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What role do consumers play in constructing their own luxury experiences? Challenging the dominant product-focus in luxury conceptualizations, this research note conceptualizes agentic luxury in the context of luxury services. Drawing on extant luxury research, the purpose of this article is to develop how consumers may take on more active roles in enacting their own luxury services experiences.

This research note is conceptual but builds on managerial insights from the luxury service sector to conceptualize the concept of agentic luxury.

Our research note develops a conceptual definition of agentic luxury and provides seven research propositions for its impact on luxury service encounters. These propositions detail how consumers engage in constructing their luxury experience; the roles of consumers and luxury service providers in the experience; and boundary conditions of agentic luxury. The authors further develop the role of customer-as-designer and highlight similarities and differences for agentic luxury between luxury goods and services.

The authors combine the recognized specificities of the largely goods-dominated luxury sector with service research to show how luxury service providers can engage customers for more complete and engaging luxury service experiences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research note is the first to conceptualize agentic luxury. The authors show how agentic luxury fills a gap in the current literature, and our propositions advance the relevance of agentic luxury for luxury service research.

A small group of pioneering founders led the creation and early evolution of the service research field. Decades later, this article shares timeless service wisdom from ten of those pioneering founders.

Bowen and Fisk specified three criteria by which to identify a pioneering founder. In total, 11 founders met the criteria (Bateson, Berry, Bitner, Brown, Chase, Edvardsson, Grönroos, Gummesson, Parasuraman, Schneider and Zeithaml) and were invited to join Bowen and Fisk – founders that also met the criteria as coauthors. Ten founders then answered a set of questions regarding their careers as service scholars and the state of the field.

Insightful reflections were provided by each of the ten pioneering founders. In addition, based on their synthesis of the reflections, Bowen and Fisk developed nine wisdom themes for service researchers to consider and to possibly act upon.

The service research field is in its fifth decade. This article offers a unique way to learn directly from the pioneering founders about the still-relevant history of the field, the founders' lives and contributions as service scholars and the founders' hopes and concerns for the service research field.

The study aims to highlight and understand, and bring the human agency into the debate on the theory of normative control. While, the previous literature has highlighted the problem of the missing subject. However, the actual human agency in terms of agential properties has not been seriously addressed. This study is an attempt to overcome this problem of the missing subject.

A two-phase design inspired by retroductive inference was adopted for this study. In the first phase, abduction was used to explore the literature on normative control to highlight the forces of attraction, which may pull the employees to participate willingly within normative control systems. In the second phase, following retroductive inference, agential explanations of the forces of attraction identified in the first phase were explored by venturing into other related fields, e.g. psychology and sociology.

The study highlights four strategies used by organizations using normative control, i.e. comfort zoning, relational bonding, moral trapping and elitist appeal. These strategies rely on attractive forces. These forces of attraction pull employees to participate in the normative control system. The attractive element in the identified strategies is due to the fact that these strategies target specific agential properties, i.e. the need for comfort, sense of belonging, moral agency and pride. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals drive their concerns from culture but in relation to their capacity as needy beings for being enculturated.

Theoretically, this study adds conceptual strength to the explanations of normative control. It is suggested that neglect of human agency renders explanations conceptually weak. The study fills this gap in the research. Practically, this study would be beneficial for better design and implementation of normative control. Several studies have pointed out that normative control does not yield the intended results. Out of many reasons, a lack of understanding of human agency is a major cause of unsuccessful attempts to normatively control employees. This study provides some basis to understand the human subject for better design of soft systems of control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that explores agential properties with reference to normative control systems. This study is important for researchers and practitioners.