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The purpose of this study is to investigate how does key accounts managers’ (KAMs’) customer orientation affect customers’ repurchase intention and how do tie strength and structural holes in KAMs’ client networks moderate these linkages.

Paired data of 208 dyadic relationships between KAMs and customers in several Chinese industries are subjected to multiple linear regression analyses.

KAMs’ functional customer orientation can directly increase customers’ repurchase intention, whereas relational customer orientation cannot do that. With strong ties in client networks, KAMs’ relational customer orientation could promote customers’ repurchase intention, whereas when there are many structural holes in a client network, relational customer orientation would constrain customers’ repurchase intention. In addition, structural holes can enhance the effectiveness of functional customer orientation in facilitating customers’ repurchase intention, but tie strength has no impact on this.

This study pays attention to the emerging topic of KAMs’ customer orientation and introduces KAMs’ client networks as a new contextual factor. The findings not only address the outcomes of KAM’s customer orientation but also indicate the vital role client networks play in determining the effectiveness of KAMs’ customer orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkages between the determinants of relationship marketing and the behavioural component of these determinants within a non-Western retail stores setting.

A quantitative approach was employed, using 19-item, seven-point Likert scaled questionnaire administered to 350 participants with 67 per cent usable response rate. Data was analysed using exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s α internal consistency; correlation analysis and One-Way Analysis of Variance test.

Trust-Quality services emerged as the most outstanding determinant of relationship marketing within the retail stores context followed by relational orientation, commitment and proximity. Quality services were found to have the most significant positive impact on trust whereas trust was found to have a strong positive impact on commitment. Relational orientation was found to have a strong positive impact on trust, commitment and quality services but proximity was found to be a docile factor determining commitment and relational orientation. Finally, consumers were identified as being more relationally oriented than retailers and all categories of consumers can be served with same blend of relationship marketing strategies.

Since findings could not be generalized across other sectors and regions, guides for testing the proposed research model are put forward.

Relationship marketing implementation within the context of retail stores will be more successful if based on delivery of quality services. Consumers are also more likely to patronize closer than distant retail stores. As such, even if retail firms build strong trust, commitment and relational orientation with customers through quality services, consumers will still patronize stores that are closer to them more than stores in distant locations. Siting retail stores in locations with the largest pool of customers’ is therefore central to enhancing retail stores performance. All categories of customers could be served with same stream of relationship marketing strategies because designing different schemes of relationship marketing programmes for different customer categories were found to be counter-productive.

This paper identified 16 attributes that are important to consumers under four dimensions: Trust-Quality services, relational orientation, commitment and proximity within the retail stores context. The findings are acknowledged to be unique because they emerged from a largely under-researched collectivistic emerging market where relationship marketing formation is key.

This study aims to use the framework of customer dominant logic to explore the mediating role of service co-creation on the relationships between customer involvement and perceived service performance and between customer involvement and word-of-mouth (WOM). It also investigates the moderating role of customer relational-motivational orientation on the relationship between customer involvement and service co-creation.

A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect responses from 289 Hong Kong's customers in different service settings. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed research model.

The results of structural equation modeling showed that the freedom of co-creation and the degree of collaboration fully mediated the effect of customer involvement on perceived service performance and WOM. Additionally, relational-motivational orientation moderated the relationships between customer involvement and the freedom of co-creation and between customer involvement and the degree of collaboration.

This research provides implications to managers on how to facilitate an environment that stimulates customer co-creation. Customer-contact employees must be trained with the necessary interpersonal skills to serve customers with different levels of relational-motivational orientation.

The study is one of the first to identify customer involvement as a key antecedent of service co-creation attributes and the moderating role of relational-motivational orientation on the relationships between customer involvement and service co-creation attributes.

This paper aims to examine how modern, digital era customers in a business-to-consumer (B2C) setting prioritize salesperson-customer orientation attributes when evaluating their expectations regarding interactions with salespeople, as well as their impact on positive and negative word-of-mouth. In addition, the research further investigates which negative salesperson attributes have an impact on overall customer experience and satisfaction.

Role theory and expectancy-disconfirmation theory form the theoretical foundation for two mixed-method studies. Study 1 is an exploratory content analysis of online consumer reviews and social media word-of-mouth related to consumer experiences with salespeople. Study 2 is a three-round Delphi study investigating which salesperson orientation attributes are most important to the customer in B2C interactions.

The results uncover which salesperson customer orientation attributes are essential for modern consumers and how they differ as a function of context (retail, direct-selling and follow-up) and how they contribute to the generation of digital word-of-mouth.

This paper expands B2C sales interaction literature by exploring the need for differing sales attributes based on the differential function of the shopping environment.

This paper seeks to explore drivers and consequences of customer trust in the salesperson in the financial services industry. Its theoretical foundations are based on literature on customers' interpersonal relationships with salespeople and front‐line employees, as well as on literature in the area of customer trust.

A conceptual model, specifying a set of hypotheses linking a salesperson's behaviours to customer trust, and the latter to behavioural loyalty intentions, was tested using partial least squares (PLS) on a sample of 150 customers in the Italian banking industry. Multiple models were compared in order to evaluate the mediating role of customer trust.

The results of the empirical study show that both salesperson's customer orientation and expertise positively influence customer trust in the salesperson. Conversely, selling orientation has a negative impact on it. Moreover, a salesperson's likeability does not influence customer trust. Finally, trust in the salesperson positively influences a customer's intentions to re‐buy/cross‐buy and to recommend, while it decreases a customer's intention to switch to competitors.

The study suggests that different relational antecedents may have different impacts on different relational mediators and outcomes. Since the mechanisms of interpersonal relationship formation and development are multifaceted, to understand fully the complexity of relational phenomena researchers should develop and test models incorporating multiple relational antecedents and outcomes.

The study provides sales managers with some evidence of the behaviours that salespeople should adopt to influence successfully the creation of long‐term relationships, especially in the context of “credence” services. The findings suggest that the optimal behaviours of salespeople may vary, depending on the ultimate goal of the sellers' relational strategy. The authors suggest drivers that managers can leverage to stimulate salespeople to perform the desired behaviours.

The model tested in the empirical study highlights the mediating role of customer trust and incorporates a broad set of drivers and consequences of interpersonal trust. As such, it improves knowledge of trust‐building processes in the context of credence services, where trust and interpersonal relationships are very relevant.

Social commerce (s-commerce) is an online business model combining commercial and social features. Vendors may engage in a business-oriented relationship with customers and/or establish a personal relationship with customers. The role performed by the vendors may not match customer expectations and needs, resulting in low repurchase intention. Drawing on role theory in the context of customer orientation, this study integrates functional customer orientation (FCO) and relational customer orientation (RCO) with the expectation–confirmation model (ECM) to propose a theoretical framework for explaining customers' post-consumption behaviors. This study also examines how product-specific attributes moderate the effect of FCO and RCO on customer satisfaction.

This study analyzed 273 survey responses from WeChat users by using PLS-SEM.

The results confirmed that the confirmation of customer expectations positively affected FCO and RCO. Additionally, FCO and RCO had different effects on customer satisfaction, depending on product type and brand awareness, and their effects on customers' post-consumption behaviors also varied.

The findings suggest that both business and social roles are important to customers in C2C s-commerce. This study also demonstrates product characteristics moderating the effectiveness of customer orientation on customer satisfaction.

This study provides empirical support for vendors and platform developers to implement appropriate selling strategies and manage customer expectations in C2C s-commerce.

This study is the first to incorporate FCO and RCO into the ECM theoretical framework to obtain new insights into vendors' selling approaches in C2C s-commerce, thus contributing to the marketing literature.

Keeping both employees and customers highly engaged has become a critical issue for service firms, especially for high-contact and highly customized services. Therefore, it is essential to engage employees and customers during service interactions for better service outcomes. However, past research on employee and customer engagement has primarily focused on brands and organizations. Little research has concentrated on service interactions as the objects of engagement. To fill this research gap, this study aims to clarify and define service engagement behaviors (SEBs), identify various employee and customer SEBs and develop a model to investigate the relationships between these behaviors.

A theoretical framework was developed based on social contagion theory and service-dominant (S-D) logic to explore the effects of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through customer perceptions of relational energy and interaction cohesion. Dyadic survey data collected from 293 customer-employee pairs in various high-contact and highly customized service industries were examined through structural equation modeling.

Results show that employee SEBs (service role involvement, customer orientation behavior and customer empowerment behavior) positively influence relational energy and interaction cohesion, which in turn affect customer SEBs (service exploration behavior and service coordination behavior).

This study represents pioneering research to conceptualize SEBs. Different from the extant literature on engagement, SEBs capture the proactive and collaborative engagement behaviors of employees and customers in service interactions. Various employee and customer SEBs were identified and an empirical model was proposed and tested to investigate the effect of employee SEBs on customer SEBs through relational energy and interaction cohesion.

This paper aims to analyse the relationship between intellectual capital and financial capital using a case study. This makes it possible to discuss how intellectual capital is related to value creation with a degree of nuance that is absent from most statistical studies of relationships between human, organisational, relational and financial capital.

The paper uses a case study of a firm that invests in intellectual capital in order to develop financial capital. It traces the relationship between intellectual capital elements and financial capital via interviews. This allows the development of a nuanced account of the performance of intellectual capital. This account questions the universality of the linear model typically found in statistical studies. The model makes it possible to show how items of intellectual capital not only interact but also compete.

Relationships between intellectual capital and financial capital are challenging to specify because they are complementary rather than causal. Financial capital is not only an effect but also an important input because the development of intellectual capital takes place through the firm's budgeting processes.

The findings suggest future development of accounts of the role and performance (strength) of intellectual capital be developed around imaginative, perhaps recursive and certainly dynamic, statistical models and/or more inclusive case studies of the various elements that influence the development and transformation of intellectual capital.

The case study suggests that investments in intellectual capital happen in the context of many other investments. Bounded by the budgeting process, intellectual capital has no separate agenda and therefore, intellectual capital investments compete with other types of investments.

This paper explores the meaning of relationship selling in the light of sales force developments during the “relational era”. Starting from a review of relationship marketing, personal selling and sales management literature, it defines a “firm's selling orientation” (FSO) and designs a framework for identifying the factors, inside and outside the selling firm, that potentially affect its sales managers’ preference for the relationship approach rather than the transactional approach. It discusses the results of an empirical study based on questionnaires mailed to 113 sales managers in Italian companies, aimed at exploring the relationships between external and internal factors and the FSO. The study also examines the relationships between the FSO and two broad categories of consequences: sales force control systems and salesmen activities.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interactive effects of a firm’s strategic sustainability orientation (SSO) and customer relationship capital (CRC) on sustainable product design practices (SPDP).

The authors examine the interactive effects of two firm resources, namely, SSO and CRC, as they relate to SPDP, using survey data from 132 manufacturers in Malaysia.

The findings show that the effect of SSO on SPDP is stronger when CRC is low, than otherwise. The authors also find that the interactive effects of the firm-level resources stated above are stronger when customer pressures (CPs) are higher than when they are low.

The authors contribute to the literature by studying the effects of firm-level strategic resources and their interactions as they relate to SPDP. An important limitation of this research is the usage of single-source data and single-period data.

Managerially, this research provides new insights into how organizations should respond to CPs while understanding the counterintuitive but disabling effects of customer relationship assets.

The findings are important to society because most of the environmental impact arising from the production, consumption and disposal of products is a direct consequence of decisions made at the product design stage and an unintended consequence of the marketing decision-making processes that underlie marketing strategy formulation that fails to recognize ecosystems impact as a standard decision influence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to study the effects of firm-level strategic resources and their interactions as they relate to SPDP.