. High-contact services have stronger gender identity than low-contact services. Congruence of consumer and service gender is more important to men than women.

This study suggests that managers must understand gender identity of their services as well as cues that suggest gender relating to consumers and front-line employees. Automated and online services also must be positioned to give correct gender cues, particularly to male markets.

This is one of the few studies to explore the gender identity of services and the first study to consider service gender in approximately two decades. Additionally, it is the first study to explore gender in automated delivery/online services as well as high/low-contact services, and the first study to gauge service gender perceptions of Gen Y.