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This study empirically examines the impact of quality effort orientation on the financial performance of certified Portuguese firms. The results of factor analysis revealed four quality efforts orientation factors. The results of cluster analysis revealed the existence of three distinct groups of firms with regard to quality efforts orientation and performance. The analysis of variance results revealed that firms with a quality efforts orientation focusing on the customer tends to outperform firms utilising other quality efforts orientation with regard to net profit after taxes.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations represented in religious motivation and customer equity (CE) drivers, respectively, and switching costs (SCs), on customer’s retention to conventional banks and their switching intention (SI) to Islamic ones in the context of the Egyptian banking sector.

Based on the literature, a theoretical model is proposed and examined using structural equation modeling (AMOS) 24. Data were obtained using an intercept sample of 273 conventional bank customers in two major cities in Egypt, namely, Cairo and Giza.

The results supported the positive effect of CE and SCs on customer retention (CR) to conventional banks. Value equity has direct positive effect on CR. In addition, SC significantly mediated the relationship between relationship equity (RE) and service encounter employee’s equity (SEEE) and CR. Finally, religious motivations positively and significantly influence customers SI to Islamic banks.

CE, including all its drivers, namely, value, brand, relationship and SEEE, are the best force of CR in the Egyptian banking sector. The mediating role of SC in the relation between RE and SEEE and CR is perceived as a barrier to switch, instead of reflecting real desire from customers to stay tuned to their conventional banks. In addition, religious motivation should be considered while planning banking services because of its significant direct effect on customers SI from conventional banks to Islamic ones. Finally, both utilitarian extrinsic motivation and hedonic intrinsic ones are influencing customer’s retention and SI, respectively.

This paper develops and adds a fourth driver to previously examined and validated CE drivers, namely, SEEE. Further, it provides empirical analysis to the effect of religious motivation and CE drivers on SCs, CR and SI in a developing and Islamic dominating context, namely, Egypt. Moreover, it introduces a framework that could be examined and validated in other Islamic contexts to further comprehend bank customers' switching behavior. Yet, the current research focused on the Egyptian banking sector only, where the individual customers represent the sampling unit.

Previous research in the area of distributor performance proposed different scales, mostly in western, developed country context. These studies also lacked the consideration of dynamic interaction between variables, which determine the distributor’s performance. This paper proposes a composite Distributor Performance Index (DPI) to evaluate distributors’ performance based on at the “Enables” and “Results”, taking a system dynamics approach. The model results have been discussed and validated, in business marketing channel. The context of this study is India, an emerging market.

The world economy is likely to worsen because of the consumer's fears created by a cascade of financial and business catastrophes. To adapt their marketing approach, executives need guidance on how to respond to the sea change in the attitudes of individual customers during this current Great Recession. this paper aims to investigate this issue.

Given that experts believe that we have entered a period of austerity marketing, which is defined as marketing to consumers who do not want to spend, the paper shows how companies can reconcile consumers' fear, their aspirations for comfort, and their new reluctance to flaunt extravagance. His research indicates that marketers will have to include reassurance as part of their appeal.

Some businesses think that the fail‐safe approach is to emphasize great value, but this will require them to understand their evolving customers' value system better than ever in order to sell to them successfully; in particular their need for self‐respect, status and self‐fulfillment.

The author, a professor of marketing at Waseda University in Tokyo has also been a senior marketing executive for major global businesses. Much of his research is based on first‐hand observation.

In the consumer markets of the USA, Japan and Europe, one new marketing approach that addresses consumers' higher needs is that of indulgent parsimony, or frugal indulgence. The theory is that recession‐shocked consumers are shopping for less costly goods and services but nonetheless want their purchases to provide comfort and relief from stress.

For the next few years, marketers should encourage guilt‐free (and altruistic) gratification by customers. A potentially successful marketing approach could articulate this customer mindset: “I'm worth it … because I've examined all the alternatives and this one gives me the best value for something I really do need”. Indulgent parsimony – offering reassurance, value and self‐esteem at bargain – may prove most effective.

This paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners with a consumer-focused alternative for considering the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into services.

The paper reviews and critiques the most popular frameworks for addressing AI in service. It offers an alternative approach, one grounded in social psychology and leveraging influential concepts from management and human–computer interaction.

The frameworks that dominate discourse on this topic (e.g. Huang and Rust, 2018) are fixated on assessing technology-determined feasibility rather than consumer-granted permissibility (CGP). Proposed is an alternative framework consisting of three barriers to CGP (experiential, motivational and definitional) and three responses (communicate, motivate and recreate).

The implication of this research is that consistent with most modern marketing thought, researchers and practitioners should approach service design from the perspective of customer experience, and that the exercise of classifying service occupation tasks in terms of questionably conceived AI intelligences should be avoided.

Indicative of originality, this paper offers an approach to considering AI in services that is nearly the polar opposite of that widely advocated by e.g., Huang et al., (2019); Huang and Rust (2018, 2021a, 2021b, 2022b). Indicative of value is that their highly cited paradigm is optimized for predicting the rate at which AI will take over service tasks/occupations, a niche topic compared to the mainstream challenge of integrating AI into service offerings.

It's been three years since my previous survey in RSR. Superb reference books in pop music have been appearing so frequently that I've been having trouble keeping up. Let's hope “next year's” survey will only be 12 months in the making and not 36.