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The technological revolution in the service sector is radically changing the ways in which and with whom consumers co-create value. This conceptual paper considers social robots in elderly care services and outlines ways in which their human-like affect and cognition influence users’ social perceptions and anticipations of robots’ value co-creation or co-destruction potential. A future research agenda offers relevant, conceptually robust directions for stimulating the advancement of knowledge and understanding in this nascent field.

Drawing from service, robotics and social cognition research, this paper develops a conceptual understanding of the value co-creation/destruction potential of social robots in services.

Three theoretical propositions construct an iterative framework of users’ evaluations of social robots in services. First, social robots offer users value propositions leveraging affective and cognitive resources. Second, users’ personal values become salient through interactions with social robots’ affective and cognitive resources. Third, users evaluate social robots’ value co-creation/destruction potential according to social cognition dimensions.

Social robots in services are an emerging topic in service research and hold promising implications for organizations and users. This relevant, conceptually robust framework advances scholarly understanding of their opportunities and pitfalls for realizing value. This study also identifies guidelines for service managers for designing and introducing social robots into complex service environments.

The purpose of this paper is to assess, clarify and consolidate the terminology around the co-creation of services, establish its forms and identify its outcomes, to resolve the conceptual pluralism in service co-creation literature.

A focused literature review screened the articles published in five major service research journals to determine relevant contributions on the concept of co-creation of services. Then, a thematic analysis identifies the forms, themes and outcomes of co-creating services in the set of 80 qualifying articles.

The study reduces conceptual pluralism by establishing different forms of co-creating services and developing an explicit definition of co-creation in services. The authors develop an integrative framework that recognizes involvement, engagement and participation as prerequisites for co-creation. Relating to the different phases of the service process, the specific co-creation forms of co-ideation, co-valuation, co-design, co-testing and co-launching are classified as regenerative co-creation, while the specific co-creation forms of co-production and co-consumption are recognized as operative co-creation. Both beneficial and counterproductive outcomes of co-creation are identified and arranged into a typology.

The integrative framework illustrates that service providers and customers are involved, engaged and participate in co-creating services, which manifests in specific forms of co-creation; they attain beneficial and counterproductive outcomes (personal, social, hedonic, cognitive, economic and pragmatic); and are influenced by a contextual multi-actor network.

Co-creation in services is actionable; the typology of outcomes suggests service managers ways to motivate customers and employees to participate in co-creating services.

This paper defines and establishes the conceptual forms of co-creating services and the identified outcomes, and develops an integrative framework of co-creation in services.

Although the sharing economy improves comfort and convenience, it is yet unclear how it affects subjective well-being. This study aims to offer a conceptual model for understanding the linkages between the antecedents and consequences of subjective well-being in ridehailing services.

Using a non-probabilistic sampling method and a pre-tested survey instrument, 450 responses were collected from January to March 2020. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

Experience quality and perceived convenience are correlated with subjective well-being. Perceived value and personal innovativeness were not correlated with subjective well-being, as the former does not contribute to the latter’s development. Continuous usage intention significantly correlated with subjective well-being, followed by customer relationship proneness and advocacy. Regarding gender and age differences, men place higher value on customer relationship proneness than women, while women place higher value on subjective well-being than men. Older users value perceived convenience and customer relationship proneness in ridehailing services more than younger users.

Understanding key factors contributing to user well-being in ridehailing would promote a more affordable mobility sector globally. This understanding would enable ridehailing businesses to create more effective business and marketing plans while prioritising user well-being, thus enhancing user happiness and reducing turnover rates.

This research demonstrates how crucial it is for users’ well-being to have a positive experience and find the service convenient. It also highlights the importance of building strong customer relationships and examines how gender and age influence people’s adoption and use of these services.

Aunque la economía colaborativa mejora la comodidad y conveniencia, aún no está claro cómo afecta al bienestar subjetivo. Ofrecemos un modelo conceptual para comprender las conexiones entre los antecedentes y consecuencias del bienestar subjetivo en los servicios de transporte compartido.

Utilizando un método de muestreo no probabilístico y un instrumento de encuesta previamente probado, se recopilaron 450 respuestas entre enero y marzo de 2020. Los datos fueron analizados utilizando un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

La calidad de la experiencia y la percepción de conveniencia están correlacionadas con el bienestar subjetivo. El valor percibido y la innovación personal no se correlacionaron con el bienestar subjetivo, ya que el primero no contribuye al desarrollo del último. La intención de uso continuo se correlacionó significativamente con el bienestar subjetivo, seguida por la propensión a las relaciones con los clientes y la defensa de estos servicios. En cuanto a las diferencias de género y edad, los hombres valoran más la propensión a las relaciones con los clientes que las mujeres, mientras que las mujeres valoran más el bienestar subjetivo que los hombres. Los usuarios mayores valoran más la percepción de conveniencia y la propensión a las relaciones con los clientes en los servicios de transporte compartido que los usuarios más jóvenes.

Esta investigación demuestra lo crucial que es para el bienestar de los usuarios tener una experiencia positiva y encontrar el servicio conveniente. También resalta la importancia de construir relaciones sólidas con los clientes y examina cómo el género y la edad influyen en la adopción y uso de estos servicios.

Comprender los factores clave que contribuyen al bienestar de los usuarios en los servicios de transporte compartido promovería un sector de movilidad más asequible a nivel global. Esta comprensión permitiría a las empresas de transporte compartido crear planes de negocios y marketing más efectivos, priorizando el bienestar de los usuarios y mejorando así su felicidad y reduciendo las tasas de rotación.

尽管共享经济提高了舒适度和便利性, 但它如何影响主观幸福感尚不清楚。我们提供了一个概念模型, 用于理解乘车服务中主观幸福感的前因后果之间的联系。

采用非概率抽样方法和预先测试的调查工具, 在 2020 年 1 月至 3 月期间收集了 450 份回复。数据采用结构方程模型进行分析。

体验质量和感知便利性与主观幸福感相关。感知价值和个人创新性与主观幸福感不相关, 因为前者无助于后者的发展。持续使用意愿与主观幸福感密切相关, 其次是客户关系倾向和拥护。在性别和年龄差异方面, 男性比女性更重视客户关系倾向, 而女性比男性更重视主观幸福感。老年用户比年轻用户更重视乘车服务中的便利感和客户关系代言。

这项研究表明, 用户获得积极的体验和便捷的服务对他们的福祉至关重要。研究还强调了建立牢固的客户关系的重要性, 并探讨了性别和年龄如何影响人们采用和使用这些服务。

了解有助于提高乘车旅行用户幸福感的关键因素, 将在全球范围内推动建立一个更加经济实惠的移动出行行业。这种理解将使打车企业能够制定更有效的业务和营销计划, 同时优先考虑用户福祉, 从而提高用户幸福感并降低流失率。

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding about how to improve customer value and to make mobile banking services a profitable business for banks and other financial actors. The study explores the user experiences and related value of a new mobile banking service.

The study is implemented as a case study that is phenomenological in nature and linked to an interpretive consumer study. Empirical data were collected through 14 semi-structured theme interviews and a diary method. The data were analysed by using a content analysis method.

The findings illustrate the importance of customer centricity in the mobile banking context by identifying customer experience and related value in a new mobile banking service. The study extends current understanding of customer experience as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon by including value related to process, the use situation and the outcome, and it identifies temporality as influencing and connecting all these aspects. The study identifies several aspects that help us to understand what creates value for the customer while using mobile banking services.

As one limitation, this study was conducted in a developed country and the findings could be different in an emerging market context. Another limitation relates to the data, as the interviewees’ age range is quite limited, ranging between 20 and 40 years. However, they represent the consumers who normally use mobile services well and thus provide reliable data about their use experiences.

As the banking industry is currently experiencing rapid and widespread changes and customers become more demanding, it is crucial for banks and other mobile service providers to understand the everyday lives of their customers and to integrate their future services into the customers’ value creation processes as smoothly and inseparably as possible. The findings of this study will help banks and other financial institutions to develop their strategies and operations in regard to customer-oriented thinking, which will further help them to create long-term, profitable customer relationships and improve future viability.

The study contributes to bank marketing research and extends previous research on customer-centred service marketing by providing a framework that identifies the value related to customer experience in a new mobile banking service. It explores the experiences of actual mobile banking service customers’ and the related value, and thus provides original implications for both theory and practice.

This study aims to build on the dynamic capability view by examining dynamic capabilities associated with public value in public procurement.

A qualitative case study approach is used in this study. The interview and secondary data consist of eight cases of value-creating procurement from four public organizations.

The findings connect dynamic capabilities and public value in terms of innovation generation and promotion, well-functioning supplier markets, public procurement process effectiveness, environmental and social sustainability and quality and availability of products or services.

Dynamic capabilities in public procurement are necessary to improve public procurement.

This study extends understanding of how sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities contribute to public value creation in both innovative and less innovative (i.e. ordinary) procurement scenarios.

This paper aims to develop a model that supports public organisations in making informed strategic decisions as to which public services are most suitable to be improved through co-creation. Thus, it first identifies the features that make public services (un)suitable for co-creation and then applies this knowledge to develop a multi-criteria decision support model for the assessment of their co-creation readiness.

The decision support model is the result of design science research. While its structure is determined by a qualitative multi-criteria decision analysis, its substance builds on a content analysis of Web of Science papers and over a dozen empirical case studies.

The model is comprised of 13 criteria clustered into two groups: service readiness criteria from the perspective of service users and service readiness criteria from the perspective of a public organisation.

The model attributes rely on a limited number of empirical cases and references from the literature review. The model was tested by only one public organisation on four of its services.

The paper shifts the research focus from organisational properties and capacity, as the key co-creation drivers and barriers, to features of public services as additional factors that affect the prospect of co-creation. Thus, it makes a pioneering step towards the conceptualisation of the idea of “service readiness for co-creation” and the development of a practical instrument that supports co-creation in the public sector.

This study aims to propose a conceptual framework based on organisational and environmental indicators of business-to-business sellers’ sales performance in services firms.

A descriptive research design was applied and data was gathered from 389 respondents across industries and different-sized services firms in Norway using a self-administered questionnaire.

Results show that the proposed six-dimensional framework of organisational and environmental indicators can be applied to manage seller–customer relationships in a business-to-business environment.

A six-dimensional framework of organisational and environmental indicators is tested successfully in services firms.

Increasingly, services firms will need to work closely with business-to-business sellers to proactively adapt to market changes through a co-creation approach to build long-term seller–customer relationships.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has focused on relationship marketing in business-to-business relationships that proposes a conceptual framework based on organisational and environmental indicators of business-to-business sellers’ sales performance in services firms.

The purpose of this paper is to study the drivers of service provider switching intention other than satisfaction and, additionally, analyse the moderating role of the type of service (utilitarian vs hedonic). Specifically, the authors study the effects of alternative attractiveness, post-purchase regret, anticipated regret and past switching behaviour.

A representative survey with 800 consumers of mobile phone services (utilitarian) and holiday destinations (hedonic) was carried out.

Satisfaction is not a significant antecedent of switching intention in the hedonic service and its effect is marginal in the utilitarian service. In the utilitarian service, the main predictor of switching intention is post-purchase regret, whereas in the hedonic service, the main determinants of switching intention are past switching behaviour and anticipated regret.

The main contribution of this study is the analysis of the determinants of provider switching behaviour that may explain abandonment by satisfied customers, to see if their influence is greater or smaller than that of satisfaction itself, which has been the most analysed variable. Furthermore, there are expected to be differences between utilitarian and hedonic services, an aspect which is also studied in this work.

Self-employment is often viewed as a more desirable work arrangement than working as an employee for a firm. Women are pushed into self-employment due to organizational factors, such as a shrinking workforce or limited job opportunities, while being attracted to self-employment by the many psychological and social benefits (e.g., independence, flexibility, work-life balance, job satisfaction). Despite more women moving into self-employment, this type of employment still has different financial consequences for men and women. This article investigates whether a pay gap exists for self-employed women after controlling for industry, occupation, and hours worked and seeks to quantify the gender wage gap for the self-employed. A sample of 467 self-employed independent contractors in the United States was examined from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce. The results indicate a large financial disparity between self-employed women and men. On average men earned $54,959 as compared to women who earned on average $28,554. Regardless of the parity in education, work experience, number of hours worked, or occupations, women earn less than men in self-employment. Findings suggest the existence of the glass cage‐a phenomenon whereby self-employed women earn significantly less than self-employed men with limited abilities to narrow the economic inequality.