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Almost everything consumers buy in a store has a package. At point of purchase, the first moment of truth, the package functions as a silent salesman. Once the purchase is made, the product is consumed in the second moment of truth. The purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of how customers evaluate different aspects of the package in the first and second moments of truth.

An empirical investigation is conducted on how customers experience three different packages for everyday commodities in the first and second moments of truth. Causal modeling is used to analyze the impact of different benefits of a package onto customer satisfaction and loyalty.

It was found that both benefits and attributes can have different roles in affecting customer satisfaction and loyalty in different parts of the consumption cycle. Furthermore, the results show that there are significant differences for the impacts of customer satisfaction on loyalty in the first moment of truth compared to the second moment of truth.

By applying a consumption system approach, it is possible for managers to design a package that can attract customers in the first moment of truth and at the same time create customer satisfaction in the second moment of truth.

The research shows that the role of certain benefits and attributes can be different in the purchase and use situation. Previously, this has been modeled separately but by operationalizing the first and second moment of truth in the same model the true effects of various benefits and attributes can be identified.

To contribute to the theoretical work on products that contain both tangible (goods) and intangible (service) dimensions, by arguing that the consumption of physical goods and services should be understood as a process with two major steps – the first and second moments of truth.

An investigation of the service perspective and packaging is made based on a literature review. Empirical examples are then presented from an interview study of people working with packaging‐related issues at Procter & Gamble, Schwarzkopf & Henkel, Procordia Food, and Coop. The relationship between theory/concepts and research in the paper can be described in terms of extension and emergent.

Consumers evaluate quality when they purchase an offering and when they consume it. Using the terminology of the present paper, this means that the perception of quality is created at both the first and second moments of truth. The first moment of truth is about obtaining customers’ attention and communicating the benefits of an offer. The second moment of truth is about providing the tools the customer needs to experience these benefits when using the product. The combination of these two moments of truth makes up the total customer experience.

This paper holds the potential to contribute to extending understanding of the service perspective and service encounters.

This paper aims to explore the executive request for program results. With major programs in place and other programs planned, executives want to know if they are working. The executive’s perspective focuses on whether these programs impact the organization and do they deliver a positive return on investment (ROI).

The paper describes how an executive’s request for ROI will lead human resources professionals to plan an evaluation, collect data, analyze data and present the results to the program sponsors and funders. The success of the results presentation will influence program support and future allocation of funding to HR programs.

To be credible, the presentation must include five moments of truth. These five moments of truth require credible data, collected from credible sources, presented in five categories, and a conservative analysis that executives can believe, including proof the program has made a difference. Executives must believe the results are true, or the presentation becomes a waste of time.

The critical challenge for the HR team is to involve executives in each of the five truths. In the findings, the most successful programs have high executive involvement, beginning with investment alignment and business alignment, and moving through to solution implementation and capability development, and motivation attainment.

Bringing together diverse areas of a university means having to work with several different methods and frameworks for measuring and assuring quality and identifying key performance indicators. The Business and Strategic Planning area of Library and Student Support at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has been involved in such a case study, and this paper aims to present the findings of this work, which may be of interest to performance measurement practitioners.

This paper applies a case study approach, in that the background of the institution and change management programme will be clearly presented in order that the subsequent overview of the performance management work can be placed into context. The newly‐formed department already had several quality assurance and user satisfaction measurement instruments which were being used within the constituent parts of the service area (i.e. LibQUAL, SCONUL benchmarking exercises, Matrix assessment, enrolment surveys) as well as the results of the annual National Student Survey. The work in question has allowed for an investigation into how to establish a framework for inputting measurement and key performance data from all of these instruments and being able to respond to them as a single department. Having consulted some of the university's external corporate partners (namely Shop Direct and Merseytravel), the resulting framework now incorporates embedding departmental values and behaviours, and identifying particular moments of truth within the student lifecycle, where Library and Student Support has a particular impact on the student experience. By identifying these “moments of truth” the department is better placed to measure its impact and subsequently assure quality. The paper will present the experience of Library and Student Support in their efforts to find a single framework, made up of constituent methods and instruments, by which it can measure and assure quality.

The findings of the paper bring together the method outlined above and allow for the dissemination of the first year's work of the Library and Student Support Quality Assurance Framework. At the time of writing, this is a work in progress, as the first year's data, analysis and resulting quality actions and responses are for the academic year 2010‐2011. This paper presents an opportunity to find out how the framework was developed, constructed and implemented, how effective it has been and what further development needs to happen in order for the framework to continue to be effective.

Super‐convergence of university support departments is becoming increasingly more common, and existing quality and performance measurement channels now appear less and less meaningful within this new paradigm. This case study should present itself as one of the first studies of a “whole service” approach to quality assurance within this new order, and will therefore be of great interest and value to anyone else currently working within the business, planning and quality areas of super‐convergence.

The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is in a critical moment in its information and news ecology, exhibiting signs of pretruth and posttruth syndromes. Between the “pretruth” and “posttruth” there is a gap that circumvented “truth.” The state of information in the MENA region brings back the dystopian Orwellian notion of the “Ministry of Truth.” A poetic term in anticipation of this moment of the crisis of truth. Sharing the latter with the rest of the world, the pretruth moment is engraved in the region's history of precarious political and religious authoritarian control and manipulation of information and news and low press freedom. In the region, truth is told, hidden, distorted, and manufactured by a blend of humans and bots, where both artificial intelligence and social humans are involved in this process of multipolarized disinformation operations with multifarious sponsors, actors, and beneficiaries that have distinct and often clashing agendas and interests. To understand the ecology of truth, facts, news, and information in the Middle East, studies ought to be situated within the ecosystem of information and media technologies in the globalized national and transnational societies of the region and consider both the role of the regionally oriented neoauthoritarian regimes and that of interested rising and established global powers. Central to this ecosystem is the dynamic interaction among three actors: communication technologies (the focus here is on the Internet); media, public, and activists' use of these technologies to mobilize, inform, and present alternative narratives, and to resist or confirm state narratives; and the authoritarian political regimes and their containment strategies for legacy media (particularly television) and the Internet.

Discusses the issue of service excellence. Presents a five‐step plan for achieving service excellence. Notes that these steps can also lead to bottom‐line rewards. Summarizes that the keys to a good long‐lasting customer satisfaction programme are listening regularly, training employees to meet customers′ needs, measuring and rewarding employees′ efforts.

The learning outcomes of this study are as follows:▪ to analyze service attributes that influence customers’ decisions to purchase services;▪ to identify the factors that influence customers’ perceptions of service quality;▪ to identify the “moments of truth” that the service provider (IndiGo) would need to monitor and manage through the service encounter; and▪ to use the Servuction model to analyze the various elements of the service process.

In May 2022, the chief executive officer of IndiGo Airlines - India’s largest passenger airline by market share, Ronojoy Dutta, faced flak over the airline staff's handling of a specially abled child travelling with his parents on IndiGo Airlines. The staff member, reacting to the tantrums of the disturbed child, had refused to allow the boy and his parents to board the flight. He had cited the “risk to other passengers” from the boy as the reason for such a refusal (Biswas, 2022). In spite of the boy’s parents being supported by their fellow passengers, the IndiGo staff member refused to relent, and the flight took off without the trio (Firstpost, 2022). The incident goes viral when a fellow flyer shares a Facebook post describing it first-hand and provokes widespread condemnation of the nation's “preferred airline” (IndiGo, 2023) by citizens and politicians on various social media platforms besides Facebook (Gupta, 2022). Dutta initially supports his employee even as he issues a statement expressing his regret at the “unfortunate incident” (Business Standard, 2022a). The regulatory body for aviation in India, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, imposes a fine of INR 5 lakh on IndiGo for denying boarding to a specially abled child (Indian Express, 2022). How could an incident like this impact the perception of IndiGo’s service quality? How could Dutta better ensure that IndiGo managed the various touch points with the customer over the entire service encounter – the “moments of truth”? How could he prevent such a fiasco in the future, ensuring that IndiGo remains India’s “preferred airline”?

This case is intended to be taught in an undergraduate or MBA marketing course in a module on service marketing. The case can also form a 90-min module in a service marketing course within an advanced management or executive education program.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CCS 8: Marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on ascertaining whether and how groups based on demographic variables (age, gender, education level, and family income) differs for dimensions of customer experience quality in the Indian retail store context.

A 23 items instrument was distributed to retail store customers. Demographic variables were age, gender, education level, and family income. Finally, the analysis was performed on 346 responses. ANOVA test was performed to find out the significant difference between the groups based on demographic variables with respect to components of customer experience quality in the Indian retail store context.

Analysis revealed that some categories of demographic variables differ with respect to dimensions of customer experience quality in the Indian retail store context.

Authors believe that this is the first study, which applies EXQ model in India retail context.

The field of human resource management faces a significant dilemma. While emerging evidence, theory, and practical demands are increasing the visibility and credibility of human capital as a key to organisational success, the measures used to articulate the impact of human resource management decisions remain misunderstood, unwanted by key constituents, or even counter‐productive. This article proposes that the key to creating meaningful HR metrics is to embed them within a model that shows the links between HR investments and organisational success. The PeopleVantage model is proposed as a framework, the application of the model is illustrated, and the potential of the model for guiding research and practical advances in effective HR measures is discussed.