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The primary objective of this research is to explore the impact of the repeated two-syllable communication strategy on the interaction effectiveness between AI and customers.

This study adopts an experimental research methodology to investigate the role of the repeated two-syllable communication strategy employed by AI customer service agents.

Study 1 shows that AI agents using the repeated two-syllable strategy enhance the interaction effectiveness between AI and customers. Study 2 identifies humanization perception as a key factor linking the strategy to better interaction effectiveness. Study 3 highlights how consumer materialism moderates this effect, while Study 4 examines how the type of agent (AI vs. human) influences the results.

This study extends the application of AI communication strategies in interactive marketing, specifically how AI agents enhance consumer interaction through repeated two-syllable communication. It pioneers the exploration of AI-human interaction, enriching the humanization theory by revealing how AI can evoke emotional responses. The study also integrates consumer materialism as a moderating factor, offering new theoretical and practical insights for brands to optimize AI-customer service interactions and improve engagement in real-world marketing contexts.

This paper aims to aims to extend emotional labor research by exploring whether the impact of emotional labor on customer satisfaction depends on the order in which different emotional labor strategies are used by employees. Specifically, the authors explore how the order effects of two emotional labor strategies – deep and surface acting – impact customer satisfaction.

The authors conducted two experimental studies in which participants interacted with service employees who systematically switched between surface and deep acting strategies during the service episode. In Study 1, participants watched a video clip depicting a service encounter in a bookstore. In Study 2, participants partook in a simulated career-counseling session.

The four different emotional labor strategy order effects differentially impact customer satisfaction. Consistent with theories of gain–loss effects, improvement and decline trends positively or negatively impact customers, respectively. Furthermore, results show that these trends impact customer satisfaction growth differently over time.

The authors only focused on two emotional labor strategies, and future research may benefit from extending the research to additional regulation strategies and/or specific discrete emotions.

The results suggest that managers may train employees in recognizing that customer satisfaction is not just driven by customers’ overall assessment of the interaction but also by their experience at different stages of the interaction.

Service marketing and management scholars have largely explored emotional labor from a between-person or within-person perspective, with little empirical attention paid to within-episode processes that focus on how employee behavior varies within a single service episode. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to demonstrate that surface and deep acting can be used simultaneously and dynamically over the course of a single service interaction in impacting customer satisfaction.

Applying social capital and the social exchange theories to customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions, this study aims to propose that interaction quality perceptions affect the customer-to-service provider’s interaction quality perceptions in a prolonged, close-proximity service setting. Examining this exogenous dimension, the study also tests socio-emotional support perception’s mediating effect and customer proactiveness’ moderating effect.

This study adopts and modifies existing general services of C2C interaction dimensions to fit the health-care context. An in-person survey of 192 neurosurgery inpatients and their care-giving companions (both considered health-care customers) provides data to validate the dimensions and test the model. Structural equation modeling and moderated regression test the hypotheses.

Results show that affirmative C2C interactions positively affect the customer’s perceived socio-emotional support, whereas negative C2C interactions show no significant impact. Greater socio-emotional support acuity improves customers’ assurance and empathy quality perceptions about the provider’s service. Customer proactiveness moderates C2C interaction dimensions.

This study extends the research of the C2C interaction to include their effect on service quality perceptions in a prolonged close-proximity service setting. Study results validate C2C interaction’s dimensions specific to an inpatient setting. Finally, this study extends the application of social capital theory and social exchange theory to C2C settings.

Findings emphasize the importance of managing C2C interactions during prolonged, close-proximity service delivery processes to improve customer perceptions of service quality. Results suggest that managers should monitor customer proactiveness to maximize positive C2C interactions’ positive effects while minimizing negative C2C interactions.

Prior service quality studies tend to focus on managing internal resources (staff, processes or physical environment); however, this study examines how the interactions among external resources create a halo effect and impact customers’ service quality perceptions. Results inform methods to improve their quality perceptions by better managing exogenous factors. The study also responds to calls for research on how C2C interactions affect functional service contexts (vs hedonic service contexts).

Co-creating value with customers is important for companies in order to gain a competitive advantage. Based on resource theory and social interaction theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the customer participation mechanism in co-creating value and test the effects of different types of customer resources and multi-level customer–firm interaction on customer value.

Data were collected from tourism industry. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that both the customer’s human resource and relationship resource have a significantly positive effect on customers’ utilitarian value and hedonic value through reactive and proactive interactions. Reactive interaction has a full mediating effect on the relationship between relationship resource and proactive interaction, whereas proactive interaction has a full mediating effect on the relationship between reactive interaction and hedonic value.

This study explores the mediating effects of customer–firm interaction between customer resources and customer value. This paper contributes to the understanding of customers’ motivations for, and the processes of, participating in value co-creation.

This paper aims to explore the physical attractiveness stereotype in service encounters. Specifically, this paper examines how physical attractiveness affects a customer’s response and whether a customer’s social interaction anxiety and the consumption situation moderate this relationship.

Three experiments were used to test hypotheses. Participants were subject to scenarios of varying levels of physical attractiveness (more vs less), social interaction anxiety (high vs low) and consumption situation (private vs public). Customer participation intention and citizenship behavior were measured along scales.

The results indicate that the physical attractiveness of service providers positively affects customer citizenship behavior, and customer participation intention mediates this relationship. However, the effect only exists for a customer with low social interaction anxiety or presents itself under public consumption conditions.

This work paints a more nuanced picture of missing links in the understanding of the influence of service providers’ physical attractiveness. It enriches the physical attractiveness stereotype literature by identifying the mediating role of customer participation intention while bounding the relationship within conditions related to a customer’s social interaction anxiety and the service consumption situation.

Management may alter the performance of service employees by considering the employee’s physical attractiveness and gauging customer social interaction anxiety while keeping in mind the consumption situation.

This study advances physical attractiveness stereotype research by examining its effect on customer participation intention and citizenship behavior in the service industry. Additionally, this study adds customer social interaction anxiety and consumption situation to the existing literature that addresses employee factors affecting customer behavior.

This paper aims to examine the effect of customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction while using a service on the willingness of consumers to engage in altruistic customer participation (CP) or co-production efforts aimed at helping other customers. It further examines the role of consumer skepticism toward the service category in moderating the effects of C2C interaction on altruistic CP and customer satisfaction.

A survey methodology was used to collect data from 374 consumers of health-care services in India. The data collection involved interviews of patients visiting diabetes clinics and focused primarily on the interaction between customers and their willingness to participate in educating members of the community on diabetic self-care.

The analysis shows that C2C interaction positively affects customer satisfaction and willingness to engage in altruistic CP. Consumer category skepticism does not moderate the effect of C2C interaction on customer willingness to engage in altruistic CP. However, category skepticism does have the moderating effect of significantly reducing the positive effect of C2C interaction on customer satisfaction.

Data for this study were collected via interviews of consumers in India. Each consumer was interviewed by a trained interviewer. Although the authors do not detect any systematic influence in the results, the possibility of bias is acknowledged. Regarding the research implications, the finding that category skepticism does not moderate the effect of C2C interaction on willingness to engage in altruistic CP suggest that ultimately consumers may have stronger commitment and loyalty to themselves and that their relationships with the firm’s might be peripheral.

The study finds that consumer skepticism toward a service category can have adverse effects for service co-creation. The authors advise managers in troubled industries not to focus exclusively on improving brand differentiation but to also consider working with major industry players and regulators to address the deepest fears of consumers.

The findings have implications for the service dominant logic of marketing in that it suggests that category skepticism is disruptive to the value integration process on which service co-creation relies for value creation. This has strong implications for how managers should structure their interaction processes with customers and for future research that seeks to them prove customer productivity.

Advances in autonomous technology have transformed customer experience. Most prior research has investigated the effect of augmented reality (AR) on purchase intention, yet few research has discussed the effect of semiautonomous AR in the context of service use. Semiautonomous AR recognizes content in the present reality, inserts and adjusts virtual content, supervises the users and enables them to feel in control of the virtual content overlaid in observed reality resulting in enriched user experience and thereby augmentation experience. This research demonstrates how perceived control of virtual content leads to higher perceived augmentation experiences among semiautonomous AR users than among non-AR users. In addition, this research examines the mediation effects of enriched user experience and perceived augmentation experience on user satisfaction and users’ willingness to continue using AR. Results also indicate that AR users perceive a higher augmentation experience than non-AR users. However, users’ willingness to continue using AR is not significantly different between AR and non-AR users.

This study derives six hypotheses and uses a preliminary study, a field study and a lab study to evaluate the hypotheses. A field study was conducted in a car dealership to test the hypotheses, and a lab experiment was conducted in a controlled setting to corroborate the results obtained in the field study and test the underlying causal effects.

Semiautonomous AR can constantly sense, plan and not necessarily always act over the virtual content to sustain the interaction with its users. Perceived control of virtual content enhances perceived augmentation experience, and its effect of perceived control of virtual content on perceived augmentation experience is higher among semiautonomous AR users than among non-AR users. Perceived control of virtual content is a key to enriched user experience, augmentation experience and thereby users’ attitude and behavior. In addition, results showed that enriched user experience mediates the effect of perceived control of virtual content on perceived augmentation. User satisfaction mediates the effect of perceived augmentation experience on users’ willingness to continue using AR. The theoretical and practical contributions are comprehensively discussed.

Some limitations of the studies are ascertained. First, a larger sample size might be required to achieve generalizability and a strong test of the applied theory. Second, new field studies can reflect customers’ real attitudes and behaviors so as to reveal realistic interactions between the device properties and the human will in solving actual problems. The user is interested in participating in the solution within the sensing-planning-acting process as depicted by this research. Third, new research to test AR’s capabilities in bounded and symbiotic conditions can illustrate the level of autonomy each type requires, providing additional insights into why supervised AR autonomy best reflects semiautonomous AR. The pioneering structural model offered in this study (perceived control of virtual content-perceived augmentation experience-users’ satisfaction-users’ willingness to continue using AR) should be tested with new samples in other industries, aside from including other variables that may enrich the model and increase its explanatory power. In addition, future research might use other AR devices such as smart glasses to explore the effects of AR on perceived control of virtual content, enriched user experience and perceived augmentation experience. Future studies can investigate the effect of auditory and visual augmentation on enriched user experience and perceived augmentation experience, and involve features of artificial intelligence (AI) to assist users in decision-making. Regarding context, this research showed that age and gender differences did not affect the results. Nonetheless, age and gender, and perhaps additional demographic characteristics, may concern future studies.

Some recommendations for technology developers are derived from this research. AR is revolutionizing service experience. As technologies are becoming autonomous, developers seek ways to design experiences to enhance consumers’ sense of control over their interaction with such systems. Companies cannot create customer experience (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020), yet they can leverage the level of autonomy in AR to sustain ongoing interaction with customers. It is vital to design an autonomous AR that focuses on users’ needs, desires and well-being (de Bellis and Johar, 2020) that drive novel experiences (Novak and Hoffman, 2019). This study recommends AR developers design autonomous features in AR that enable customers to interact with the virtual contents generated by AR and extend their own capabilities to perform a task and feel expanded. While designing a fully autonomous system may hinder users to feel in control of their choice (Schmitt, 2019), service companies can develop an AR system that sustains an interaction, involves the user in value co-creation and guides the user (Alimamy and Gnoth, 2022). AR can sustain an interaction with the users by continuously scanning the objects in the reality and providing sensory feedback such as product size recommendations (e.g. eyeglasses) that facilitate customers’ information processing (Poushneh, 2021b; Heller et al., 2019). To achieve this, developers may focus on technology qualities such as “image recognition,” a subset of AI. With image recognition, AR can effectively provide instruction as if the customer is in a real setting. The proper incorporation of image recognition in the design of AR while enabling users to interact with 3D virtual images sustains their interaction with AR and makes them feel in control of their interaction with AR. Service companies need to ensure users feel in control of their interaction and expand their capacities to engage in the service experience with AR to accomplish their desired tasks. AR’s capacities enable users to expand their abilities to fix their basic service problems without referring to or speaking to a service provider agent in a service context. Therefore, instead of taking their car back to the dealership, customers can use AR mobile applications or glasses provided by car manufacturers to learn and fix basic vehicle problems.

This research advances the marketing literature on how users feel in control of virtual content when they interact with a semiautonomous AR that subsequently influences enriched user experience, perceived augmentation experience, attitudes and behavior.

The e-services market is expected to reach nearly $500bn globally by 2028. As this marketplace grows, customer-to-customer interactions (CCIs) occurring through virtual channels will likely increase. Consequently, the purpose of this research is to examine how the context in which CCI’s occur (i.e. virtual vs in-person) and the frequency of their occurrence affects customer identification, leading to increased customer engagement and more favorable purchase behaviors.

Two studies were conducted to test the proposed models and hypotheses. The sample for Study 1 is comprised of college students taking in-person or online classes (n = 290). In Study 2, members of an online brand community (n = 125) were surveyed. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

Overall, results support a mediation effect such that CCI context (virtual vs in-person) affects customer engagement and purchase behaviors via customer identification. Specifically, Study 1 finds that customer engagement behaviors (CEBs) are greater for in-person CCIs due to the frequency of interactions and heightened identification between customers. Study 2 further examines the CCI frequency-identification link and finds that customer-firm identification is the only form of identification that affects CEBs and purchase behaviors.

Limited customer engagement research has examined the effects of CCIs on CEBs, and research has rarely compared in-person to virtual CCI contexts. This paper addresses these shortcomings by testing the effects of in-person and virtual CCIs on CCI frequency, identification and CEBs. This research fills another important gap in the literature by considering the unique effects of specific dimensions of customer identification on CEBs and purchase behaviors.

Inspired by the concept of the moment of truth, this study aims to examine how service interactions between hotel front-desk staff and a first-time check-in guest affect the guest’s brand satisfaction and brand attitudes, considering the moderating effect of welcome hospitality.

This study employs a between-subjects 2 (check-in service with high-service interaction vs low-service interaction) × 2 (with welcome hospitality vs without welcome hospitality) experimental method to investigate the mechanism of building brand attitudes towards a hotel during the check-in process.

The results of Study 1 showed that participants in the high-service interaction group reported higher brand satisfaction and brand attitudes than the low-service interaction group. It also confirmed that brand satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between service interactions and brand attributes. The results of Study 2 demonstrated the moderating effect of welcome hospitality. When service interaction is low, welcome hospitality can effectively improve brand satisfaction, but when service interaction is high, the improvement in brand satisfaction is smaller.

This research contributes to the literature on service interactions by potentially first experimentally examining the impact of first-time employee-customer interactions within a hotel setting. Recommendations were provided to hotel operators on how hotel staff can improve their service interactions.

Enterprises' multichannel operations provide various avenues for customer interaction; however, existing literature investigating customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) mainly focuses on a single channel. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the spillover effect of CCI and potential underlying mediating mechanisms in different information channels.

Three between-subjects experiments with 946 participants were employed to empirically validate the proposed hypotheses in the context of an experiential product and a material product.

Results suggest the clear spillover effect of CCI, indicating that positive CCI improves focal customers' satisfaction and purchase intention, whereas negative CCI reduces focal customers' satisfaction and purchase intention. Moreover, CCI's spillover effect varies based on the CCI channel. Offline CCI has a stronger positive spillover effect than online CCI. Contrarily, online CCI has a stronger negative spillover effect than offline CCI. Customer experience and trust are demonstrated to have mediating roles in this process.

This study is the first to comprehensively understand and compare the CCI spillover effect of the two information channels. The findings add to the existing knowledge of information processing in the psychological mechanisms influencing the belief in addition to providing insights for companies engaged in multichannel operations management across different channels.