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The context of marketing and service research is rapidly changing as a result of advances in academic research and business practice. This has implications for our understanding of customer value. The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on customer value given today’s context (including recent advances such as technologies, human contact, collaborative consumption, service ecosystems and transformative service research); to revise Holbrook’s value typology; and to propose a research agenda.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service and marketing literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, this paper presents an evolved view on customer value which accounts for recent advances in academic research and business practice. Second, this paper updates Holbrook’s value typology by revising existing value types as well as identifying additional value types; and offers guidelines for measuring and modeling customer value. Third, this paper proposes a research agenda to guide and stimulate future value research.

This paper provides an update on customer value, which is one of the most fundamental concepts in service and marketing research. This updated perspective has been approved and applauded by Morris B. Holbrook, one of the founding fathers of value research.

Missing in most of the research on selling has been an examination of the process from the point of view of the customer. When satisfaction in selling has been considered, researchers have focused on the satisfaction of the salesperson with his job and/or the impact of this job satisfaction on performance (e.g. Bluen, Barling & Burns, 1990; Churchill, Ford & Walker, 1979; Pruden & Peterson, 1971). To concentrate on salesperson performance while neglecting customers is to ignore the most important half of the relationship between buyers and sellers and entirely disregards the marketing concept and the streams of research in customer satisfaction. This research takes a different approach and examines customers’ satisfaction with salespeople.

This paper aims to investigate the role of service modularity in developing and deploying efficient services, while at the same time meeting diverse customer needs. The analysis distinguishes between different service types and sets forth key issues for service modularization, identifying supporting resources (both internal and customer) and associated modular strategies for the different types.

The study design used an exploratory case study approach, focusing on three Swedish manufacturing firms that are moving toward an increased service focus (service infusion). Data were collected through interviews and focus groups, and the collected data were analyzed independently, before being merged and synthesized in a cross-case analysis. Themes and patterns were extracted and linked to the theoretical framework following a systematic combining process.

This study contributes insights to the emerging field of service modularity by investigating process modularization and modular strategies. A framework is put forward outlining modular strategies for four different service types covering both a passive and an active role for a customer. From a theoretical point of view, the role of the customer is added to the discussion to advocate for the necessity of a co-creative perspective in service modularity.

This article contributes to the emerging research field of service modularity by providing empirical insights into how modularization and modular strategies can enable more efficient services. Depending on service type, different modular strategies are set forth. This study also highlights the need to recognize customer-specific activities, resources and competencies as pivotal parts of the modular service processes. Such insights are particularly relevant given the established view of service modules as functions of intra-firm activities.

This study aims to address the following research questions: Do the two types of service firms (individual or aggregator) have similar competitiveness on online search ads? How should the two types of service firms select optimal branded keywords to improve search performance? In addition, how do consumers’ search queries influence the service search performance of the two types of service firms?

In this study, the authors conduct an empirical analysis by building a two-stage choice modeling on the process of search engine ranking and consumer click-through decisions. The authors estimate the parameter coefficients and test the hypotheses using maximum likelihood estimation in the logistic regression model.

The empirical findings suggest that consumer response rates are highly dependent upon three aspects (service types, branded keyword strategy and consumer search query). First, the authors found that service aggregators receive greater consumer responses than individual service providers. Second, depending upon the various branded keyword strategies (e.g. generic vs branded, “within-type” vs “cross-type”) implemented by service aggregators or individual firms, the expected consumer responses could be quite different. Finally, customer’s search query, being either generic or branded, also has direct effect and interactive effect with service type on how consumers would response to the sponsored ads in the service search process.

The limitation of the research is twofold. First, conversion rate is not considered in the model estimation due to the nature of the data set. Second, the discussion about the keywords selection strategies is focusing on the hospitality industry. Future research shall further validate the generalizability into other industries.

First, given this competitive advantage, service aggregators should take an aggressive approach to adopting paid search strategy in acquiring new users and enhance its brand salience in the service ecosystem. Second, when considering other competitor’s brand names to include, if a firm is a service provider (e.g. hotel), a strategy that can help it receive higher consumer response would be to use “within-type” rather than “cross-type” branded keyword strategy. If a firm is a service aggregator, a better branded keyword strategy would be to use “across-type” instead of “within-type” approach. In addition, given that consumer’s brand awareness can influence the effectiveness of branded keyword strategy, online service search should target consumers in earlier stages of a decision journey.

The authors believe their theoretical framework can provide actionable solutions to service firms to ease customer’s search process, increase customer’s stickiness using search engines and add value to the customer relationships with all services entities within the digital ecosystem.

This study is the first to expand online search marketing into granule examinations (main and interactive effects of three key factors) in the service search domain. First, the authors differentiate service firms into two categories – online travel aggregators and individual hotels in the model. Second, the authors introduce two sets of new classifications of branded keywords for online service search research (i.e. own versus other brand and “cross-type” versus “within-type” branded keywords). Third, this study integrates service consumers’ search word specificity into the conceptual framework which is often missing in previous online search research.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

This paper aims to investigate how to design a firm’s customer demotion policy and communication styles differently for customers demoted from top-tier and bottom-tier to promote their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions.

Four scenario-based experiments were conducted in the customer demotion context of an airline’s hierarchical loyalty program. A total of 796 customers recruited from a survey panel participated in the study.

The results reveal that customers in top-tier demotion significantly increase their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions when a short evaluation period (vs a long evaluation period) is given. Further, customers in bottom-tier demotion improve their willingness to restore and, in turn, their loyalty intentions more with a gain-focused communication style than with a loss-focused communication style. Willingness to restore lost status plays a mediating role in the process by which an appropriate match between demotion type and evaluation period type/communication styles leads to higher loyalty intentions.

This study extends the research stream on customer demotion by examining how to execute customer demotion to mitigate its detrimental effects and facilitate demoted customers’ approach motivation and behavioral intentions, a critical but understudied topic that has been ignored by researchers.

Managers are advised to offer customized customer status evaluation periods and communication styles for top-tier and bottom-tier demoted customers to effectively promote their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions.

This study is among the first to explore the possible varying effects of differential demotion policy and communication style on different tiers of customers.

With the rise of customer engagement in online products and services innovation, enterprises are seeking effective referral reward program (RRP) to encourage customers’ follow-up electronic-referral (e-referral) behaviors. Therefore, how to stimulate more customers to participate in the RRP is very important to enterprises. However, little empirical work has systemically investigated the impact of RRP on customers’ follow-up e-referral, as well as the moderating effects of customers’ characteristics. To fill those research gaps, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of RRP (particularly, reward amount and reward type) on customers’ follow-up e-referral, and the role of creative self-efficacy.

Based on the self-perception theory and the context of online customer innovation, this paper establishes a theoretical model and uses an experiment with 160 participants to test the hypotheses on the role of reward (amount and type) and the moderating effect of creative self-efficacy.

The results of the experiment suggest that both reward amount and reward type in RRP positively impact customers’ follow-up e-referral. Furthermore, customers’ creative self-efficacy moderates the relationship between rewards and customers’ follow-up e-referral. Customers with low creative self-efficacy, reward amount significantly stimulate their follow-up e-referral, but such effect is insignificant when customers’ creative self-efficacy is high. In terms of reward type, gift reward has more positive effect on customers’ follow-up e-referral when they have high (rather than low) creative self-efficacy, but cash reward has more positive effect on those with low (rather than high) creative self-efficacy.

First, based on the self-perception theory, the study clarifies the inconsistent relationship between reward and customers’ e-referral and contributes to related research. Second, the study broadens the existing research perspective by introducing creative self-efficacy, which shows interesting and powerful moderating effect but has been ignored in previous studies. Third, the study provides valuable advice on how enterprises design an effective RRP to enhance customers’ follow-up e-referral.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the nature of linkages between characteristics of a service and customer consequences and elicit the types of such linkages.

The paper builds on current research on linkages and customer consequences within the means‐end approach and on a qualitative case study in the context of website use in business‐to‐business relationships.

The paper introduces six types of linkages between characteristics of a service and customer consequences: common and unique, conflicting and non‐conflicting, and homogenous and heterogeneous linkages.

The paper portrays four cases of implications of the linkages for simplicity and homogeneity of the design of services and of their marketing strategies.

The ways in which characteristics of a service are linked with customer consequences of an engagement with the service are of crucial importance in marketing. Despite the importance, research on linkages is scarce. By considering currently neglected aspects such as different units of analysis, different relationships between characteristics and customer consequences, and diversity in characteristics and consequences, the paper introduces new types of linkages. It also depicts the relevance of the knowledge of the linkages for portraying customer value fully.

In services, customers’ successful performance of expected roles is critical to ensuring successful service outcomes. To help customers perform their roles better, service providers offer them feedback on their performance. To improve the design of customer feedback that contains both positive and negative messages, the purpose of this paper is to examine the order and the repetition effect of feedback message types on customer feedback satisfaction, motivation, and compliance intention, focusing on the moderating effect of customer involvement level. This paper also examines whether feedback satisfaction and motivation mediate the moderation effect of the order or repetition of feedback message type and customer involvement level on compliance intention.

This study employs two between-subject quasi-experimental designs: 2 (feedback message order: positive message first vs negative message first) × 2 (involvement level: high vs low) and a 2 (repeated feedback type: positive vs negative) × 2 (involvement level: high vs low). Data collection occurred through an online survey using eight health checkup scenarios. Hypotheses were tested by using MANOVA and PROCESS.

The customer involvement level moderated the effect of the presentation order of feedback message type on customer responses. With highly involved customers, offering positive feedback initially produced responses that were more favorable. With customers with low involvement, the order did not matter. The effects of feedback satisfaction and motivation as mediators in the effect of order on compliance intention were significant only with highly involved customers. The mediation effect of motivation was much stronger than that of feedback satisfaction. The repetition of a particular feedback type took effect only with customers with low-involvement level. Compared to the no-repetition condition (positive-negative), when positive feedback was repeated (positive-negative-positive), motivation increased. Compared to the no-repetition condition (negative-positive), when negative feedback was repeated (negative-positive-negative), feedback satisfaction and compliance intention decreased. In terms of mediating effect, only feedback satisfaction was a meaningful mediator and only when negative feedback was repeated to low-involvement customers.

This study contributes to research by extending feedback studies in services to include a consideration of the order and repetition of feedback message types as design variables; it contributes practically by suggesting how to design feedback for better customer responses such as feedback satisfaction, motivation, and compliance intention.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and application of a theoretical framework to examine the connections between different types of suppliers, their capabilities and opportunities in customer relationships, and the illustration of these connections through the findings from empirical case studies of small and medium‐sized suppliers in the metal industry in Denmark.

Multiple case studies involving 17 small and medium‐sized suppliers within the Danish metal industry were undertaken.

By focusing on the development of capabilities that are “valuable” to customers in specific types of supply, small and medium‐sized suppliers may improve their responses to opportunities in their customer relationships.

Further investigation is needed on the longer‐term impacts of valuable capabilities on opportunity enactment by suppliers, and the examination of key issues arising from these findings across different industries and countries.

Small and medium‐sized suppliers, their customers and government agencies involved with suppliers should advocate and actively support the development of valuable capabilities to enhance the effectiveness of suppliers' relationship and network strategies and their potential to seize opportunities.

This study highlights that different types of suppliers require different types of current and future valuable capabilities to seize opportunities and sustain current customers or develop new customer relationships.