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The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for understanding, predicting and analyzing how future service technologies can lead to value co-creation at different stages of a value chain.

For organizations, future service technologies are growing in importance and will become a crucial means to survival. It is clear that future service technologies will increase the opportunity to reduce costs and create efficiency, but it is not equally clear how future service technologies enable value creation for customers and users. On this premise, the study proposes a conceptual framework.

The framework illustrates how future service technologies can lead to value creation for customers. The paper also portrays opportunities and potential pitfalls with future service technologies for organizations.

Several researchers are focusing on innovative technologies. Many business companies are talking about how to implement them and increase their profit. However, less attention is devoted to the ways in which future service technologies will lead to benefits and the experience of service for customers and users using them. This paper represents an original attempt to illustrate that.

Technology-enabled business-to-business (B2B) services contribute the largest share to GDP growth and are fundamental for an economy’s value creation. This article aims to identify key service- and digital technology-driven B2B innovation modes and proposes a research agenda for further exploration.

This conceptual paper adopts a techno-demarcation view on service innovation, encompassing three core dimensions: service offering (the service product, or the “what”), service process (the “how”) and service ecosystem (the “who/for whom”). It delineates the implications of three digital technologies – the internet-of-things (IoT), intelligent automation (IA) and digital platforms – for service innovation across these core dimensions in B2B markets.

Digital technology has immense potential ramifications for value creation by reshaping all three core dimensions of service innovation. Specifically, IoT can transform physical resources into reconfigurable service products, IA can augment and automate a rapidly expanding array of service processes, while digital platforms provide the technical and organizational infrastructure for the integration of resources and stakeholders within service ecosystems.

This study suggests an agenda with six themes for further research, each linked to one or more of the three service innovation dimensions. They are (1) new recurring revenue models, (2) service innovation in the metaverse, (3) scaling up service innovations, (4) ecosystem innovations, (5) power dependency and lock-in effects and (6) security and responsibility in digital domains.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of innovation in smart service systems to conceptualize how actor’s relationships through technology-enabled interactions can give birth to novel technologies, processes, strategies and value. The objectives of the study are: to detect the different enablers that activate innovation in smart service systems; and to explore how these can lead dynamically to the emergence of different innovation patterns.

The empirical research adopts an approach based on constructivist grounded theory, performed through observation and semi-structured interviews to investigate the development of innovation in the Italian CTNA (Italian acronym of National Cluster for Aerospace Technology).

The identification and re-elaboration of the novelties that emerged from the analysis of the Cluster allow the elaboration of a diagram that classifies five different shades of innovation, introduced through some related theoretical propositions: technological; process; business model and data-driven; social and eco-sustainable; and practice-based.

The paper embraces a synthesis view that detects the enabling structural and systems dimensions for innovation (the “what”) and the way in which these can be combined to create new technologies, resources, values and social rules (the “how” dimension). The classification of five different kinds of innovation can contribute to enrich extant research on value co-creation and innovation and can shed light on how given technologies and relational strategies can produce varied innovation outcomes according to the diverse stakeholders engaged.

In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.

This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.

Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).

Service providers increasingly use conversational agents (CAs), such as chatbots, to effectively communicate with customers while managing interaction costs and providing round-the-clock customer service. Yet, the adoption and implementation of such agents in service contexts remains a hit-and-miss, and firms often struggle to balance their CAs implementation complexities and costs with relation to their service objectives, technology design and customer experiences. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance on optimizing CA design, therefore, the authors develop a conceptual framework, TRISEC, that integrates service logic, technology design and customer experience to examine the implementation of CA solutions in search, experience and credence (SEC) contexts.

The paper draws on service marketing and communications research, combining the service context classification scheme of search, experience and credence and the technology infused service marketing triangle foci (service, technology and customer) in its conceptual development.

The authors find that an opportunity exists in recognizing the importance of context when designing CAs and aiming to achieve a balance between service objectives, technology design and customer experiences.

This study contributes to service management and communications research literature by providing interactive service marketing researchers with the highly generalizable TRISEC framework to aid in optimizing CA design and implementation in interactive customer communication technologies. Furthermore, the study provides an array of future research avenues. From a practical perspective, this study aims at providing managers with a means to optimize CA technology design while maintaining a balance between customer centricity and implementation complexity and costs in different service contexts.

The aim of the paper is to bring together the state-of-the-art research and theory from the communication and service research fields to examine the implications of new technologies for the future of service communication.

The authors apply the media affordances perspective to develop an overarching framework that facilitates theoretical conceptualization and research question formulation on the constantly evolving technology-enabled communication formats.

Central to the forward-looking framework of service communication facilitated by new technologies, this paper identifies various affordances at the service frontline where service customers and providers interact with the technologies. Customers are empowered to expand their roles blurring the role distinction between service providers and customers. Depending on what kind of relationships service providers form with the emerging technologies, they may develop new service communication strategies and new interaction possibilities with customers. As a result, the technologies' affordances would facilitate value creation outcomes that can manifest in the external (whether it is in the physical or digital space) and/or internal (one's own mind) spaces. Applying the affordances framework, the authors map out four key areas of future research regarding new technologies in service communication: (1) social media technologies; (2) multisensory reality-enhancing technologies; (3) AI-enabled voice assistants; and (4) AI-driven service robots.

This paper proposes an original theoretical framework to stimulate and guide future research and theory development regarding the implications of new technologies in the constantly evolving and complex service communication landscape.

Using retail banking as a setting and focusing specifically on elderly customers (i.e. individuals aged 60 or more), this study aims to deepen the current understanding of how the physical context and the need for human interaction influence elderly customers' attitudes toward self-service technologies (SSTs) and their behavior.

Using face-to-face questionnaires, a sample of 505 elderly bank customers was collected. Data were analyzed using a multi-method approach, combining a moderated mediation analysis with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

The findings suggest that a pleasant retail space may result in a positive attitude toward SSTs, which increases their co-creation intention. It also highlights that need for interaction of elderly customers with employees has detrimental effects on their attitude toward SSTs.

The current analysis was carried out among Italian elderly banks' customers. Thus, the results are highly dependent on the context of the analysis. In addition, it does not consider the different degrees of knowledge and experience the elderly may have with technology.

This study suggests that providing access and support for using technology may be essential for banks to facilitate SSTs adoption in elderly customers.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study represents the first attempt to examine the influence of the physical context on elderly customers' attitudes toward SSTs and their consequent behavioral intentions. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of the human touch for these particular customers.

This study aims to reveal the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of a front-line service meeting to understand how users accept AI technology-enabled service.

This study collected 454 Korean employees through online survey methods and used hierarchical regression to test the hypothesis empirically.

In the results, first, clarity of user and AI's roles, user's motivation to adopt AI-based technology and user's ability in the context of the adoption of AI-based technology increases their willingness to accept AI technology. Second, privacy concerns related to the use of AI-based technology weakens the relationship between role clarity and user's willingness to accept AI technology. And, trust related to the use of AI-based technology strengthens the relationship between ability and user's willingness to accept AI technology.

This study is the first one to reveal the role of AI in the context of a front-line service meeting to understand how users accept AI technology-enabled service.

本研究旨在顯示在前線服務會議的情況下人工智能所扮演的角色，以便了解使用者如何接受人工智能科技化服務。

研究以網上問卷調查方式取得454名韓國僱員的數據，並使用層次迴歸分析，對假設進行以經驗為依據的測試。

研究結果首先顯示、增強使用者願意接受人工智能科技的因素包括使用者與人工智能兩者角色的清晰度、使用者使用基於人工智能的科技的積極性、以及在應用基於人工智能科技的情況下使用者的能力。其次，與使用基於人工智能的科技有關的私隱問題會削弱角色清晰度與使用者是否願意接受人工智能科技之間的關係。而且，對使用基於人工智能的科技的信任會強化有關的能力與使用者是否樂意使用基於人工智能的科技之間的關係。

這是首個研究、去顯示在前線服務會議的情況下人工智能所扮演的角色，以便了解使用者如何接受人工智能科技化服務。

This study investigated the linkage between customers’ acceptance (CA) level and smart service competencies in the food sector across Penang, Malaysia. This research aims to develop a vision of how smart technology may transform the business model in hospitality industry to create value.

In this study, the level of CA of the smart restaurant is proposed as the dependent variable, while the perceived security (PS), perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived enjoyment (PE) are proposed as independent variables (IVs). The quantitative approach and simple random sampling method were adopted in this study. Data were collected from 150 respondents by distributing 225 survey questionnaires to restaurant customers across Penang, Malaysia. The data were analysed by the reliability test, factor analysis and multiple regression analysis using SPSS 23.0 software

The study outcomes indicated that PE and PEOU emerged as the most significant predictors for CA of smart services in restuarants in Penang. The smart services provide customers to experience enjoyable dining services with accurate and user-friendly service delivery.

This study may serve as a guideline for food and beverage (F&B) business owners and restaurant operators with an industrial standard to adopt smart services in restaurants and their progression to develop the intention to use such a novel technology. This research is one of the few attempts that have looked into the influences of hedonic, comfortable and security value on customers’ acceptance level of smart restaurant services.

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.