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The growth of self-service technologies (SST) in the retail sector has led to an increased prevalence of SST failures, and spurred academic debate on customer self-recovery of the failed services. This study sets out to explore why customers prefer or decline to engage in self-recovery. A framework integrating elements from self-determination theory and theory of planned behavior is developed to explore the impact of motivational factors, attitudes and self-efficacy on self-recovery intention.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the sample consisting of 297 users of retail kiosks in convenience stores.

The results revealed that intrinsic motivation and identified regulation directly affect customers' attitude and intention to engage in self-recovery. Despite an insignificant direct relationship, external regulation impacted self-recovery intention through attitude. Further, the association between intrinsic motivation and self-recovery intention is moderated by self-efficacy.

Much of the extant SST recovery literature has focused on company-rendered service recovery, providing little guidance to firms on how to promote self-recovery among customers. The integrated motivational-cognitive theoretical base in this study allows for a more differentiated inquiry into the factors shaping self-recovery intention, resulting in a deeper understanding of this topic. The novel insights will help retailers develop effective strategies for promoting self-recovery among users of retail kiosks.

As developed countries experience a decline of manufacturing industries, national governments increasingly turn to innovation‐based cluster initiatives to secure the long‐term prosperity of a region. However, the mechanisms that help translate cluster membership into higher innovativeness are not well understood. This paper seeks to propose a framework which sees a firm's network competence and network location as being key to superior innovation performance.

The deductive quantitative study applies a combination of statistical tools and tools for social network analysis to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results show that none of the cluster companies has so far been able to operate at the expected level of innovation performance. Findings further support the hypothesis that network competence and central network positions are positively related to innovation performance. Therefore, while innovation performance proves to be unsatisfactory for all cluster companies, those with a higher level of network competence and central network positions perform significantly better in terms of innovation than companies low in network competence and network centrality.

In order to succeed in a cluster, companies must focus on enhancing their network competence and strive for more central network positions.

The study focuses on the social construction of innovation performance. Cluster firms, their embeddedness in exchange relationships with other firms, as well as their network managerial competence are seen as key factors influencing firm innovation performance. In conclusion, the study offers an alternative view on innovation performance, complementing the traditional explanation approaches in the innovation literature.

The success of retail service innovations is contingent upon a thorough understanding of the antecedent factors that drive adoption intention. Using the example of a novel kiosk technology, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the antecedents of kiosk use intention and to find out how perceptions of antecedent factors vary among potential and early adopters.

Based on the “Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology” and the technology readiness (TR) concept, the proposed framework identifies several factors underlying adoption intention. The framework is tested on potential and early adopters of a kiosk system recently launched by Taiwan's largest convenience retailer.

Results show that while performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions and social influence impact overall use intention, the perceptions of these antecedents vary significantly between potential versus early users. Further, individual TR does not intervene with technology perceptions.

Retail practitioners can use the findings to more effectively target these two important adopter segments and to prioritize their technology investments.

Most of extant technology adoption researches assume that factors driving adoption behaviour remain constant as diffusion progresses. This work joins a limited number of studies, which propose a dynamic nature of antecedent factors. The paper shows how perceptions of antecedent factors differ among potential and early users of a novel kiosk system. Overall, this paper emphasizes the need for a more segmented‐oriented approach in the promoting of innovative retail technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate market-contextual variations in consumers’ self-service technology (SST) usage intentions.

Applications of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology support the exploration of antecedents of usage intention for SSTs in two market contexts, through a survey among Taiwanese and Austrian college students. The cross-cultural nature of the study suggested the need for factor analyses to evaluate measurement equivalence. A Chow-Test confirmed structural stability, followed by regression analysis and independent samples t-tests to confirm the hypotheses.

Substantial differences arise across market contexts that shape usage intentions. In a collectivistic, emerging market context (Taiwan), performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and personal innovativeness significantly influence usage intention. In an individualistic, advanced market context (Austria), only performance expectancy and social influence have significant impacts on usage intention. Personal innovativeness moderates only the relationship between performance expectancy and usage intention.

The findings suggest that usage intention is subject to the market environment in which the technology is introduced. Consumers are influenced by the local and institutional-cultural environment.

Globalization has accelerated the launch of retail services innovations. It is imperative to understand consumers’ usage intentions from a global perspective. This study advances SST research by analyzing and comparing adoption behavior in an advanced vs emerging market setting.