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While the proliferation of chatbots allows companies to connect with their customers in a cost- and time-efficient manner, it is not deniable that they quite often fail expectations and may even pose negative impacts on user experience. The purpose of the study is to empirically explore the negative user experience with chatbots and understand how users respond to service failure caused by chatbots.

This study adopts a qualitative research method and conducts thematic analysis of 23 interview transcripts.

It identifies common areas where chatbots fail user expectations and cause service failure. These include their inability to comprehend and provide information, over-enquiry of personal or sensitive information, fake humanity, poor integration with human agents, and their inability to solve complicated user queries. Negative emotions such as anger, frustration, betrayal and passive defeat were experienced by participants when they interacted with chatbots. We also reveal four coping strategies users employ following a chatbots-induced failure: expressive support seeking, active coping, acceptance and withdrawal.

Our study extends our current understanding of human-chatbot interactions and provides significant managerial implications. It highlights the importance for organizations to re-consider the role of their chatbots in user interactions and balance the use of human and chatbots in the service context, particularly in customer service interactions that involve resolving complex issues or handling non-routinized tasks.

Although trade volumes in e-retailing have increased significantly in recent years, logistics service failures are inevitable, especially at the delivery stage. Therefore, it is essential to provide customers with effective recovery strategies to increase their satisfaction and repurchase intentions. There is a lack of empirical evidence on whether the response time or the discount offered in compensation is more crucial for customers. Therefore, this study aims to determine whether the response time or the discount offered for high and low criticality failures has a greater impact on customer satisfaction levels and repurchase intentions for female and male customers.

A scenario-based experimental design method has been adopted to collect data, and 697 participants aged 18 and 58 years have been reached. The research utilized a between-subjects design, incorporating three factors: gender (female vs male), criticality (high vs low) and compensation (7 days: 10% discount, 10 days: 20% discount and 14 days: 30% discount). Six scenarios depicting the failure of an online retailer were created, and factorial univariate ANOVA was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The study's results show that in terms of customer satisfaction, female customers attach more importance to the response time in the case of high criticality and the amount of discount offered in the case of low criticality. On the other hand, male customers give more importance to the response time in terms of customer satisfaction when they experience a high or low criticality failure. In the case of low criticality, response time is more important for male customers to increase their repurchase intentions, while the amount of the discount is more important for female customers.

The study demonstrates the relative importance of the response time and discount amount according to the criticality level of failures and to guide business managers in terms of the recovery strategies they will implement. It focuses on gender differences and determine whether the response time or discount amount is more important for male and female customers in high or low-criticality situations.

This study aims to explore Augmented Language Models (ALMs) for synthetic data generation in services marketing and research. It evaluates ALMs' potential in mirroring human responses and behaviors in service scenarios through comparative analysis with five empirical studies.

The study uses ALM-based agents to conduct a comparative analysis, leveraging SurveyLM (Bickley et al., 2023) to generate synthetic responses to the scenario-based experiment in Söderlund and Oikarinen (2018) and four more recent studies from the Journal of Services Marketing. The main focus was to assess the alignment of ALM responses with original study manipulations and hypotheses.

Overall, our comparative analysis reveals both strengths and limitations of using synthetic agents to mimic human-based participants in services research. Specifically, the model struggled with scenarios requiring high levels of visual context, such as those involving images or physical settings, as in the Dootson et al. (2023) and Srivastava et al. (2022) studies. Conversely, studies like Tariq et al. (2023) showed better alignment, highlighting the model's effectiveness in more textually driven scenarios.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first to systematically use ALMs in services marketing, providing new methods and insights for using synthetic data in service research. It underscores the challenges and potential of interpreting ALM versus human responses, marking a significant step in exploring AI capabilities in empirical research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of Customer Participation (CP) in the effectiveness of New Service Development (NSD) by examining the moderating roles of Customer Empowerment (CE) and Customer Satisfaction (CS). The research reduces the risk of failure of the NSD process and/or improves the NSD processes used by companies through the consideration of the results in the practical dimension.

This study investigates the effects of CP at different stages of NSD using a quantitative approach. Data were collected through an online survey questionnaire. Smart PLS was used to analyse the data collected from 509 newsreaders and users of the news agency’s application.

The model confirmed that CE has an impact on the effectiveness of NSD in the idea generation and commercialization stages, but not in the development stage. Empowerment and customer satisfaction did not influence the three stages of NSD indirectly but directly. The results show that CP, CS and CE do not always have a direct or indirect effect on the development of new services. Therefore, in order to design new service development projects, media news companies need to determine the level of user cooperation.

The lack of objective data, especially on company performance, forces researchers to use questionnaires to analyse NSD effectiveness. Another limitation is that newspaper users answered the questionnaires, which creates “common method variance.”

Researchers on NSD effectiveness must use questionnaires due to a lack of objective data, especially on company performance. Another limitation is “common method variance” from newspaper users answering questionnaires.

This paper is a response to a perceived need for an examination of how new service development can be successful and effective.

This study addresses the gap in understanding text analytics within the service domain, focusing on new service development to provide insights into key research themes and trends in text analytics approaches to service development. It explores the benefits and challenges of implementing these approaches and identifies potential research opportunities for future service development. Importantly, this study offers insights to assist service providers to make data-driven decisions for developing new services and optimising existing ones.

This research introduces the hybrid thematic analysis with a systematic literature review (SLR-TA). It delves into the various aspects of text analytics in service development by analysing 124 research papers published from 2012 to 2023. This approach not only identifies key practical applications but also evaluates the benefits and difficulties of applying text analytics in this domain, thereby ensuring the reliability and validity of the findings.

The study highlights an increasing focus on text analytics within the service industry over the examined period. Using the SLR-TA approach, it identifies eight themes in previous studies and finds that “Service Quality” had the most research interest, comprising 42% of studies, while there was less emphasis on designing new services. The study categorises research into four types: Case, Concept, Tools and Implementation, with case studies comprising 68% of the total.

This study is groundbreaking in conducting a thorough and systematic analysis of a broad collection of articles. It provides a comprehensive view of text analytics approaches in the service sector, particularly in developing new services and service innovation. This study lays out distinct guidelines for future research and offers valuable insights to foster research recommendations.

The purpose of this study is to identify the structural determinants of e-returns service interactions, examine their impact on online shoppers' loyalty and propose returns service interventions from an interactive marketing perspective to facilitate consumer interaction and repeat purchase intentions with e-retailers.

This study empirically tests the research hypotheses based on cross-sectional survey data collected from Chinese online consumers who experienced interactions during the product returns process.

E-return service interaction includes three determinants: access support, friendly interaction and communication support. These interactions positively impact ease of return, returns satisfaction and customer loyalty. Returns satisfaction is a key mediator in the relationship between return service interaction and loyalty. Access support and friendly interaction have both direct and indirect effects on loyalty, while communication support has only an indirect effect.

This study contributes to understanding e-returns service interaction by analyzing its structural determinants, providing a robust scale foundation and analytical framework for future empirical research. Additionally, this study explores the driving role of e-returns service interaction in forming e-customer loyalty, offering a theoretical basis for the service recovery function of e-returns service interaction. It enriches the application of service recovery theory and relationship marketing theory in the field of interactive marketing.

The purpose of this study is to investigate possible drivers of loyalty amongst Islamic banking customers in Gauteng, South Africa. We ponder the relationships of service fairness (a secondorder reflective construct) with perceived value, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Data were obtained from Islamic banking customers in South Africa using interview-administered questionnaires. A total of 350 responses were perceived as being suitable for data analysis. The measurement and structural models were measured through structural equation modelling.

Service fairness and perceived value were found to be important drivers of loyalty within this context.

This study demonstrates that service fairness and perceived value are precursors to the future loyalty intentions of Islamic banking customers. As such, they should be nurtured as key elements of the relationship building process.

The study guides South African Islamic banks and South African banks with Islamic windows to better understand how service fairness (interactional, procedural and distributive) fosters satisfaction, perceived value and loyalty (attitudinal and behavioural).

Enhancing comprehension of the relationship between service fairness and customer loyalty, with satisfaction and perceived value playing intermediary roles, represents an unexplored avenue in academic research within the context of Islamic banking in an emerging African market.

In a dynamic and complex environment, employees’ creative performance (CP) can be essential in developing a distinguished and competitive strategy for an organization. Using the lens of competency management, this study aims to examine how employees perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) and competency formula relate to employee CP, with a focus on the hospitality industry.

The data was collected from employees in the hospitality sector. Both symmetrical (PLS-SEM) and asymmetrical (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis [fsQCA]) tests were performed to gain in-depth knowledge of how individual, organizational and environmental factors can be configured to explain employees’ CP.

The symmetrical analysis shows that the competency formula mediates the negative impacts of PEU on two dimensions of creativity – that is, novelty and utility. The fsQCA testing generated contrasting findings and revealed that uncertainty, along with the formula elements, is a unique antecedent condition and opportunity for employees’ CP. The inconsistent findings indicate asymmetrical and complex relationships between the proposed antecedents and outcomes in the case of employee creativity.

A combination of symmetrical and asymmetrical approaches is necessary to uncover the complex relationships among employees, organizations and the environment. This study shows that organizational agility, competency strategies and comprehensive strategic management processes can be configured to explain positive outcomes for organizations during uncertain circumstances. The findings can be used by human resource practitioners to maximize employee creativity and enhance organizational performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use symmetrical and asymmetrical testing to address the inadequacy of explaining employee CP in complex and uncertain environments, and highlight the crucial role of the competency formula in enhancing novelty and utility dimensions of CP. This research examines the impact of various internal and external factors (i.e. individual, organizational and contextual) on employee creativity within the hospitality industry.

Notwithstanding their potential benefits especially for individuals with low health literacy, users are still somewhat skeptical about the reliability of healthcare chatbots. The present study aims to address this challenge by investigating strategies to enhance users’ cognitive and emotional trust in healthcare chatbots. Particularly, this study aims to understand the effects of chatbot design cues in increasing trust and future chatbot use intention for low health literacy users.

We conducted two experimental studies with a final sample of 327 (Study 1) and 241 (Study 2). Three different chatbots were developed (Chatbot design: Bot vs Male-doctor vs Female-doctor). Participants were asked to have a medical consultation with the chatbot. Participants self-reported their health literacy scores. The PROCESS model 7 was used to analyze the hypotheses.

The results showed that the female-doctor cues elicited greater cognitive and emotional trust, whereas the male-doctor cues only led to greater cognitive trust (vs bot-like cues). Importantly, this study found that users’ health literacy is a significant moderating factor in shaping cognitive and emotional trust. The results indicated that both the female and male-doctor cues’ positive effects on cognitive trust were significant for those with lower levels of health literacy. Furthermore, the positive effect of the female-doctor cues on emotional trust was also significant only for those whose health literacy level was low. The increased cognitive and emotional trust led to greater future intention to use the chatbot, confirming significant moderated mediation effects.

Despite the strong economic and educational benefits of healthcare chatbots for low health literacy users, studies examining how healthcare chatbot design cues affect low health literate users surprisingly remained scarce. The results of this study suggest that healthcare chatbots can be a promising technological intervention to narrow the health literacy gap when aligned with appropriate design cues.

This paper aims to answer questions pertinent to whether or not services provided by smart hotels are really what customers are looking for, as well as to ascertain what are some unintended experiences guests may encounter. In essence, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the field to acknowledge the paradox of smart service.

This inquiry adopts a qualitative approach with data-driven from online customer reviews and semistructured interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken to interpret review comments.

Results point to a new phenomenon, which is coined as the smartness paradox. In particular, customers on one hand enjoy an array of smart-infused experiences that jointly offer patrons a sense of a futuristic lifestyle. On the other hand, smart devices superimpose a number of hindrances that bring guests dismay and annoyance.

This investigation brings smart service failure to the fore to highlight several key failure themes that could jeopardize the entire operation with debased customers’ satisfaction and loyalty inclination.

The smartness-paradox framework used in the present inquiry entails both approach and avoidance consequences customers enact depending on their smart experiences.