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Notwithstanding a significant amount of literature on the technology acceptance model (TAM), past research has overlooked the role consumers' technology readiness (TR) plays in adoption of self‐service technologies (SSTs). This study aims to fill this research gap by developing and testing a model that integrates the role of TR into the TAM.

The study proposes a research framework to suggest the direct and moderating roles of TR in the TAM. Extant research from various research streams is reviewed, resulting in 13 hypotheses. Data collected from customers with SST experiences are examined through structural equation modeling (SEM) and hierarchical moderated regression analysis.

Results indicate that customer TR enhances perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward use, and intention to use. Results also show that TR attenuates the positive relationship between perceived ease of use and attitude toward using SSTs.

This research represents an early attempt to explain the role of TR in the TAM in the context of SSTs. Future research directions are discussed, with emphasis on incorporating customer differences and situational factors to better understand this model in various service settings.

Findings show that TR influences perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward using SSTs, and behavioral intentions. Therefore, to achieve better SST service outcomes firms implementing SSTs should give increased attention to customer TR. Firms should stimulate the use of technological services by strengthening positive TR drivers (the optimism and innovativeness dimensions) to encourage use of technological services and positive attitudes toward technology, while also reducing TR inhibitors (the discomfort and insecurity dimensions) to lower reluctance to use technology.

This study is the first to integrate the role of TR into the TAM in the context of SSTs.

Few empirical studies have been conducted to explore the mechanisms and drivers of service exchange and value co‐creation. In particular, no study has compared a service system design informed by service‐dominant logic (SDL) with a service system design informed by goods‐dominant logic (GDL). The purpose of this paper is to address this knowledge gap. The research question is: does a service‐dominant system design result in a more favourable customer experience than a goods‐dominant service system?

An experiment was carried out on a group of habitual bus travellers. The subjects were asked to plan a specific journey using two online journey planning systems. Two hypotheses were tested: first, an SDL informed service system will evoke a better overall customer experience than a GDL informed service system. Second, this better customer experience arises out of seven service system design characteristics. Both objective and subjective data were gathered to compare the customers' experiences of using the two service systems.

The results show that a service‐dominant service system outperforms a goods‐dominant service system in terms of both objective and subjective criteria. Moreover, the experiment elucidates the subjects' perceived importance of the characteristics of a service‐dominant service system. Analysis of the subjects' perception of the two service systems reveals that certain characteristics set the service‐dominant service system more distinctly apart from the goods‐dominant one.

The paper contributes by extending the empirical foundation for service‐dominant logic, providing new knowledge on value co‐creation and design characteristics of service systems, and identifying the most important service system characteristics perceived by the customer.

This article presents the results of a qualitative study of a Portuguese bank regarding customer use of Internet banking integrated in a multi‐channel offering that includes high street branches, telephone banking, and automatic teller machines. The results show that performance evaluation is a key factor influencing channel use. Customers tend to use the different service delivery systems in a complementary way, taking into account their assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Customer characteristics, and the type of financial operation, are also identified as important factors influencing this process. These results indicate that, in a multi‐channel context, customer satisfaction with Internet services depends not only on the performance of this channel in isolation, but also on how it contributes to satisfaction with the overall service offering.

The purpose of this paper is to put forth an expanded servicescape framework that shows that a perceived servicescape comprises physical, social, socially symbolic, and natural environmental dimensions.

This conceptual paper offers an in‐depth literature review on servicescape topics from a variety of disciplines, both inside and outside marketing, to advance a logical framework built on Bitner's seminal article (1992).

A servicescape comprises not only objective, measureable, and managerially controllable stimuli but also subjective, immeasurable, and often managerially uncontrollable social, symbolic, and natural stimuli, which all influence customer approach/avoidance decisions and social interaction behaviors. Furthermore, customer responses to social, symbolic, and natural stimuli are often the drivers of profound person‐place attachments.

The framework supports a servicescape paradigm that links marketing, environmental/natural psychology, humanistic geography, and sociology.

Although managers can easily control a service firm's physical stimuli, they need to understand how other critical environmental stimuli influence consumer behavior and which stimuli might overweigh a customer's response to a firm's physical dimensions.

The paper shows how a servicescape's naturally restorative dimension can promote relief from mental fatigue and improve customer health and well‐being. Thus, government institutions (e.g. schools, hospitals) can improve people's lives by creating natural servicescapes that have restorative potential.

The framework organizes more than 25 years of servicescape research in a cogent framework that has cross‐disciplinary implications.

The purpose of this article is to study the construct of reputation in retail services, its dimensions and attributes from the store management perspective.

The article adapts the conceptual model developed by Vidaver‐Cohen who suggests that reputation predictors are formed by eight quality dimensions. In the first stage of the study 18 interviews were carried out. In the second stage a survey containing 170 statements was conducted.

The main contribution lies on the identification of the context specific attributes of the quality dimensions of reputation and their content in retailing.

The study focuses on identifying reputation dimensions and their attributes and contents in the retail context. The empirical data were gathered from stores located in shopping centres.

The study suggests that reputation management in the service sector might be easier if managers were better able to recognise the industry‐related quality dimensions of reputation. In addition, stores should be more prepared for unforeseen, even disastrous events and publicity that may ruin their reputation in one way or another.

Numerous researchers have recognised the critical role of reputation in marketing, but as yet empirical reputation studies are scarce, at least in retailing services.

Previous research on the relationship between service environments and customer emotions and service outcomes has focused on the physical environment. Among studies exploring the social environment, the emphasis has been on service employees, ignoring the impact of other customers. Recent research has further called for the need to include displayed emotion within the social environment. Therefore, this study aims to develop and test a more comprehensive model that focuses on the relationship between the social environment (employee displayed emotion and customer climate) and the physical environment (ambient and design factors) and resulting customer emotion and service outcomes.

Based on past research, a theoretical framework was developed to propose the links between social/physical environments and customer emotion/perceptions. Extant research from various academic fields, including environmental psychology, was reviewed, deriving 11 hypotheses. Data collected from fashion apparel retailers, using both observation and customer survey methods, was examined through structural equation modeling (SEM).

Results show that both social and physical environments have a positive influence on customer emotion and satisfaction, which in turn affect behavioral intentions. The physical environment exhibited more influence on customer emotion and satisfaction than social environment.

This research explains how both social and physical environments affect customer emotion and perceptions. Future research directions are discussed, with an emphasis on incorporating customer characteristics, industry attributes, and cultural variables to better understand the influence of service environments in different service settings.

Social and physical environments influence customer emotional states within the service delivery context, which in turn affect customer service evaluations. Therefore, both social and physical service environments should be emphasized by service firms.

This research represents an early attempt to develop a more comprehensive model explaining how both social and physical environments affect customer emotion and perceptions. This study also represents the first empirical study of service environment research to include employee displayed emotion as part of the social environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how product‐centric businesses (PCBs), operating in a business‐to‐business environment, configure their organizations to align services strategy with structure. PCBs are companies whose businesses were historically based on the products, rather than services, they sold.

A UK‐based study was undertaken which comprised 40 interviews with managers in 25 PCBs from 11 sectors.

The main parameter which determines the appropriate organizational configuration for services within the PCB's structure is strategy. A new framework is developed from the empirical research which identifies a number of PCB configurations, based on PCBs' services strategies (services engagement, extension, penetration and transformation) and organizational structures aligned to strategic business units (SBUs), i.e. combined product and services, independent services and customer‐focused. The framework is used to show how organizational structure changes in response to changes in strategy. For certain strategies, the degree of product differentiation (services engagement) and future product sales potential (services transformation) also plays a part in determining strategy/structure configurations.

Future research could confirm and compare the effectiveness of the identified structural configurations.

Managers in PCBs can identify appropriate organizational structures based on their services strategies and products. They can configure organizational design in light of evolving strategies that enable services‐led growth.

The paper presents a large pan‐sector study of organizational design for services as it related to PCBs, providing a new framework through which appropriate strategy/structure configurations can be identified and investigated as services‐led growth takes place.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the emerging crowd‐funding phenomenon, that is a collective effort by consumers who network and pool their money together, usually via the internet, in order to invest in and support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Successful service businesses that organize crowd‐funding and act as intermediaries are emerging, attesting to the viability of this means of attracting investment.

The research employs a “grounded theory” approach, performing an in‐depth qualitative analysis of three cases involving crowd‐funding initiatives: SellaBand in the music business, Trampoline in financial services, and Kapipal in non‐profit services. These cases were selected to represent a diverse set of crowd‐funding operations that vary in terms of risk/return for the investor and the type of payoff associated to the investment.

The research addresses two research questions: how and why do consumers turn into crowd‐funding participants? and how and why do service providers set up a crowd‐funding initiative? Concerning the first research question, the authors' findings reveal purposes, characteristics, roles and tasks, and investment size of crowd‐funding activity from the consumer's point of view. Regarding the second research question, the authors' analysis reveals purposes, service roles, and network effects of crowd‐funding activity investigated from the point of view of the service organization that set up the initiative.

The findings also have implications for service managers interested in launching and/or managing crowd‐funding initiatives.

The paper addresses an emerging phenomenon and contributes to service theory in terms of extending the consumer's role from co‐production and co‐creation to investment.

The objective of this paper is to present an empirically founded outline of value creation and the orchestration of this process.

A qualitative study of the video game industry was undertaken for which data were collected through use of both primary and secondary sources. The gathered data enabled a categorization of the industry, from both a user and a firm perspective, into different archetypical modes of value creation.

The study adds to the understanding of value creation by illustrating that a firm can orchestrate the process through which value is created by being: an inspirator; a facilitator, and an attendant. In illustrating the continuity of this process, the paper introduces the orchestrating firm and the value emergence process.

In describing the modes through which interaction occurs within the video game industry, the paper provides an outline which can be used for further investigations of value creation. This industry holds, however, certain features making the arguments presented in need of further research.

Based on the empirical findings, an outline is provided for the allocation and deployment of internal resources in order to enable continuous value creation.

The paper empirically exemplifies how value creation is orchestrated by developing firms within the video game industry and illustrates value creation as a continuous process; a value emergence process.

The purpose of this paper is to accelerate research related to the employee-facets of service management by summarizing current developments in multiple research streams, providing propositions, and articulating new directions for theory and empirical inquiry.

Seven scholars provide short reviews of the core topics and findings from four employee-related research streams – collective turnover, service climate, emotional labor, and occupational stress; and generate propositions to guide future theoretical and empirical work. Four distinguished service scholars – David Bowen, Ray Fisk, Christian Grönroos, and Jochen Wirtz comment upon these research streams and provide future directions for accelerating employee-related research in service management.

All four research-streams yield insights that have the potential to advance service management research. Commentaries from the distinguished scholars further integrate this work with key concerns within service management including technology-enablement, transformative services, and service strategy.

This paper is unique in its scope of coverage of management topics related to service and its aim to promote interdisciplinary dialog between service management scholars and researchers conducting employee-related research relevant to services.