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The purpose of the paper is to review the contribution of the paper, “The Importance of Servicescapes in Leisure Service Settings” to the discipline and to offer directions for further research and developments in the research area.

Key findings from research streams in sports and entertainment, leisure and hospitality, and services and retail marketing, which emanated from the publication of the paper, are highlighted. Opportunities for future research are discussed.

The importance of the servicescape in leisure settings has become even greater on a national and global basis as individuals spend more time, money and effort pursuing hedonic consumption in service settings. More research is needed within specific service contexts among and between individuals, groups and cultures to determine the holistic and particular influences of the physical environment on consumer response.

With increased co-production of service experiences, including the integration of technology and mobile/wearable devices, marketers and researchers must better understand the role of the physical surroundings on individual, group and organizational behavior in the evolving servicescape.

The original paper motivated significant, highly cited studies in multiple disciplines integrated and overlapping with services and retail marketing. Taking a historical perspective encourages other researchers to conduct research of personal interest to address theoretical, methodological and practical issues. The retrospective analysis by the authors gives insight into the thought processes associated with understanding key aspects of the servicescape that contribute to the historical development of services marketing and offers food for thought (if not ambience and layout) for future research directions.

The purpose of this study is to model the consumer journey of admission-based membership services from initial purchase to full-season memberships. Particularly, the study pays attention to customer-owned contacts (purchase behavior) and service-owned contacts (salesperson voice- and text-based communications), to examine longitudinal internal data to determine factors which hinder and propel customers toward full memberships.

On the basis of big data supplied by a National Hockey League team, the study uses three simultaneous equations in modeling to account for potential endogeneity related to the likelihood that sales and service personnel are more likely to contact frequent customers. The longitudinal data allow us to map the customer journey over the course of multiple years, compared to typical cross-section studies.

The findings show that as customers increasingly own committed points of contact, they are prepared to move to the next level – but rarely skip major steps in the relationship journey. The quantity, type and timing of customer contacts by the service firm may hinder or propel the customer down the path to purchase full memberships.

The prevalence of big data among service firms should allow researchers to better understand how consumers respond to contact strategies over time, as well as fluctuations in firm performance. The research adds to the customer journey research stream, while meeting the call of researchers to bridge the gap between service marketing research priorities and current practice.

Sales practices and marketing automation tactics may come at the cost of burning leads and alienating future members. Frequent text-based contacts absent voice-based interactions hinder consumer journey and work against relationship building. Service marketers can learn how to better allocate resources, properly manage and motivate contact strategies and target campaigns to send the right message via the right media at the right time.

This is the first study to map customer journey for admission-based, membership services. The longitudinal approach across multiple years provides a deep understanding of how customers take steps toward loyal membership status, while also pinpointing potential drawbacks of current contact strategies.

Previous sales promotion research has focused primarily upon groceries and packaged goods. This research examines what motivates consumers to respond to sales promotions for leisure services. Leisure services may offer price deals, but also frequently offer non‐price sales promotions which may add entertainment value for some consumers. We find that consumers who are likely to respond to leisure service price deals are motivated by primarily economic reasons. Emotional motives, on the other hand, are found to drive consumer responses to organization‐related non‐price deals.

This study seeks to illustrate empirically how person‐situation variants influence customer assessments of service quality across multiple stages in the service drama.

Using surveys that were systematically distributed to 3,000 passengers boarding 30 different flights (with 432 complete responses), the effects of consumption motive (hedonic versus utilitarian) and service duration (shorter versus longer service encounters) were examined in relationship to perceived time pressure within a multiple‐sequence service encounter.

The results indicate that the consumption motives (utilitarian‐hedonic) of passengers do influence perceptions of service quality, as well as altering perceived time pressure resulting from service delays. Also, the length of the service duration moderates the negative effects of time pressure on perceived service quality.

Extrapolating the findings from this research to other service industries should be done with care given that consumption motives and perceived time pressures may vary greatly across different service industries.

This study suggests that managers must develop systemic solutions to service delays during early stages of the encounter as such delays may prompt a “domino effect” that transcends all subsequent stages in the service encounter. Service encounters that are longer in duration may also be more susceptible to critical service evaluations if these delays are not rectified.

This study demonstrates the critical issue of measuring service quality during each successive stage of a service encounter.

SERVQUAL, an instrument developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, is currently the most popular measure of service quality. Compares these original studies with subsequent research employing the SERVQUAL instrument. Analyzes its psychometric properties to gain some basic insights into the overall utility of this measure, and offers directions for its use in future research. Discusses managerial implications and recommendations resulting from these analyses.

Presents a dynamic model of the consumer complaining behavior process. Is unique in that it distinguishes between negative word‐of‐mouth that occurs prior to seeking redress (or in lieu of seeking redress) and negative word‐of‐mouth that occurs after seeking redress. Another unique aspect of this study is that it specifically recognizes positive word‐of‐mouth as a possible post‐complaint response. The results indicate that the major factor that determines why some dissatisfied consumers seek redress and give the seller a chance to remedy the problem, while others exit and engage in negative word‐of‐mouth behavior, is the perceived likelihood of success. Results also show that, once a dissatisfied customer seeks redress, that person expects to receive a fair settlement but, more importantly, to be treated with courtesy and respect. Based on these results, discusses the pervasive effects of customer service on consumer complaining behavior, and offers managerial recommendations.

Services marketing research has largely focussed on measuring service quality and satisfaction associated with the primary service itself, with little attention given to the effect of the physical surroundings of the service setting. Leisure services in particular, may be concerned with how consumers perceive the quality of the “servicescape” and what effect the servicescape has on customer satisfaction and repatronage. Investigates these effects, as well as the interactions of perceived crowding, excitement and enduring involvement associated with the leisure service. Results indicate that servicescape quality does play an important role in determining customer affective and behavioural response to the service.

This study examines how various characteristics of the discount retail environment and the overall attitude towards a discount retail store, considered to be an abstract and global image component, influence consumers’ satisfaction and how consumers’ satisfaction, in turn, affects store loyalty. The data, collected from a sample of 517 discount retail customers in Daegu, Korea, indicate that: (1) forming the overall attitude is more closely related to in‐store services: atmosphere, employee service, after sales service and merchandising, (2) store satisfaction is formed through perceived store atmosphere and value, (3) the overall attitude has strong influence on satisfaction and loyalty and its impact is much stronger on loyalty than on satisfaction, (4) store loyalty is directly affected by most significantly location, merchandising and after sale service in order, (5) satisfaction is not related to customers’ committed store revisiting behavior. The applications in management and implications for future research are discussed.

Social media is replete with malicious and unempathetic rhetoric yet few studies explain why these emotions are publicly dispersed. The purpose of the study is to investigate how the intergroup counter-empathic response called schadenfreude originates and how it prompts media consumption and engagement.

The study consists of two field surveys of 635 in-group members of two professional sports teams and 300 residents of California and Texas with political party affiliations. The analysis uses SEM quantitative methods.

Domain passion and group identification together determine the harmonious/obsessive tendencies of passion for an activity and explain the schadenfreude response toward the rival out-group. Group identification is a stronger driver of obsessive passion compared to harmonious passion. Schadenfreude directly influences the use of traditional media (TV, radio, domain websites), it triggers social media engagement (posting), and it accelerates harmonious passion's effects on social media posting.

The study is limited by the groups used to evaluate the research model, sports, and politics.

The more highly identified and passionate group members experience greater counter-empathy toward a rival. At extreme levels of group identification, obsessive passion increases at an increasing rate and may characterize extremism. Harboring feelings of schadenfreude toward the out-group prompts those with harmonious passion for an activity to more frequently engage on social media in unempathetic ways.

This study links the unempathetic, yet common emotion of schadenfreude with passion, intergroup dynamics, and media behavior.

The definition of the term “family” around the Western world is more heterogeneous than ever before and so are its roles and the social expectations of it. However, prisoners’ families (specifically parents and siblings) are expected to support their incarcerated son/brother as they are perceived responsible for his choices and as having the closest relationship with him. Based on a study of parents and siblings of incarcerated men in Israel, this chapter’s goal is to shed light on families’ choice to support their incarcerated son or brother and the struggles this choice entails. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 17 parents and 10 siblings of incarcerated men in Israel showed that nuclear family members may experience various struggles throughout the legal proceedings, including family hardships, negative social experiences, and negative experiences with formal institutions – all leading to social self-exclusion. Looking through the intersectionality lens, the findings show that when accumulating hardships that prisoners’ families experience encounter perceived harsh institutional systems of oppression, preordained marginalization can be deepened as families operate in opposition.