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The purpose of this study is to draws on self-determination and self-evaluation theories to examine the psychological factors impacted by augmented reality (AR) services, an augmented reality try-on system. This study highlights three characteristics of modality, synchronous sense or ownership and re-processability within an AR try-on experiences as well as the moderating effects of consumers’ body surveillance and fashion consciousness.

Using a scenario survey approach, this study designs characteristics of an AR try-on system to examine the research model and the hypotheses. A total of 207 responses are collected and analysed using the SmartPLS 3 statistical software.

The results show that modality, synchronous sense of ownership control and re-processability of AR try-on system positively affect consumer’s rapport experience. Both body surveillance and fashion consciousness significantly moderate the effects of AR try-on service system characteristics on consumer rapport experience.

This study highlights the importance of understanding the implications of the evolution of cyborg consumerism where consumer technology interface systems such as AR, as a source of technologically mediated modality, become part of the consumer’s body, an extension of their body if you will.

Based on the study findings, marketing managers can understand how to better use AR to implement digital promotional strategies for various body-involvement products.

Using immersive technologies, this study shows that AR allows a consumer see an authentic self and tangible extension of their physical self in an online shopping setting, thus enhancing a consumer’s online shopping experience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediation impacts of core, relational and tangible service-quality features on the relationship between customer–frontline employee rapport and customer dependency in an emerging market context. The study examines the moderating effects of relationship age and frequency of customers’ physical visits.

Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling was used to analyse data from a survey of 290 financial services customers in Dhaka, Bangladesh using the convenience sampling technique.

Results show that relational service-quality features had the largest mediation impact on the rapport–dependency relationship, followed by core and tangible service-quality features. Relationship age was not found to be a significant moderator for any relationship. However, the moderation effect of the frequency of customers’ physical visits to the service premises was significant, but only for the link between relational service-quality features and customer dependency and not for the other two types of service-quality features.

Data collected from several other emerging markets would provide more rigorous findings: this is recommended as an avenue for further research.

Practitioners can manipulate specific relational or tangible service-quality features to increase customer dependency on their firms, thus ensuring longer-term customer retention.

This study is the first one to examine the relative significance of the impacts of relational features vs tangible features of services on customer dependency in the emerging market context, with rapport serving as an antecedent.

During service encounters, it has been suggested that emotionally competent employees are likely to succeed in building rapport with their customers, which in turn often leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, these relationships have not been empirically examined. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of customer perceived employee emotional competence (EEC) on satisfaction and loyalty. The paper also examines how and to what extent rapport mediates these effects.

Drawing on the theory of affect‐as‐information, suggesting that emotions inform human behavior, the paper develops a structural model and tests it on a sample of 247 customers in a personal service setting.

Customer perceptions of EEC positively influence customer satisfaction and loyalty. Rapport partially mediates both effects.

The extent to which customers perceive employees as emotionally competent is related to the development of rapport, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. Managers of high‐contact services should therefore pay attention to emotional competence when hiring new employees, and/or encourage and train existing employees to develop this type of competence.

Previous studies have used employee self‐reports or supervisor reports of EEC, both of which have significant limitations when used in service encounters to predict customer outcomes. Furthermore, they essentially capture an employee's potential to behave in an emotionally competent way while service managers are interested in the actual display of emotionally competent behaviors as perceived by customers. Accordingly, to overcome these issues, this study adopts a customer perspective of EEC and uses customer perceptions of EEC to predict customer outcome.

This chapter attempts to capture what teaching excellence looks and feels like for students. Our research reports on research conducted by two student authors at separate institutions. It suggests that the most crucial aspect of the student experience of ‘teaching excellence’ is a teacher's ability to build rapport and create meaningful interpersonal relationships with their students. Leanne Hunt's research was conducted with her fellow students at the University of Bradford. She outlines how, for her participants, the student–teacher rapport informed a positive learning experience which translated into a mutual understanding of excellent teaching. Widening participation, college-based HE student Hollie Shaw, now at Sheffield Hallam University, defines teaching excellence as flexible enough to respond to student learning needs, but strong enough to inspire interest in the discipline. In this chapter, we consider their separate testimonies carefully: we argue that exploring unconscious bias furthers understanding of how differences between student and teacher may compromise interpersonal relations and so student recognition of a tutor's positive and crucial role in the student experience and the implications of how one might measure this given the emphasis on proxies for teaching excellence in the TEF. We suggest breaking down unconscious bias calls for embracing differences, reflection and recognising the complexities of contemporary staff and student university lives. This chapter's exploration of staff–student partnership opens up potential for the creation of more equitable and honest learning dynamics in higher education – where a nuanced understanding of ‘teaching excellence’ can be defined, understood and evidenced within a HEI, with external bodies such as the Office for Students, and included in the Teaching Excellence Framework.

This study draws on the author's experiences building rapport through online chat for data collection for the author's doctoral dissertation. The author contacted ten Korean women via online chat to recruit and faced the most challenging situation; building rapport. As the Millennial generation is known as being tech-savvy or digital natives, the author actively used emoticons (pictorial representations of facial expressions using characters) with potential interviewees and completed ten interviews. Therefore, this paper offers a new qualitative interviewing method in feminist research.

The paper briefly reviews the works of literature on interviewing women on sensitive topics and building rapport before the interview. Then, the author introduced using emoticons to create rapport during the data collection process and how a non-traditional approach positively impacts the interviewer and interviewee before, during and even after the interview.

Women participants' responses and behaviors differed after building a rapport through an online chat. They were willing to share their personal stories and memories with the interviewer even though the interviewer did not ask.

This study provides a stepping stone for developing an account of the new qualitative methodological approach, specifically feminist qualitative research.

Few studies have described how qualitative researchers create a rapport in virtual space, specifically using emoticons. Also, this study suggests a new methodological approach since nonverbal communication in online chat is inevitable when interviewing people in qualitative research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the customer’s perception of customer-firm, customer-employee, and employee-firm fit and to assess how these fits impact the service experience.

The paper looks at the impact of fit on the service experience and focusses on three specific types of dyadic fit: customer-employee; customer-firm; and employee-firm. A conceptual model is presented, accompanied by a detailed development of the hypotheses. A sample of 447 consumers is used to empirically test the proposed model.

The analysis reveals the importance of fit and suggest a triadic relationship perspective is essential when designing for the service experience. Specifically, employee-firm fit is key to enhancing fit within the other dyads and providing a superior service experience.

The main implication is that this paper expands the investigation of fit by examining the interplay of multiple fits while also exploring how they affect the customer experience. The limitations are based primarily on methodology where the use of a survey to collect data rules out potential generalizations of true cause and effect while also potentially being subject to a common method effect.

Managers should consider adopting a triadic relationship perspective when designing for the service experience. A number of managerial implications are proposed and discussed.

Prior research has not explored the impact of fit among the customer-employee, customer-firm, and employee-firm dyads in one model on an important outcome such as the service experience. In addition, to show that customer-employee, customer-firm, and employee-firm dyadic fits are predictors of the service experience is novel.

This paper aims to employ a conceptual model to examine the relationship processes and mediating role of client‐coach relationship between client‐coach match criteria and coaching outcomes to advance the understanding of client‐coach relationship's impact on leadership coaching.

Data collected from 74 client‐coach pairs participating in a voluntary leadership coaching program at a military service academy during pre‐partnering and post‐transition phases were analyzed to examine the impact of match criteria and client‐coach relationship processes on coaching outcomes.

Consistent with the conceptual framework, relationship processes of rapport, trust, and commitment positively predicted coaching program outcomes, including client and coach reactions, behavioral change, and coaching program results. The client‐coach relationship fully mediated two match criteria (compatibility and credibility) with coaching outcomes, suggesting that complementary managerial and learning styles and relevant job‐related credibility support the development of client‐coach relationships and therefore positively impact leadership coaching programs.

The generalizability of findings may be limited due to the population studied. Future research needs to examine relationship processes in the larger context of the coaching practice as well as formative and results‐level outcomes.

The research findings provide support and understanding of the impact of the client‐coach relationship on coaching and the understanding of factors influencing the relationship, which allows the development of selection tools to better match clients with coaches, increasing the quality of the relationship and ultimately the coaching outcomes.

The study represents one of the first attempts to symmetrically examine client‐coach relationships and highlights the value of the conceptual framework for conducting client‐coach relationship research.

Consequent upon the intense competitive nature of today's business environment, service businesses are seeking for the most creative but effective means of attracting and retaining customers. One of the ways is to build quality relationship via interpersonal relationship with customers. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate two ways of building interpersonal relationship with customers – respect and rapport, and their impact on overall customer perceived relationship quality, as well as the role of context/environment.

This preliminary study reports on empirical results from a survey of customers of dental clinics in Malaysia. Data from a questionnaire survey of 563 respondents were analysed using factor analysis, Pearson correlation and hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The authors estimated the direct effect of respect and rapport on relationship quality as well as the moderating effect of context (cosmopolitan vs traditional milieu).

The results show that both rapport and respect are important in building quality relationship with customers. Environment/context has a direct effect on relationship quality. Context moderates the relationship between rapport and relationship quality but does not moderate the relationship between respect and relationship quality.

This research is of practical use to service companies (especially healthcare service providers) interested in developing effective strategies for building quality relationship with customers. Building good rapport and respecting customers are useful relational strategies to pursue.

The effect of rapport and respect on relationship quality in the Asian context has not been studied before. The paper sheds light on the overlooked dimensions of respect and service sector (small healthcare businesses) and also highlights the contextual implications of the findings.

Brands are increasingly considering the use of chatbots to supplement, or even replace, humans in service interactions. Like humans, chatbots can follow certain service scripts in their encounters, which can subsequently determine the customer experience. Service scripts are verbal prescriptions that seek to standardize customer service interactions. However, while the role of service scripts is well documented, despite the increasing use of chatbots as a service mechanism, less is known about the effect, on consumers, of different service scripts presented during chatbot service encounters.

An experimental scenario was developed to test the research hypotheses. Respondents were randomly allocated to scenarios representing a 2 (service interaction: human, chatbot) × 2 (service script: education, entertainment) design. A total of 262 US consumers constituted the final sample for the study.

The findings indicate that when employing an education script, a significant positive effect occurs for human service agents (compared to chatbots) in terms of both satisfaction and purchase intention. These effects are fully mediated by emotion and rapport, showing that the bonds developed through the close proximity to a human service agent elicit emotion and develop rapport, which in turn influence service outcomes. However, this result is present only when an educational script is used.

This paper contributes to the emerging service marketing literature on the use of digital services, in particular chatbots, in service interactions. We show that differences occur in key outcomes dependent on the type of service script employed (education or entertainment). For managers, this study indicates that chatbot interactions can be tailored (in script delivered) in order to maximize emotion and rapport and subsequently consumer purchase intention and satisfaction.