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Volunteers at child helplines play an important role in providing support for children, so keeping them satisfied during encounters is crucial to continue helping children. The purpose of this study is to understand how children’s perceptions of instrumental and emotional support (partner effects) influence volunteer encounter satisfaction, and whether this effect is moderated by a volunteer’s previous encounter experience and levels of interpersonal and service-offering adaptiveness.

The sample consisted of 377 dyads of 116 volunteers and 377 children from online service encounters at a child helpline. Questionnaires were used to measure satisfaction, support and volunteer adaptiveness. A multilevel model was estimated to test the hypothesized moderation effects.

This study revealed that the instrumental support partner effect positively influenced volunteer encounter satisfaction. This relationship was stronger when the previous encounter was less satisfying or for volunteers with higher interpersonal, but not higher service-offering, adaptiveness. Negative effects on the relationship between the emotional support partner effect and volunteer encounter satisfaction were found after a less satisfying previous encounter or for volunteers with higher interpersonal adaptiveness.

This study contributes to the services and volunteerism literature by providing a unique perspective on the interpersonal influence between volunteers and children during service encounters. In the context of child helplines, this paper illustrates how volunteer encounter satisfaction is a function of the intricate interplay between children’s perceptions of the service encounter and volunteers’ perceptions of previous experiences and their adaptiveness.

The authors investigate how employee social support impacts children’s perceptions of service quality of a child helpline chat service and the chatters’ immediate well-being. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to examine how action-facilitating support, nurturant support and emotional reflections influence the children and to test whether this impact varies depending upon the controllability of the issues discussed.

The authors develop hypotheses about the influence of social support and controllability on children’s perceived service quality and well-being. Chat conversations are coded on the social support given by the employee and the controllability of the issue. Questionnaires are collected to measure children’s service quality and well-being. Using structural equation modeling, hypotheses are tested with a sample of 662 children and chat conversations of a child helpline.

The study reveals that for children chatting about controllable issues, nurturant support and negative emotional reflections negatively influence the immediate well-being of these children. Positive emotional reflections positively influence immediate well-being. For children chatting about uncontrollable issues, nurturant support and negative emotional responses positively influence the perceived service quality.

This study contributes to the services marketing literature by broadening the current understanding of the impact of social support on children’s service quality perceptions and well-being, and by showing how this impact is moderated by the level of controllability of the issue discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumers' responses to social alliances, a specific type of corporate social marketing in which companies cooperate with non-profit organizations. This paper extends previous studies that suggested that a social marketing effort may be a “double-edged sword” with regard to companies' marketing objectives.

This study uses a 2 (social value orientation: prosocials/ proselfs) × 3 (company-cause fit: high/low fit/control group) between-subjects experimental design.

The findings suggest that while prosocials reward companies for social marketing alliances with high fit, proselfs punish the company. This effect can be explained by differences in prosocials' and proselfs' perceptions of the company's corporate abilities, which are influenced by the level of fit.

Future research could give more attention to low-fit alliances, and whether specific fit dimensions play a role. It could also identify ways to overcome negative responses by proselfs in case of high fit.

Companies should be cautious in selecting a social marketing alliance partner as high fit is received favourably by some consumers, but unfavourably by others. While high fit has other benefits for companies, increasing consumers' awareness of strong corporate abilities is important.

Previous studies suggested that different consumer types and a link between the company and the cause may impact the effectiveness of social marketing initiatives. Unlike extant studies, this paper explores the combined and hence moderating influence of both factors, and adds perceived corporate abilities as a mediating factor.

In this paper, the focus is on a new type of electronic service encounter called Moderated Group Chat (MGC). MGC is defined as on‐line, real‐time interactions between groups of customers with an active coordinating role for a company representative and a commercial objective. Based on the technology acceptance model, we develop a conceptual framework and examine empirically which factors drive customer satisfaction with MGC sessions. Particularly, we look at the impact of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment on customer satisfaction. As MGC involves multiple participants and interactions take place within an electronic group environment, predictor‐criterion relationships may vary between individual‐ and group‐level or shared perceptions. Therefore, the relationships between aforementioned determinants and chat session satisfaction are tested using a multi‐level model. In addition, group size was included as a control variable. Finally, since chat is an innovative service delivery channel, we also took a number of customer characteristics (i.e. innovativeness, experience with investing and experience with chat) into account. Whereas we find support for a positive impact of the majority of predictor variables on chat session satisfaction, the precise nature of the relationship varies across levels. Moreover, while group size is positively related to satisfaction, experience with investing exhibits a weakly negative relationship.

Although research is emerging, the knowledge base on the evaluative determinants of the effectiveness of corporate employment web sites is still limited. This paper attempts to narrow this gap by investigating how potential job applicants' evaluations of web site content‐ and form‐related attributes contribute to corporate employment web site effectiveness.

The approach takes the form of an empirical study using PLS path modeling.

Applicants' attitude toward a corporate employment web site is found to be differentially influenced by the web site's content‐ and form‐related evaluations. In turn, attitude toward the web site influences intentions to apply. This relationship is fully mediated by attraction toward the organization. The latter is also influenced by attitude toward corporate employment web sites in general, which consequently contributes indirectly to application intentions.

Using a non‐laboratory setting and a broader sample, future research should further apply a person‐organization fit perspective to corporate online recruitment and investigate effects of personality‐related factors such as risk/security‐seeking tendencies. Furthermore, it may be worthwhile to include technology‐oriented variables such as technological self‐efficacy as well.

Corporate employment web sites used to inform potential applicants about employment opportunities should be easy to use. In addition, firms should provide applicants with updated information and make sure that the information provided matches the applicants' needs during their information search process.. Persons who hold a more favorable overall predisposition toward corporate employment web sites are more attracted toward an organization using such sites. This suggests that corporate employment web sites may be particularly effective for certain groups of applicants, beyond the effects of web site content and form.

Drawing on literature in areas such as job applicant decision making, information systems, and web site effectiveness, the paper develops the understanding of the role of web site features in determining intentions to apply for a job via corporate employment web sites.

Most studies on consumers and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have focused on Western contexts. Consequently, good insight is lacking into non-Western markets where consumers may respond differently. China is a case in point, despite the popularity of the CSR concept and high societal expectations of firms. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese consumers perceive the underlying components of CSR found in Western countries; whether their CSR expectations differ for local Chinese compared to foreign firms; and whether results differ across regions within China.

A country-wide study was done using a questionnaire to collect data in seven distinctive regional markets across China.

Findings show that the originally Western CSR construct seems generalizable to China, but consumers across all regions perceive two rather than four components: one combining economic and legal responsibilities (labelled “required CSR”) and another combining ethical and philanthropic responsibilities (“expected CSR”). Consumers expect local Chinese firms to take more responsibility than foreign firms, particularly for required CSR.

This study focused on consumer perceptions, not on actual buying behaviour, which is a potential area for further research. Follow-up investigation to see whether the findings regarding the CSR concept also hold in other emerging and developing countries would be worthwhile. This also applies to an extension of the different expectations vis-à-vis foreign and local firms.

The study gives more insight into notions of standardization and adaptation with regard to CSR, considering China compared to other countries and China’s different internal markets. This is relevant for international marketers confronted with (potential) investments and activities in China, inbound or outbound, or in need of a comparative global perspective.

While the findings show some context-specificity for CSR in and across China, they also confirm the relevance of the originally Western CSR components to an emerging-market setting. These insights may be helpful for those interested in furthering CSR across countries, and locally as well as globally.

This study responds to calls for an improved understanding of the context-specificity of the originally Western CSR construct and of the extent to which it may be generalizable to non-Western settings such as China. The authors used a sample covering all regions of China and discovered two important dimensions. The results may be helpful to guide the debate on the plethora of CSR conceptualizations into a more focused direction, with clear relevance for the marketing field.