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This research aims to better understand customer experience, as it relates to customer commitment and provides a framework for future research into the intersection of these emerging streams of research.

This research contributes to theoretical and practical perspectives on customer experience and its measurement by integrating extant literature with customer commitment and customer satisfaction literature.

The breadth of the domains that encompass customer experience – cognitive, emotional, physical, sensorial and social – makes simplistic metrics impossible for gauging the entirety of customers’ experiences. These findings provide strong support of the need for new research into customer experience and customer commitment.

Given the complexity of customer experience, managers are unlikely to track and manage all relevant elements of the concept. This research provides a framework identifying empirically the most salient attributes of customer experience with particular emphasis on those elements that enhance commitment. This offers insight into service design to correspond with specific commitment and experience dimensions.

This research is the first to examine the customer experience as it relates to customer commitment – a key factor in customer loyalty, positive word of mouth and other desired outcomes for managers and marketers. This paper provides a framework for future research into these emerging topics.

The collaborative economy (CE), and within it, collaborative consumption (CC) has become a central element of the global economy and has substantially disrupted service markets (e.g. accommodation and individual transportation). The purpose of this paper is to explore the trends and develop future scenarios for market structures in the CE. This allows service providers and public policy makers to better prepare for potential future disruption.

Thought experiments – theoretically grounded in population ecology (PE) – are used to extrapolate future scenarios beyond the boundaries of existing observations.

The patterns suggested by PE forecast developmental trajectories of CE leading to one of the following three future scenarios of market structures: the centrally orchestrated CE, the social bubbles CE, and the decentralized autonomous CE.

The purpose of this research was to create CE future scenarios in 2050 to stretch one’s consideration of possible futures. What unfolds in the next decade and beyond could be similar, a variation of or entirely different than those described.

Public policy makers need to consider how regulations – often designed for a time when existing technologies were inconceivable – can remain relevant for the developing CE. This research reveals challenges including distribution of power, insularity, and social compensation mechanisms that need consideration across states and national borders.

This research tests the robustness of assumptions used today for significant, plausible market changes in the future. It provides considerable value in exploring challenges for public policy given the broad societal, economic, and political implications of the present market predictions.

Four characteristics have been regularly applied to services: intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, perishability (IHIP). More and more exceptions occur which have resulted in substantial criticism. This paper aims to show that each characteristic is valid and useful when related to an individual aspect of services instead of being assigned to services as a single entity.

Based on customer integration, a framework (FTU framework) and a resource typology are developed. These approaches are the theoretical foundation of the analysis.

The FTU framework and a resource typology reveal different aspects of services and allow the assignment of the IHIP characteristics to them. Intangibility is assigned to the service offering, heterogeneity and inseparability to customer resources, and perishability to the facilities of the provider.

The paper is based on a theoretical analysis. Researchers may want to empirically test the approach.

Assigning the IHIP characteristics more clearly to certain aspects of services reveals their origin and makes them more tractable. For example knowing that heterogeneity of services is due to customers resources makes it more predictable and manageable.

Although the IHIP characteristics are both widely cited and criticized, existing research has only tried to find and establish new characteristic(s). The approach of this paper is original because it takes a more trenchant look at them in order to develop a framework identifying aspects of services for which they apply.

The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize platforms for members to exchange information by information-based online communities (IBOCs, like LinkedIn or Facebook). Because member participation is vital for IBOCs, this research aims to identify and validate factors that drive member participation.

With reference to social exchange theory the authors developed a model of antecedents of participation in IBOCs that was tested with survey data using PLS. Because some of the results contradicted the theory, the authors examined those results in a mainly qualitative study with online community providers. These experts offered explanations that inform the discussion and managerial implications.

Role clarity, provider’s responsiveness, and enjoyment all influence member participation. Contrary to theory, the cooperation of other members affects member participation negatively while a member’s ability shows no effect.

This research has several implications for IBOC providers. Because ability does not affect participation directly, providers do not need to worry about lacking ability and can effectively target all potential members. The importance of provider responsiveness signals that IBOC providers should proactively monitor members’ compliance with social norms to lower the social risk for members. The impact of community-specific knowledge and enjoyment on participation puts emphasis on careful community design and the thoughtful implementation of new features that might enhance enjoyment, but reduce role clarity.

Whereas most of the participation literature focusses on a dyadic relationship, the research investigates the triadic relationship in which the provider is only an enabler of exchange. Furthermore, the authors bring together two streams of the literature: the participation literature, which tends to focus on offline participation; and the online community literature, which has not yet investigated participation. This is also the first paper to investigate nonlinear effects on participation.

The purpose of this study is to identify and assess the importance of proposed determinants of the growing consumer preference for renting consumer goods, as opposed to the actual transfer of ownership.

Following a qualitative preliminary study and a literature review, six factors are identified as possible determinants of a preference for non‐ownership modes of consumption. These are examined in a quantitative study using a sample of 461 members of a German online peer‐to‐peer sharing network. Hypotheses regarding the proposed determinants are tested using factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The results show that the demand for non‐ownership services is negatively influenced by “possession importance” (the importance that a consumer attaches to full ownership) and positively influenced by “trend orientation” and “convenience orientation”. The other proposed determinants – “experience orientation”, “price consciousness”, and “environmentalism” do not appear to influence a preference for non‐ownership modes of consumption.

Although the renting of goods is an increasingly popular form of consumption, consumers still value ownership. Suppliers should therefore consider offering a mixture of “ownership” and “non‐ownership” modes of consumption to their customers.

This study complements existing research in this area, which has largely been conceptual in nature, by undertaking an empirical evaluation of the importance of several proposed determinants for non‐ownership preference.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of a new convenience‐enhancing service at the interface between retailers and consumers: time‐based delivery of parcels. The service allows consumers to choose a preferred time slot for a parcel to be delivered. This convenience‐enhancing logistics service may be attractive for consumers, retailers, and logistics service providers. The authors provide insights on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for this service and important drivers of its attractiveness.

This paper measures and analyzes the attractiveness and antecedents, the WTP, and the overall revenue potential of this service based on an empirical analysis. A contingent valuation approach was adopted to measure the WTP and the level of usage.

Research results suggest that the level of availability at home and the working hours per week are important antecedents of the perceived attractiveness of the service. Furthermore, consumers who perceive this convenience‐enhancing service as attractive, represent a market segment that has significant revenue potential.

Based on the analysis, important managerial insights are derived that can guide logistics service providers and retailers in their decision to implement such a novel service.

The paper enhances the scope of convenience services, providing empirical data for a time‐based delivery service.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate customer perceptions of their own contribution to service provision, in order to enhance our understanding of customer contribution and its dimensions.

In total, 27 in-depth interviews were conducted across nine service contexts. Qualitative data were then analyzed to identify the various dimensions of customer contribution.

First, the study contributes to the understanding of customer contribution in identifying physical, mental, and emotional dimensions. The physical and mental dimensions of customer contribution are represented by activities, while emotions comprise mood and emotional states. Second, relationships among the three dimensions were identified; in particular, physical and mental activities were found to influence customer emotions. Third, the findings reveal that customer understanding of their own contribution to service provision encompass the co-creative sphere of customer and provider, and extends to the customer-sphere before the service encounter.

The qualitative study is limited in terms of generalizability, since the 27 interview cases were based on nine interviews each covering three service settings. Further research is needed to investigate how the dimensions of customer contribution are linked to different outcomes (e.g. service value, satisfaction, loyalty), thus providing a quantitative validation of our findings.

Understanding the customer contribution to service provision is pivotal for service design. Service managers need to reflect on how the different dimensions of contribution manifest in their existing or potential service offering, since physical and mental customer activities shape their emotions, which in turn impact on the service experience and value.

Little in-depth research has been conducted on the nature and dimensionality of customer contributions to service provision, particularly with regard to perceptions of their own contribution. Most previous empirical research on customer contribution is limited to a specific context and concerned with customer behaviors. Hence, this qualitative study examines customer contribution across different service context, focussing on customer perceptions in terms of physical, mental, and emotional contributions to service provision.

Demand for service convenience, defined as a consumer’s perception of minimized time and effort spent to obtain a service, has increased in conjunction with certain sociocultural and demographic changes. Previous research notes the significance of service convenience, but the importance of different dimensions of service convenience and the role of key moderators affecting the link between convenience and satisfaction (like customer psychographic and sociodemographic characteristics) remain unaddressed. Thus, the purpose of this research is to identify those customer groups for which offering convenience will have the highest leverage to increase satisfaction.

Two models are developed and tested: a multidimensional model of service convenience with a formative measure of five service convenience dimensions, namely, decision, access, search, transaction and after-sales convenience, and a moderator model hypothesizing different customer psychographic and sociodemographic characteristics (time pressure, shopping enjoyment, age, household size and income) that affect the link between service convenience and satisfaction.

This study reveals that search convenience, followed by transaction and decision convenience, exerts the greatest influence on the perception of overall service convenience. In addition, those who value service convenience most are high-income, time-pressed consumers in smaller households who experience low shopping enjoyment.

Providers have limited budgets for enhancing their services. Thus, it is important to identify which dimension has the greatest influence on the perception of service convenience and the customer segments for which service convenience is most critical.

Organizations (data gatherers in the context) drown in data while at the same time seeking managerially relevant insights. Academics (data hunters) have to deal with decreasing respondent participation and escalating costs of data collection while at the same time seeking to increase the managerial relevance of their research. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework on how, managers and academics can collaborate better to leverage each other’s resources.

This research synthesizes the academic and the managerial literature on the realities and priorities of practitioners and academics with regard to data. Based on the literature, reflections from the world’s leading service research centers, and the authors’ own experiences, the authors develop recommendations on how to collaborate in research.

Four dimensions of different data realities and priorities were identified: research problem, research resources, research process and research outcome. In total, 26 recommendations are presented that aim to equip academics to leverage the potential of corporate data for research purposes and to help managers to leverage research results for their business.

This paper argues that both practitioners and academics have a lot to gain from collaborating by exchanging corporate data for scientific approaches and insights. However, the gap between different realities and priorities needs to be bridged when doing so. The paper first identifies data realities and priorities and then develops recommendations on how to best collaborate given these differences.

This research has the potential to contribute to managerial practice by informing academics on how to better collaborate with the managerial world and thereby facilitate collaboration and the dissemination of academic research for the benefit of both parties.

Whereas the previous literature has primarily examined practitioner–academic collaboration in general, this study is the first to focus specifically on the aspects related to sharing corporate data and to elaborate on academic and corporate objectives with regard to data and insights.