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Following a contingency approach, this paper aims to understand when service automation can enhance or destroy value for customers in the frontline by (1) providing a comprehensive overview of factors that influence the value co-creation/co-destruction potential of service automation and (2) zooming in on the combination of service contexts and service tasks to develop research propositions.

This paper uses a grounded theory approach based on qualitative data from multiple methods (i.e. a diary study with follow-up interviews, a consultation of academic experts and a storyboard study) as well as a systematic literature review to develop (1) a Framework of Automated Service Interactions (FASI) and (2) a contingency model for service tasks/contexts.

This paper presents a framework which gives an overview of factors influencing the value co-creation/co-destruction potential of service automation. The framework discerns between three types of factors: service design (i.e. controllable and manageable by the organization), static contingency (i.e. uncontrollable and fixed) and dynamic contingency (i.e. uncontrollable and flexible). Furthermore, the paper presents a contingency model based on the combination of service contexts and service tasks which results in seven research propositions.

This paper brings structure in the fragmented field of service automation. It integrates and summarizes insights regarding service automation and sheds more light on when service automation has the potential to create or destroy value in the organizational frontline.

The proliferation of online brand communities has shifted control over brands from firms to consumers. Demonstrating how marketers can stimulate consumers to use these opportunities and engage with the brand in such communities, the purpose of this paper is to address the effectiveness of normative and utilitarian appeals commonly employed in practice for enhancing engagement intensity and brand equity in turn.

This paper presents two studies at an individual user level. The first study builds on matched data on marketing actions, user behavior, and user perceptions from a Facebook brand community. The second study uses an experiment with members of a firm-hosted online brand community. The authors employ seemingly unrelated regressions while controlling for self-selection.

Marketer-generated appeals have a positive effect on brand equity that is mediated by engagement intensity. However, the strength of these effects depends highly on community, user, and relationship characteristics.

Generally speaking, marketer-generated appeals are effective tools for marketers to build brand equity through enhanced user engagement. However, their effectiveness can be improved when managers use a targeted approach. To offer precise managerial guidance, this paper shows how entertainment value, content consumption asymmetry (e.g. whether a user prefers user-generated content over marketer-generated content), and membership duration increase or lower the impact of appeals in building the brand through engagement intensity.

The authors provide evidence that appeals designed to drive user engagement in online brand communities are effective tools for boosting brand equity.

Recent service studies suggest focusing on the service triad consisting of technology-customer-frontline employee (FLE). This study empirically investigates the role of service robots in this service triad, with the aim to understand the augmentation or substitution role of service robots in driving utilitarian and hedonic value and ultimately customer repatronage.

In study 1, field data are collected from customers (n = 108) who interacted with a service robot and FLE in a fast casual dining restaurant. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test hypotheses about the impact of service robots' anthropomorphism, social presence, value perceptions and augmentation opportunities in the service triad. In study 2, empirical data from a scenario-based experimental design (n = 361) complement the field study by further scrutinizing the interplay between the service robot and FLEs within the service triad.

The study provides three important contributions. First, the authors provide empirical evidence for the interplay between different actors in the “customer-FLE-technology” service triad resulting in customer repatronage. Second, the empirical findings advance the service management literature by unraveling the relationship between anthropomorphism and social presence and their effect on perceived value in the service triad. And third, the study identifies utilitarian value of service robots as a driver of customer repatronage in fast casual dining restaurants.

The results help service managers, service robot engineers and designers, and policy makers to better understand the implications of anthropomorphism, and how the utilitarian value of service robots can offer the potential for augmentation or substitution roles in the service triad.

Building on existing conceptual and laboratory studies on service robots, this is one of the first field studies on the service triad consisting of service robots – customers – frontline employees. The empirical study on service triads provides evidence for the potential of FLEs to augment service robots that exhibit lower levels of functional performance to achieve customer repatronage. FLEs can do this by demonstrating a high willingness to help and having excellent interactions with customers. This finding advocates the joint service delivery by FLE – service robot teams in situations where service robot technology is not fully optimized.

Smart technologies and connected objects are rapidly changing the organizational frontline. Yet, our understanding of how these technologies infuse service encounters remains limited. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to update existing classifications of Frontline Service Technology (FST) infusion. Moreover, the authors discuss three promising smart and connected technologies – conversational agents, extended reality (XR) and blockchain technology – and their respective implications for customers, frontline employees and service organizations.

This paper uses a conceptual approach integrating existing work on FST infusion with artificial intelligence, robotics, XR and blockchain literature, while also building on insights gathered through expert interviews and focus group conversations with members of two service research centers.

The authors define FST and propose a set of FST infusion archetypes at the organizational frontline. Additionally, the authors develop future research directions focused on understanding how conversational agents, XR and blockchain technology will impact service.

This paper updates and extends existing classifications of FST, while paving the road for further work on FST infusion.

This paper aims to emphasize a research priority on the understanding of service products and how services can be productized. Furthermore, it provides perspectives on the contribution of service research to management practice and who should be the main target audience of service research.

This paper is based on the personal reflections of an author of two leading services marketing textbooks.

This paper develops three propositions related to service research. First, it advances that academic service research has neglected the important topic of productizing services and that service products should be treated as concrete units of deliverables to customers rather than something fuzzy of unspecified quantity. That is, service products should be developed, designed, specified, configured, modularized, bundled, tiered, branded, priced sold and delivered to customers. More research is needed on how organizations can do this. Second, this paper argues that academics frequently underestimate the significant contributions service research has made to management practice and details important contributions that originated from the service research community. Third, it is proposed that the main target audience of service research should not be the marketing, sales and service departments. Rather, it should be decision makers (especially C-level executives) across all functions who should develop a service perspective and service mindset.

This paper urges service researchers to focus on what are service products and how firm can create, manage and deliver them. Furthermore, it suggests that service researchers should be more confident and proud of the significant progress and contributions they have made to management practice over the past few decades. Finally, service researchers should tailor their messages for decisions makers of all organizational functions and departments in service organizations.

As a writer of five editions of a services marketing textbook, the author has sifted through three decades of service research. The reflections in this paper originate from this unique perspective.

This study aims to recognize industry 4.0 opportunities and challenges associated with the co-creation of value in industrial services and to propose a theoretical framework for smart industrial services systems.

The authors carried out a systematic literature review based on the systematic search flow method; thereafter, the authors used the content analysis proposed by Bardin (2011) to analyze the resulting portfolio.

The authors identified a total of five industry 4.0 opportunities and five challenges for co-creating value in industrial services. Drawing upon these findings, this paper builds a theoretical framework for the smart industrial services system, in which the industry 4.0 opportunities arise from the digitally mediated inter-firm interactions and the challenges related to the resources of this system.

This study may not have enabled a complete coverage of all existing peer-reviewed articles in the field of value co-creation in industrial services associated with the industry 4.0 technologies. Also, the framework is constrained by being theoretical rather than empirically grounded.

The findings give managers support to devise strategies for overcoming the barriers that impede them from taking advantage of the opportunities offered by industry 4.0 for co-creating value in industrial services.

This paper’s uniqueness is to identify the industry 4.0 opportunities and challenges for value co-creation in the context of industrial services and to propose a framework for the smart industrial services system.

The introduction of robotic process automation (RPA) in shared service centres (SSCs) can hardly be overlooked. This article, therefore, draws on the institutional theory to widen the understanding of its implementation and outcomes regarding people management. Drawing on the lens of the institutional theory and the literature on SSCs and RPA, this study addresses the key challenges and outcomes of robotization.

The study follows a qualitative approach and a purposeful sampling design that collected data from six major SSCs) introducing robotization. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with service representatives, including RPA project managers. A thematic content analysis was used.

The introduction of robotics follows mechanisms of coercive, normative and mimetic isomorphism and is effectively replacing workers. So far, this process has been managed through a few reactive people management practices, such as earlier retirements, internal mobility and outsourcing reduction, which warns of future tensions. The findings also show the emergence of new jobs, such as robot developers and robot managers.

The paper contributes to the limited empirical body of research in RPA in SSCs. The study is novel as it is one of the first offering an implementation roadmap for other SSCs and illustrates the positive impact on processes redesign. It also provides empirical evidence on the debate about the potential for service workers' replacement versus tasks augmentation. In the longer term, this study opens new research avenues related to the tensions and contradictions from the progressive institutionalization of robotization in service organizations.