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The purpose of this paper is to challenge service researchers to design for service inclusion, with an overall goal of achieving inclusion by 2050. The authors present service inclusion as an egalitarian system that provides customers with fair access to a service, fair treatment during a service and fair opportunity to exit a service.

Building on transformative service research, a transformative, human-centered approach to service design is proposed to foster service inclusion and to provide a platform for managerial action. This conceptual study explores the history of service exclusion and examines contemporary demographic trends that suggest the possibility of worsening service exclusion for consumers worldwide.

Service inclusion represents a paradigm shift to higher levels of understanding of service systems and their fundamental role in human well-being. The authors argue that focused design for service inclusion is necessary to make service systems more egalitarian.

The authors propose four pillars of service inclusion: enabling opportunity, offering choice, relieving suffering and fostering happiness.

Service organizations are encouraged to design their offerings in a manner that promotes inclusion and permits customers to realize value.

This comprehensive research agenda challenges service scholars to use design to create inclusive service systems worldwide by the year 2050. The authors establish the moral imperative of design for service inclusion.

Elevating the human experience (HX) through research collaborations is the purpose of this article. ServCollab facilitates and supports service research collaborations that seek to reduce human suffering and improve human well-being.

To catalyze this initiative, the authors introduce ServCollab's three human rights goals (serve, enable and transform), standards of justice for serving humanity (distributive, procedural and interactional justice) and research approaches for serving humanity (service design and community action research).

ServCollab seeks to advance the service research field via large-scale service research projects that pursue theory building, research and action. Service inclusion is the first focus of ServCollab and is illustrated through two projects (transformative refugee services and virtual assistants in social care). This paper seeks to encourage collaboration in more large-scale service research projects that elevate the HX.

ServCollab seeks to raise the aspirations of service researchers, expand the skills of service research teams and build mutually collaborative service research approaches that transform human lives.

ServCollab is a unique organization within the burgeoning service research community. By collaborating with service researchers, with service research centers, with universities, with nonprofit agencies and with foundations, ServCollab will build research capacity to address large-scale human service system problems. ServCollab takes a broad perspective for serving humanity by focusing on the HX. Current business research focuses on the interactive roles of customer experience and employee experience. From the perspective of HX, such role labels are insufficient concepts for the full spectrum of human life.

Smart technologies and connected objects are rapidly changing the organizational frontline. Yet, our understanding of how these technologies infuse service encounters remains limited. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to update existing classifications of Frontline Service Technology (FST) infusion. Moreover, the authors discuss three promising smart and connected technologies – conversational agents, extended reality (XR) and blockchain technology – and their respective implications for customers, frontline employees and service organizations.

This paper uses a conceptual approach integrating existing work on FST infusion with artificial intelligence, robotics, XR and blockchain literature, while also building on insights gathered through expert interviews and focus group conversations with members of two service research centers.

The authors define FST and propose a set of FST infusion archetypes at the organizational frontline. Additionally, the authors develop future research directions focused on understanding how conversational agents, XR and blockchain technology will impact service.

This paper updates and extends existing classifications of FST, while paving the road for further work on FST infusion.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an interdisciplinary framework bridging service design and social entrepreneurship with transformative service research (TSR) to create greater synergetic effects to advance wellbeing and drive social impact.

This research provides an interdisciplinary review and synthesis of literature to establish a basis for a conceptual framework advancing human wellbeing and driving social impact.

The overarching framework created incorporates various concepts, methods and tools across the three research domains. At the core of the framework is the ultimate goal of multilevel wellbeing and social impact. The core is subsequently supported by established social entrepreneurship concepts and strategies: prosocial motivation, hybrid identity, social bricolage, entrepreneurial thinking, community engagement, business model design and innovative delivery. The implementation of these concepts could benefit from the methods and tools used in service design, such as: design probes, service blueprints, appreciative inquiry, contextual interviews, actor maps, sustainable business model canvas and service prototyping.

The paper uses the refugee crisis as an illustrative example of how the proposed framework can be put into action by service organizations.

By bridging literature in TSR, service design and social entrepreneurship, this paper provides service managers with a framework to guide scalable systemic solutions for service organizations interested in advancing human wellbeing and driving social impact.

Grounded in Transformative Service Research, the purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanisms by which bank information transparency influences consumer’s financial well-being (FWB). The authors propose that customer attitudes toward the brand and the subjectively perceived ability of individuals to deal with the financial challenges explain the enhancement of FWB driven by bank information transparency.

A survey was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. In total, 400 bank customers of five commercial banks in Colombia were approached and asked to fill out a pen and paper questionnaire. Serial mediation analysis was applied to test the hypotheses.

This research shows that bank information transparency can uplift the FWB of customers. Furthermore, the positive effect of bank information transparency on the FWB occurs because the shared information improves the positive attitudes toward banks and the perceived financial self-efficacy of customers.

This paper heeds the call of current literature for improved explanations of the relationship between attempts to inform consumers about financial services and their FWB.

This research shows that managers who embrace the challenging task of improving the FWB of their customers should design strategies for more transparent information sharing with their customers. However, these strategies should be designed not only to deliver information to customers but also to increase the perceived disclosure, accuracy and clarity of shared information.

This pioneering study aims to explain the effects of bank information transparency on the FWB of consumers by drawing on interdisciplinary literature. This research is important as many banks aim to increase their information transparency without a clear understanding of the effects of these actions on consumers and therefore in many instances their efforts fail. A key contribution of this study is identifying concrete mechanisms (i.e. brand attitudes and self-efficacy) that help managers to improve customers’ FWB via information transparency. Accordingly, the authors offer suggestions for better information transparency strategy implementation.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the role that service firms can play to improve societal health and create symbiotic value, defined as value created as a result of collaborative relationships between the firm, its employees, customers and the communities in which it operates.

This manuscript examines the case of Millennials as they make up a dominant portion of the current workforce in society and proposes a conceptual framework for symbiotic value creation.

This study identifies the need to develop supporting mechanisms for the growing role of Millennials as employees and members of society that ultimately, in turn, create symbiotic value.

The paper proposes an integrative framework beyond the traditional and siloed examination of linkages between employee, customer, firm and society, creating new opportunities for extending a service theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for guiding social innovation in service (SIS), defined as the creation of novel, scalable and sustainable market based service offerings that solve systemic societal problems.

This research provides a review and synthesis of transdisciplinary literatures to establish a basis for the conceptual framework proposed for SIS.

It is argued that the primary unit of an SIS is the service firm and that there are micro-, meso-, and macro-level actors and enablers in the ecosystem that can help bring about SIS. Examples from the hospitality and tourism industry are used to demonstrate key points.

Benefits of an SIS to companies include growth through new markets and innovative value offerings, sustainable supply chains in production, building consumer value and trust in the company/brand, attracting and retaining talent and being proactive in including social and environmental measures of success in customer metrics and company financial reporting.

This paper contributes to the social innovation and service literature by: offering a new, scientifically supported view of an SIS; providing managers with a framework to guide social innovation within their service firm and for the benefit of their company and its stakeholders; and directing service scholars to research issues necessary to advance SIS.

Profound economic, social, political and environmental problems are cascading across modern civilization in the 21st century. Many of these problems resulted from the prevailing effects of rational economics focused on profit maximization. The purpose of this paper is to reframe the mindsets of scholars, firms and public policy decision-makers through enabling Service Thinking practices.

Marketing, service and allied discipline literature are synthesized, and Raworth's (2018) Doughnut Economics model is adapted to conceptualize and construct the Service Thinking framework.

Service Thinking is defined as a just, mutualistic and human-centered mindset for creating and regenerating service systems that meet the needs of people and the living planet. Service Thinking is enabled by five practices (service empathy, service inclusion, service respect, service integrity and service courage).

Actionable implications are presented for service ecosystem entities to uplift well-being, enhance sustainability and increase prosperity.

Service Thinking practices are shaped by influencing forces (marketing, education and law/policy) and operant service ecosystem resources (motivation–opportunity–ability or MOA), which makes Service Thinking applicable to four economic entities in the service ecosystem: the household, the market, the state and the commons.

This study aims to explore how the attitudes, motivations and practices of informal entrepreneurs, who choose service exclusion, prevent them from recognizing and taking advantage of transformative opportunities and embracing change.

The authors conducted a two-year study to explore five types of informal entrepreneurs (musicians, street vendors, artists, owners of informal smoke shops and street food vendors). The authors used semi-structured interviews and applied thematic analysis (ATA) of popular music and narratives to shed light on their attitudes, motivations and practices.

The study shows how potential service participants freely exclude themselves from services and transformative service initiatives, preventing them from realizing opportunities and embracing change that can improve their well-being. The study also demonstrates that to serve human needs fairly, service designers need to recognize that some actors require more attention and resources than others to achieve their potential.

The study challenges the notion that any population experiencing vulnerability wants help and chooses to participate in transformative service initiatives. Service participants can, in fact, exclude themselves from services and transformative service initiatives by free will, demonstrating that service exclusion is a multidirectional phenomenon, not unidirectional. Additionally, the paper analyzes narratives gathered from aesthetic expressions, using principles of ATA, introducing music thematic analysis as a research approach.

The purpose of this special issue is to advance discussions on how the richness, complexities and challenges of the Middle East and Africa (MEA) context can contribute to the understanding of under-researched, as well as newly emerging, phenomena within the service research field.

This special issue of the Journal of Services Marketing consists of eight articles that focus on different service research topics emerging from the MEA region. The eight papers cover a variety of research methods (e.g. interviews, focus groups, ethnography, case study, survey), participants (e.g. customers, executives, households, refugees, human trafficking survivors, NGO leaders, government officials), countries (e.g. Zambia, Turkey, Nigeria, Morocco, South Africa, Senegal, Lebanon) and service industries (e.g. health care, finance, hospitality, faith-based services).

This editorial provides background information on the MEA context and proposes a unique research agenda for MEA development with a portfolio of intriguing research questions and inspiring opportunities for further research. Specifically, the editorial highlights six of the most promising and unique avenues for service research in the MEA context by considering the diversity and variations between the MEA nations: cultivate service inclusion; tackle service corruption and designing for justice; climate protection to mitigate further instability and conflict; closing the gap in digital technology: opportunities and challenges; prioritize essential service sectors (education, health care and tourism); and eradicate “service” poverty.

This special issue is a first attempt to explore the MEA region from a service research perspective. The editorial discusses unique challenges and opportunities from theoretical and managerial points of view and calls for embracing this region as the new frontier for service researchers.