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Services marketing research continues to be largely focused on firms’ reactive interactions for recovering from service failure rather than on proactive customer interactions that may prevent service failure from occurring in the first place. Building on previous studies that assess the efficacy of implementing proactive interaction in service provision contexts, the purpose of this paper is to compare the influences of proactive interaction to prevent service failure and reactive interaction to correct service failure on customer emotion and patronage behavior. Since proactive interaction for service failure prevention is a relatively underexplored and resource-intensive approach, the authors also assess the moderating influences of customer and firm-related characteristics.

The study hypotheses are tested with survey data from two scenario-based experiments conducted in a retail setting.

The findings reveal that customers prefer service providers that take the initiative to get to them before they have to initiate contact for themselves. The findings also identify the moderating influences of relationship quality, situational involvement, and contact person status and motive.

The research contributes to the development of service provision theory and practice by expanding on previous studies which report that proactive efforts to prepare customers for the adverse effects of service failure are favorably received. The results also shed light on moderating factors that may further inform the exploitation of resource-intensive proactive interaction for service failure prevention. An agenda is proposed to stimulate future research on proactive customer interaction to prevent service failure in service provision contexts.

Relationship marketing is not effective in every situation or context. This study investigates the impact of three categories of potential contingency factors on the effectiveness of relationship marketing efforts in a retail services context: demographic characteristics of the consumer (age and gender), personal values of the consumer (social affiliation), and shopping-related consumer characteristics (product category involvement, consumer relationship proneness, and shopping enjoyment). The data relate to more than 1,700 mall intercept personal interviews conducted in the United States, and in two western European countries (the Netherlands and Belgium), covering a wide variety of food and apparel retailers. The found moderating influences were inconsistent across samples, stressing the need for an adapted relationship marketing strategy per country and industry. The results do provide a first indication that relationship marketing efforts are relatively more effective if they are directed at consumers who are young and female, have a high need for social affiliation, and show high levels of product category involvement, consumer relationship proneness, and shopping enjoyment. The results provide a preliminary framework for retailers to optimize the allocation of their relationship marketing budgets.

The purpose of this study is to explore consumers’ overall attitude toward relationship marketing and to determine the influence of consumers’ overall attitude on consumers’ intentions and behaviors. Many services companies practice relationship marketing and customer relationship management. Although the benefits and drawbacks of relationship marketing for consumers have been established, little is known about whether consumers have a relatively positive or negative attitude toward relationship marketing practices.

This research investigates consumers’ attitudes toward relationship marketing using a national survey of 245 consumers and a survey of 417 consumers living in the southern region of the USA.

Although approximately 70 per cent of our national consumer sample had a somewhat positive attitude toward relationship marketing, about 30 per cent had a somewhat negative or neutral attitude. Furthermore, approximately 39 per cent of consumers in the study would choose a company that does not engage in relationship marketing over a company that does. The results also indicate that consumers’ overall attitude toward relationship marketing impacts their likelihood to respond favorably to specific relationship marketing tactics.

Some limitations should be noted. First and not uncommon to most survey research in marketing, the relationships between constructs in this study may be inflated because of common methods bias. Second, this research reports the results from two studies. Although one of the studies represents a national sample, additional research using the scales developed in this research is needed.

This research indicates that consumers’ attitudes toward relationship marketing impacts their willingness to engage in relationships with service companies and their response to specific relationship marketing tactics. Because consumer attitudes toward relationship marketing vary, companies should consider segmenting their customer base using this information.

This study extends previous research by using quantitative techniques to measure consumers’ overall attitudes toward relationship marketing and assessing the influence of those attitudes on intentions and behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of retailer service culture. A service culture is the customer‐centric culture aimed at exceeding customer expectations and creating superior customer value through the development of service and related performance competencies.

In this research, surveys were conducted with key decision makers in various retail positions across the USA to develop a customer service‐based measure of service culture and test it against traditional retail management performance outcomes.

The results of this research demonstrate that service culture is a unidimensional construct and is positively related to increases in market performance and customer perceptions of quality for the retailer.

Service culture provides retailers with a new perspective to examine their service orientation internally. Additionally, service culture extends to the relationships that retailers develop with their suppliers.

Examining retailing from a customer service perspective is becoming increasingly important as marketing research shifts its focus from being product‐centered to more service‐centered. In an increasingly turbulent economy, retailers have to create value propositions that provide customers with higher levels of customer service than ever before. This research develops a new construct that explores how retailers can incorporate service values in their overall culture. Additionally, this research validates the measure for future researchers to continue this path of study.

Today, services officially represent more than 22% (or about USD 3 trillion) of world trade and are the fastest growing sector of world trade for the last two decades (OECD, 2004; WTO, 2001). Optimist analysts believe that services will reach 50% of world trade by 2020 (Hibbert, 2003). Nearly half of the 100 biggest multinationals are service firms with an average revenue of over USD 50 million in 1997 (Hibbert, 2003; Keillor, Hult & Kandemir, 2004). The American McKinsey and Company in management consulting, the Danish ISS in facility management and the Dutch VNU in business information illustrate how service firms may succeed in gaining and holding a global dominant position. On top of the official service economy, the (hidden) service component of product markets is responsible for a major and increasing part of the total value of the world merchandise trade (Brown et al., 2001; Grönroos, 1990). Illustrative in this respect is the critical role of the global service systems of the Swedish/Swiss ABB in automation technology and of the American Caterpillar in construction and mining equipment.

Shoppers often shop for and purchase products for other individuals during the course of routine shopping experiences. The purpose of this study is to investigate differences in the shopping trip based on whether the shopper is purchasing a product for him/herself, purchasing a product for someone else’s use that is not intended as a gift and gift purchases.

This research utilizes a survey of shoppers to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results of the study indicate differences in positive affect, flow, fantasy, satisfaction, hedonic shopping value and utilitarian shopping value across the three groups of shoppers. Individuals shopping for themselves generally have the lowest overall shopping trip outcomes, followed by those shopping for a non-gift product for another person. Those making gift purchases have highest shopping trip outcomes.

While existing shopping research generally assumes the shopper is making a purchase for him/herself, this study shows previous research by showing differences in the shopping trip based on who the shopper is making a purchase for, either him/herself or someone else. Additionally, this research also shows differences between shoppers making gift and non-gift purchases for another person.