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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the evolving field of hybrid services within the customer service domain. The distinguishing characteristic of hybrid services is its rapid advancements and intersection of technology innovations mixed with customer service approaches.

Extensive research and analysis has identified numerous models to measure service quality and most of these models are derived from the SERVQUAL. Since SERVQUAL is not clearly focused to analyze the customer’s experience, the authors have used mixed methods of data collection. The two sources of data are both primary and secondary data. Primary source of research is semi-structured feedback with key operations manager and front line employees involved in the business process outsourcing industry. Secondary source of data is based on case studies of organizations engaged in information technology and ecommerce.

In this study, the author suggests multivariate hybrid pathways to streamline and deliver exceptional customer experience, which enhances the customer retention and firm’s competitive advantage. This study emphasizes on the imminent growth of hybrid services within the customer service domain. The distinguishing characteristic of hybrid services is its rapid advancements and intersection of technology innovations mixed with customer service approaches. The customers’ interactions with a firm are gaining proportional complexity due to the intercourse of human and technology interactions.

This study integrates the diverging but distinct pathways that influence customer experience. The study is centralized on the theme that there is a progressive dependence of human interactions with technological developments. It highlights the advent of new digital technologies that are the catalyst for personalized customer experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how and why small to medium enterprises (SMEs) access knowledge from external actors in general and from higher education institutions (HEIs) in particular and what is the extent to which these knowledge access pathways affect SME innovativeness.

The paper involved both quantitative and qualitative approaches: a survey of 1,226 SMEs and a mini case study to follow-up on issues arising from the survey analysis. Survey data were analysed using both non-parametric and multivariate Poisson regression analysis. The case study was based on a medium-sized manufacturing firm in South Australia.

While there are significant differences between the micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, the evidence suggests that SMEs generally use “generic” university–industry knowledge transfer pathways (e.g. published research results) rather than university–industry links with high “relational” involvement. More significantly, the results indicate that SMEs are more likely to rely on organisations other than universities and related R&D enterprises for knowledge acquisition like clients/customers or suppliers. While collaboration is most likely to occur within the same state/territory, or Australia, many SMEs also collaborate internationally, usually as part of normal supplier–customer relationships, reinforcing knowledge acquisition from organisationally proximate partners. These findings are also supported by the case study.

This research was limited to surveying SMEs in one geographic (metropolitan) region in Australia. It also does not account for the different patterns of HEI–SME interactions in different industry sectors. There is also only one case study.

First, the research adds to the few field studies that have investigated accessing knowledge for innovation among SMEs. Specifically, the research contributes to an understanding of the heterogeneous roles that different actors play in facilitating knowledge access for improving innovative SMEs outcomes. Second, the research does not treat all SMEs similarly in terms of size effects but instead accounts for differing SME sizes and how this affects their selection of knowledge access pathways. Third, the research contributes to a small number of studies that attempt to understand how HEIs and SMEs can work better together in the context of a regional innovation system, especially one that is relatively less competitive to the larger economy.

Using data from a continuous and ongoing cross-sectional web survey on hospitalisation service experiences in two Italian regions, the authors used multilevel and multivariate logistic regression models to identify factors related to users' demographics, emotional and informative support, technical and physical aspects of the provision, influencing satisfaction and willingness-to-recommend, before and during a crisis.

The value-in-use, defined in terms of a positive or negative value given by the experience with services, can be evaluated by users and influenced by the context of provision. The authors tested whether and how the value-in-use of services changed in a context of crisis. This study is applied to the healthcare sector during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, by evaluating the impact of the pandemic on hospitalisation experience.

Overall, analyses of 8,712 questionnaires found a greater value after the pandemic spread. In a time of crisis, technical and informative aspects of care were found to be most valued by patients that may recognise the extraordinary professionalism of workers during the crisis.

This study empirically suggests that context can affect the evaluation of value-in-use by patients during unprecedented circumstances, producing additional value-in-context.

These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

The level of healthcare system distress, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, positively affects patients' propensity to recommend, which the authors suggest is driven by healthcare services' feelings of reverse compassion. These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience, which can have positive social implications. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

Research based on the intersection of theoretical and empirical research regarding value-in-use, value-in-context and service quality measured through user experience is scarce, in particular in the healthcare sector. The authors' findings set the direction for future research on the influence of context on value creation and value creation's perception by users, on the concept of reverse compassion and on reverse compassion's impact on organisational well-being, particularly in times of crisis.

This paper aims to introduce the experience-dominant (Ex-D) logic model, which synthesizes the creation, perceptions and outcomes of Ex-D logic. It is designed to offer valuable insights for strategic managerial applications and future research directions.

Employing a qualitative approach by using eight selected product launch events from reviewed 100 event videos and 55 in-depth interviews with industrial managers to develop an Ex-D logic model, and data were coded and analysed via NVivo.

Results show that the firm’s Ex-D logic is operationalized as the mentalizing of the three types of customer needs (service competence, hedonic excitations and meaning making), the materializing of three types of customer experiences and customer journeys (service experience, hedonic experience and brand experience) and the moderating of three types of customer values (service values, hedonic values and brand values).

This study has implications for adding new insights into existing theory on dominant logic and customer experience management and also offers actionable recommendations for managerial applications.

This study sheds light on the importance of Ex-D logic from a strategic point of view and provides an organic view of the firm. It distinguishes firm perspective from customer perspective, firm experience from customer experience and firm journey from consumer journey.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the pathways that can enhance pharmacy‐to‐customer engagements, and give capacity to build closely aligned customer interface systems.

A nationwide, pharmacy and customer, dual survey‐based service value networks (SVNs) approach, analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM), shows significant business‐customer encounter information pathways act between the pharmacy and its engaging customer.

The complex nature of the business‐customer exchange and its interacting pathways is highlighted. Six front‐end SVNs business cells engaged in this paper have significant direct (and/or indirect) impact on customer perspectives of their pharmacy. Hence, the pharmacy front‐end business model should be fully and intelligently networked.

The SVNs and SEM approach yields a strong robust pharmacy model, and can move pharmacy business management mechanisms to elevated customer‐engaging levels. It can offer customer‐targeted interaction solutions with enhanced perceived satisfaction. This SVNs approach is efficient, understandable, measurable and business specific. It is appropriate for market leaders, innovators or differentiators. Combined with other interface‐related toolkits it can deliver competitive advantage parameters such as understanding the key measures that improve business‐customer alignment.

SVNs developed under SEM offer a new way to better align the business with its customers. They can be applied at the individual community pharmacy or pharmacy chain level. SVNs release the key measures from which pertinent interacting front‐end business‐to‐customer pathways may be adjusted in a quest to strategically build and align the business closely to its customer demands. This win‐win SVNs interface procedure can also be applied within other service industries.

This study aims to use social exchange theory and the principle of reciprocity in proposing a theoretical model to examine the essential but unexplored unique roles of individual customer equity drivers (CEDs) and their contribution to brand loyalty. This study identifies a reciprocity pathway in that brand equity, which mediates the linkage between relationship equity and brand loyalty. This study further posits that the linkage between relationship equity and brand equity is contingent on value equity. The authors then incorporate value equity as a moderator upon which the interrelationships among CEDs and brand loyalty may vary.

A sample consisted of 2,268 shoppers in a metropolitan city in Vietnam.

Relationship equity significantly determines brand loyalty through the moderating effect of value equity and the mediating effect of brand equity. Interestingly, these relationships are diverse across different experiential types of consumers.

This study contributes to a better understanding of why and when value equity, brand equity and relationship equity trigger brand loyalty. Brand equity and value equity are the two underlying mechanisms that establish a moderated mediation model between CEDs and brand loyalty. The findings of this study show that experiential consumers are not created equals. The strength of the relationships between CEDs and brand loyalty differ among the five clusters of experiential consumers.

This study reveals the critical relationships between the three components of customer equity in the supermarket industry. The findings provide concrete direction for managers and marketers to be more effective in allocating resources, tailoring their marketing strategies and, accordingly, promoting brand loyalty of different types of consumers.

This study reveals the underlying modus operandi that explains the reciprocity effects of CEDs and the contingency role of brand experience on the CEDs–loyalty link. This study shows that brand equity fosters and sustains the reciprocity generated when consumers perceive a high level of relationship equity, serving as a mediator between relationship equity and brand loyalty. Importantly, value equity is an important moderator for strengthening this reciprocity effect. Furthermore, this study identifies a typology of experience-focussed consumers and shows that the CEDs–loyalty link significantly varies by these types of experiential appeal that characterise the consumers.

This study aims to empirically investigate the pathway to value co-creation intentions through social media marketing, social support and COVID-19 perception in the tourism context with a specific focus on Couchsurfing community.

A survey was conducted from foreign and domestic travellers who used Couchsurfing platform for their recent travel, and were approached using an online survey (n = 229) and structural equation modelling used for hypothesis testing.

The findings indicate that value co-creation intentions follow a pathway through social media marketing and social support. Moreover, Couchsurfing community social support mechanisms play a crucial role in value co-creation intentions.

This study significantly contributes by taking Couchsurfing as a social networking application that provides both informational and functional support to the hardcore and active tourism and hospitality community.

This study aims to examine the impact of customer brand value dimensions on relationship marketing dimensions through consumer hope in the context of digital payment applications (apps) services. The study considers the role of consumer engagement using a moderated mediation, and applies customer perceived value, affect theory of social exchange and relationship marketing theories.

The study is based on data collected from 301 digital payment app users. Structural equation modeling results were analyzed using Smart PLS. The authors performed moderated mediation, with different levels of customer engagement as a moderating variable, using Model 8 of PROCESS. The authors considered customer perceived value dimensions, digital quality value, perceived value, hedonic value and social value as antecedents to consumer hope and explored the role of trust, commitment and continued usage as a consequence of consumer hope.

Three levels of perceived consumer value, digital quality, price value and social value, positively influenced consumer hope, which has positively influenced trust, commitment and continuance usage. Using moderated mediation analysis, consumer hope influenced continuance usage through trust at different levels of engagement, but consumer hope did not influence continuance usage through commitment at different levels of engagement.

The study highlights the role of consumer hope in linking customer value dimensions with relationship marketing dimensions. The study can guide managers to ensure continued usage of digital payment apps, which is a strategic objective. The results are relevant for the digital setting.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into whether “more sense makes sense” when attempting to encourage consumers to purchase retail products using technology; that is, does engaging senses in addition to visual and aural senses, such as haptic touch, through interactive retail technology lead to an easier and more enjoyable consumption experience of retail products for consumers, while also enhancing service provider outcomes? To test this assumption (“more sense makes sense”), this study empirically examines whether differences are present in the consumer experience (usefulness, ease of use and customer-perceived value) and service provider outcomes (satisfaction and purchase intentions) across retail technologies with and without haptic touch enabled.

The study randomly allocated participants to either the haptic touch (haptic touch, visual and aural senses, n = 135) or no haptic touch (visual and aural senses only, n = 182) interactive retail technology condition. The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance.

The data provide support for the use of high-interactive technology achieved through the inclusion of haptic touch by showing it to provide a more visually appealing, easy to use, enjoyable and entertaining experience. However, the results also provide insight into boundaries of where the use of haptic touch does not significantly increase outcomes. Overall, the results suggest high-interactive retail technology using haptic touch provides a more entertaining experience for consumers, which leads to increased satisfaction with service providers, but this does not translate into a significant increase in purchase intentions.

This study examines the consumer and service provider benefits and limitations of using haptic touch in interactive retail technology. The effects of haptic touch for both the consumer and service provider have not previously been empirically examined thoroughly in a technological setting.

The service positioning matrix shows how the desired nature of the customer’s service encounter activity sequence translates into a recommended service system design. The matrix helps managers think about marketing and operations linkages, roles of the customer and service‐provider in creating and delivering services, facility design and process choice, and the different types of management challenges at each position in the matrix. Concepts such as the service encounter activity sequence and the degree of repeatability in the activity sequence are defined and used in the matrix. Examples are given to illustrate the positioning of service entities within the matrix. An empirical evaluation provides statistical support for the logic of the service positioning matrix. The criteria used in the matrix are meaningful to survey participants. Future research directions and issues are discussed.