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This study aims to examine the links between office types (cellular, shared-room, small and medium-sized open-plan) and employees' subjective well-being regarding cognitive and affective evaluations and the role perceived noise levels at work has on the aforementioned associations.

A survey with measures of office types, perceived noise levels at work and the investigated facets of subjective well-being (cognitive vs affective) was distributed to employees working as real estate agents in Sweden. In total, 271 useable surveys were returned and were analyzed using analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and a regression-based model mirroring a test of moderated mediation.

A significant difference was found between office types on the well-being dimension related to cognitive, but not affective, evaluations. Employees working in cellular and shared-room offices reported significantly higher ratings on this dimension than employees working in open-plan offices, and employees in medium-sized open-plan offices reported significantly lower cognitive evaluation scores than employees working in all other office types. This pattern of results was mediated by perceived noise levels at work, with employees in open-plan (vs cellular and shared-room) offices reporting less satisfactory noise perceptions and, in turn, lower well-being scores, especially regarding the cognitive (vs affective) dimension.

This is one of the first studies to compare the relative impact of office types on both cognitive and affective well-being dimensions while simultaneously testing and providing empirical support for the presumed process explaining the link between such aspects.

The purpose of this paper is to explore customer interactions with servicescapes and to explain in more depth the internal mechanisms that form the customer service experience.

The paper draws on an empirical study of customers using Swedish public transport systems. Data collection is based on a microethnographic approach, using think‐aloud protocols and video documentation.

The results from the empirical study contribute with a framework of three constellations of activities and interactions: namely, identifying, sense‐making, and using, which, depending on the empirical context, form two main customer process practices – navigating and ticketing. These constructs are theoretical and have implications for service research in the sense that they explain how customer experiences are formed.

While the conceptual framework is arguably applicable also to other servicescape processes and thus has the capacity to explain how a wide range of customer experiences are formed, the study is based on one industry. Consequently, it would be worthwhile to verify this framework in different service settings.

Managers should focus on making the servicescape design intuitive, meaningful and easy to use for their customers and, depending on the empirical context, support the customer processes of finding one's way and ticketing.

The study is novel by applying a microethnographic research approach in order to provide a systematic empirical analysis of how constellations of activities and interactions in servicescape processes create customer responses and thus form the customer's service experience.

The aim of this paper is to identify and describe important dimensions of the service process as defined by customers, and to compare the results from a specific use context with the recent conceptualization of the experience room.

Public transport travellers were provided with a public transport travel diary and were encouraged to make detailed notes about their service experience during their journey. The diaries were than transcribed and coded in NVivo8 using a constant comparative method.

The qualitative analysis of the public transport travel diaries revealed six emerging themes of service experience: customer processes, other customers, physical environment, contact personnel, provider processes and wider environment. The interplay between these themes is what forms the service experience of customers. The inductive analysis of the empirical material contextualizes the experience room model in a utilitarian and facility‐driven service. This deductive analysis of 100 customer experiences shows that the dimensions customer involvement, customer placement and physical artefacts are most important for the customer's service experience in this context.

This paper offers a set of important empirically based customer experience dimensions with public transport. The paper also provides a contextualization of a theoretical model, the experience room model. The contribution results show the importance of interactions with other customers and the physical environment for the customer's experience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what options the adult learner has for continued learning and what role universities are playing in providing net-based education. Current options for lifelong learning and improvement opportunities in the educational process are described based on an assessment inspired by principles of lean management.

Sweden is chosen as an example. The current level of net-based university education and the demand for it is assessed using official Swedish data. Lean management principles are used as a starting point to define parameters for interest for the adult learner. These parameters are then converted into a five-level scale for assessing current performance with focus on university courses. The authors also study how Swedish County Councils manage their employee education and carry out a check of courses offered by massive open online course providers.

Lean management principles in combination with customer focus seem to present relevant parameters for assessing distance education. Preliminary results indicate that lean lifelong learning has a considerable improvement potential. The main reasons for this potential seem to be more of a bureaucratic and political nature, whereas technology and resources appear to be less of an issue.

The results have implications for both universities and organisations. The pressure on universities to become more customer-focussed, while at the same time, cost-effectiveness is likely to increase.

Using the customer perspective for educational services and applying lean principles to education.