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This paper provides a comparison of users and providers of third‐party logistics (3PL) services with respect to relationship marketing elements, such as trust and communication, as well as relationship marketing outcomes, such as retention and recovery.

Constructs for the relationship marketing elements and outcomes were derived from the extant literature and modified to reflect the nature of 3PL arrangements. The relevant data were collected from separate, but consistent, mail surveys that were sent to users of 3PL services as well as providers of 3PL services.

The results indicate statistically significant differences between 3PL users and providers across eight of nine relationship marketing elements, with the lone non‐significant comparison involving the communication construct. There are also statistically significant differences between 3PL users and providers for each of the four relationship marketing outcomes.

Although the present study utilized previously validated relationship marketing elements and outcomes, future research could examine other relationship marketing elements and outcomes. Future research could also investigate relationship marketing issues through dyads/matched pairs of 3PL users and providers.

This manuscript examines 3PL with respect to theories and/or frameworks that comes from outside the logistics discipline, an approach advocated by Stock. Moreover, the paper adds to Moore's 3PL/relationship marketing research by investigating relationship elements and outcomes. The current paper adds to the rather limited literature that incorporates both 3PL user and provider perspectives.

Focusing on customization, this paper aims to examine how service providers market health care in emerging markets through medical tourism.

Using a qualitative method, researchers conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with managers from five health-care providers and supporting organizations in the Philippines. For analysis, data from the service providers are compared.

Customization is found to play crucial role in offering health-care services. The customization takes place by adapting to emotional, social and cultural needs; alleviating knowledge asymmetry; and moderating the negative impact of the unfamiliar context experienced by international patients.

The empirically grounded theoretical framework needs to be tested in different contexts for generalization.

The study focuses on understanding and responding to the needs of international patients, also demonstrating that health-care marketing must be developed through a joint effort by both the medical and business sides of health-care providers.

The paper acknowledges the need for health-care marketing and the novel role of health-care providers.

Using a marketing lens, this study sheds light on the underexplored industry of medical tourism.

This study aims to describe the general picture of the competition in multichannel expert services in duopoly market and discuss how the quality difference may affects the competition between service providers with different quality levels, where both providers offer face-to-face channel and one of providers offers online channel additionally and service quality that consumers have heterogeneous preferences for is vertically differentiated. These results can be used to determine which service providers should offer online expert services and understand the competition in multichannel expert services in duopoly.

This paper uses the stylized vertical differentiation model to investigate the role of quality in expert services market, assuming that two services providers offer the same services with different quality levels and one of them having additional online services. Taking into account the differences of services from products and the particularity of online service, this paper extends the vertical differentiation model to expert services market.

The quality difference is the key factor in the competition of expert services. Service prices and the profits of providers, independent of the quality levels, are positively related to the quality difference, whereas the demand of online services is in the opposite direction regardless of which provider offers online channel. It demonstrates that provider with low-quality level should open online channel from the point of view of social welfare if it is closely related to the expert services, even though any provider can make more profits by opening online channel.

This extended vertical differentiation model, taking into account the importance of vertical differentiation in expert service, ignores the horizontal differentiation. More accurate strategies for multichannel expert services providers with what level of the quality a provider should offer is needed in future work. Moreover, this paper does not consider the different waiting costs of consumers in face-to-face channel and assumes that their problem will be solved eventually.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, no study has focused on the quality difference in multichannel expert services market or discussed how to offer online expert services in the duopoly market. This study extends the vertical differentiation model to the multichannel expert service market. Therefore, it fills this research gap and extends research to expert services market in the new network environment, aiming to help understand the competition in multichannel expert services.

Opaque selling has become popular among service providers in recent years. Although many researchers have investigated the optimality of opaque selling for service providers focusing on heterogeneous consumers, one question remaining unexplored is how the service providers’ optimal decisions are impacted by competitive intensity in a heterogeneous market. This paper aims to determine the conditions under which opaque selling is optimal for competing service providers.

The paper takes a Hotelling model to characterize the competition between two service providers. The authors also consider the interaction between the service providers and intermediary. Service providers act as game leaders and determine whether they should cooperate with the intermediary to introduce the opaque service.

The authors find that two competing service providers do not always benefit from opaque selling in a heterogeneous market consisting of leisure and business consumers, and the competitive intensity plays a significant role in the service providers’ decision optimization. Opaque selling allows service providers to acquire more profit in a highly competitive market or when the market contains a large proportion of leisure consumers. Otherwise, it is optimal for service providers without introducing the opaque selling.

The paper examines the optimality of opaque selling for competing service providers, and provides the suggestions to optimize the service providers’ decisions.

The paper investigates how the service providers’ optimal decisions are impacted by competitive intensity, considering the interaction between the service providers and intermediary.

The purpose of this research is to analyse Facilities Management (FM) service market trends and different supply models of FM services in Finland. In addition, the implications of the prevailing market conditions for a client's decision‐making concerning FM services sourcing are discussed.

The research is based on thematic interviews and a survey that were conducted in Finnish FM service companies.

In order to compete successfully in the FM service market and fulfil the clients' needs in the near future, service providers need to be able to offer a wider range of FM services. In addition, it is important that the suppliers become stronger in the area of technical service competence. As the service companies are developing their internal technical competences, the clients might become more confident in outsourcing more technically demanding FM services. These market trends might explain why buyers in the FM service market are more ahead in using supply models like the integrated service provider model as opposed to using supply models like the specialized service provider model.

This research offers new insight into FM service market trends in Finland and sheds light on the implications of the market conditions on the client's decision‐making process concerning the sourcing of FM services. In order to make stronger claims and to better understand the FM service industry as a whole, one should also gather data from the buyer side.

As information on a certain market is important for the buyers, it is suggested that the buyers of FM services should make a systematic research of the FM markets as part of sourcing strategy development or at least prior to releasing an invitation to tender to selected potential suppliers.

This research offers important market information that could be used to help the clients to make well‐grounded FM service sourcing decisions. In addition, this research describes those factors of competitiveness that come into play when service providers are in the process of reaching their competitive position in a certain market.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the diversity of markets for the provision of activation services.

The article is based on the outcomes of a project involving nine European countries. The project investigated changing forms of governance of income protection schemes and activation services for unemployed people. Diversity is investigated by focusing on five dimensions of diversity derived from the quasi‐market concept as developed by Le Grand: the purchasers, the providers, the customers, the purchaser‐provider split and the purchaser‐customer split.

The paper finds considerable diversity in the design of markets for the provision of activation. Diversity is visible in all dimensions involved in the analysis. One interesting finding is that a full split between purchasers and providers hardly exists, although some countries have introduced a stricter split than others. Another finding concerns the voice and choice of service consumers, which seems hardly affected by the introduction of market mechanisms in the provision of activation. Finally, marketisation does not seem to be an irreversible project, as de‐marketisation processes were identified as well.

Most current research into activation markets and their effects pays little attention to the issue of diversity in the design and functioning of markets. This article argues in favour of more systematic research of market diversity and of the variety of effects of various market models. Rather than comparing marketised with public service provision, a stronger focus on various market models may strengthen our insight into how service provision models affect the effectiveness of activation services.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare different groups of customers’ perceptions (i.e. stayers, switchers, and heavy switchers) of several loyalty antecedents such as satisfaction, trust, service quality, switching costs, marketing communication, and loyalty itself.

This study was carried out based on data collected through a questionnaire from 353 telecommunication services users in Portugal and using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and analysis of variance.

The three types of customers – stayers, switchers, and heavy switchers – clearly differ among themselves. Stayers differ from switchers regarding their communication efforts perceptions, and from heavy switchers in their loyalty, satisfaction, and trust levels. Switchers differ from heavy switchers in their loyalty levels.

Future research should examine differences between customers taking into account the impact of their personality, price sensitiveness, and orientation toward the adoption of new technologies.

As there are several differences among stayers, switchers, and heavy switchers, companies should not only recognize the heterogeneity of their customer base, but also target their marketing efforts accordingly.

This study is one of the few identifying groups of customers perception’s toward service providers. It also complements previous research by splitting them intro three different groups and by analyzing their behaviors across a set of previously unexamined marketing variables.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and classify the available types of 3D printing services, with the scope of determining the potential implications that such services could have on the supply chains of manufacturing firms and creating a research agenda for future studies.

The authors review the current literature on the potential supply chain impacts of 3D printing and evaluate the 3D printing services provided by 404 firms in selected European markets.

The results show that 3D printing services form a rapidly evolving industry, with new service providers entering the market on a regular basis. Evidence from the European markets investigated suggests that services can be classified into three distinct categories: generative, facilitative and selective services.

This paper represents an attempt to take stock of a fast-moving and potentially paradigm-shifting market. The implications are dynamic as new applications, business models and techniques are continually being developed. Further studies are required to substantiate the findings.

Three categories of 3D printing services that could significantly impact supply chain configurations of the future are proposed. Several issues specific to 3D printing services raised in the research agenda require further scrutiny and substantiation before services can reach their full potential.

This paper provides an overview of the growing 3D printing services industry, highlighting how the market might change as additive manufacturing technology matures.

The study is designed to explore the drivers of customer satisfaction of leading mobile network providers in a high‐growth market like Kolkata a metropolitan city in India.

A framework was developed based on earlier study of eminent researchers pertinent to customer satisfaction of mobile network providers in Germany, France, Korea, Canada, the USA and Greece. The construct flexibility was considered as a new determinant for customer satisfaction. For this data were collected from 277 respondents and pertinent analysis were made using multivariate techniques.

The study finds that generic requirements, price, and flexibility are major drivers of customer satisfaction of mobile network providers and brand wise relevance of these key determinants.

The fixed line telephone directory was the sampling frame, and all the respondents considered in the survey had a fixed line but there are situations where customer subscribes only to mobile phones. It is also necessary to study other metropolitan cities of India to validate the results we have obtained for Kolkata. Originality/value – The current research has taken into account new driver of customer satisfaction in a high‐growth market and this is the first study on drivers of customer satisfaction of leading mobile network providers in the city of Kolkata, India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how ICT service providers’ strategies affect customer migration.

Using a simulation approach and the agent-based model, this research explores how an incremental technology affects customer migration and changes the market structure.

The authors found that a strategy of disruptive technology innovation not only helps a follower company increase its market share, but it also completely disrupts the market.

This study investigates customer migration patterns in the saturated mobile telecommunication market based on service providers’ strategies.