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Service‐dominant logic of marketing claims that employees' knowledge and skills are the firm's only sustainable advantage. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the importance of branding in attracting the right employees.

This paper employs the image congruency hypothesis and social norms from consumer behavior. To test the hypotheses empirically, it uses a scenario‐based survey of respondents recruited from job‐seeking graduate students.

Based on data sampled and analyzed, it finds that both image congruency between prospective employee and preferred employer and social norm weigh in when job seekers decide on the preferred employer.

The paper tests the model only on first‐time job seekers. This group may have greater desire to find a job than employed job seekers do. However, it believes that image congruency and social norm will impact the latter group's attitudes regarding employer.

For managers who need to differentiate their market offering the findings illuminate the importance of branding and brand building not only in the consumer market but also in the labor market. It is all about attracting the right customers and moreover, the right employees to serve them.

To the knowledge, this is the first study in the field of employer branding that uses the image congruency hypothesis to study branding in the labor market, thereby linking branding to organizational behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the introduction of self‐service technology (SST) in health diagnosis as a means to reduce costs and improve quality in the health care sector – at the same time.

A survey with an internet‐based medical self‐diagnosis application as the focal technology is conducted. The research hypotheses are tested by using a scenario and questionnaire approach, in which respondents prior to responding read a scenario.

To test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling using LISREL was performed. It was found that the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) for users, described according to the Technology Readiness Index (TRI) as pioneers, has a very good ability to predict future behavioral intent. TAM has an excellent capability to predict future behavioral intent of this new application in this new context, i.e. health care services.

The paper only tests TAM for a given population described as pioneers. Future research should test for other categories of users, as this may impact different drivers of behavioral intent/adoption in the TAM.

For policy makers (e.g. politicians), this study has great implications as it documents a methodology of testing a population's receptiveness to new technology – technology that can greatly improve quality, costs and satisfaction issues with government services and reduce risk when implementing the new service.

In the context of increased healthcare spending and possibly unsustainable healthcare‐funding models, the current research investigated people's readiness and attitude toward performing self‐diagnosis which may offer a patient‐centered access to health services. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this has never been done before.

Previous research demonstrates the importance of product category fit in evaluating brand alliances. However, many factors determine fit between alliance partners. For example, conclusions from brand extension research suggest that the evaluation is a question not only of product category fit, but also of brand concept consistency. Therefore, this study introduces brand concept consistency in research on brand alliances.

The paper builds on the categorization and incongruence literature. An experiment was employed to test the two hypotheses in the study.

The results indicate that both product category fit and brand concept consistency influence consumers' evaluations. However, the results also show that product category fit is important in only functional and mixed‐brand concept‐based alliances. For expressive brand alliances, product category fit is not important in evaluating the alliance.

Managers should take care in finding potential alliance partners who have brands that in some way, either on the product category level or in brand concept, fit well with their company's brands. However, managers of a functional brand should find a partner whose brand has high product category fit, since low‐fit partners presumably will hurt the potential alliance.

The paper demonstrates that brand concept consistency, not only product category fit, is an important variable in consumer evaluations of brand alliances.

A large number of service corporations are configured with headquarters that determine the major principles of operation (services, pricing, marketing and advertising) and regional salesforces that are responsible for acquiring new customers and catering to the needs of existing customers. This separation of work within the corporation opens up a principal‐agency approach to the service production and delivery. Develops a conceptual model to examine the individual and joint work done by headquarters and regional salesforces in creating customer loyalty. Uses an external dyadic channel perspective ‐ i.e. channel and customer. A relationship between the channel and the customer is hypothesized to be one where customers perceive the regional salesforces to be their focal point to the company. Proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model based on data from 1,400 individual customers of a Norwegian life insurance company. Analyses data using structural equation modelling. Estimates headquarters’ and regional salesforces’ contribution to customer satisfaction and loyalty on the attribute level, based on path coefficients. Concludes by claiming that headquarters’ contribution to customer loyalty is more significant than that of the regional salesforces. These findings challenge headquarters’ assumptions about improving customer relations through regional salesforces. From a managerial perspective, information regarding channel members’ individual and joint contribution to customer loyalty is vital with regard to resource allocation to improve customer satisfaction and thus customer loyalty.

With the function to store individual’s data input, personal health record (PHR) enhanced the accessibility to personal health information. This study aims to assess the factors that impact the intention of Malaysian internet users to use PHR and create a modified technology acceptance model (TAM) for eHealth.

Multivariate statistical analysis was performed on a total of 216 responses using the partial least square technique based on the cross-sectional survey among Malaysian internet users.

Behavioral intention was positively associated to PHR. Subjective norm significantly influenced both attitude and intention to use, whereas trust and perceived usefulness significantly influenced attitude. There was no significant positive impact in the relationships between compatibility and perceived ease of use and intention to use; nevertheless, they positively influenced perceived usefulness. Attitude exhibited mediating influence between trust, perceived usefulness and subjective norm and intention to use. Nonetheless, perceived risk did not affect behavioral intention. Thus, PHR acceptance was well-justified by the modified TAM in evaluating eHealth acceptance.

The eHealth vendors can enhance their marketing and development strategies on related products.

Literatures and empirical evidence on eHealth are still scarce, especially in emerging markets. The role of attitude may not be well-researched in health-care context, therefore was included in this study’s modified TAM. Critical determinants, namely, trust and risk, were added to the model.

Prior research in ingredient branding (IB) has identified several important decision variables consumers use when evaluating IB alliances. This exploratory research aims to investigate the relationship between these variables and consumers’ buying likelihood of the IB alliance and the relative importance of these variables for low- vs high-involvement product categories.

A study with the participation of 458 mTurkers was conducted and the data were analyzed using random forests.

Findings reveal relative importance of different variables for an IB alliance and that these differ for low- vs high-involvement categories.

Being exploratory in nature, this research has several limitations, such as using only one high- and one low-involvement categories.

Results of this research will help brand managers as they make decisions entering an IB alliance as well as with investing their budget on different aspects of their brand, and tailoring their marketing activities for low- vs high-involvement product categories.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss the relative importance of different decision variables in an IB context empirically.

The purpose of this paper is to show how modularity manifests in a service context, more specifically in the provision of care and services to independently living elderly.

Four case studies provide insight into the specification of relevant components and their subsequent assembly into a customized package of care and services.

In all cases, component specification and package construction take place in two phases: partly before and partly during care delivery. Early client involvement allows for a combination of standard components that have a lower level of customization, whereas late client involvement allows for adaptation of these components resulting in a higher level of customization. The paper proposes that modularity theory should distinguish between the creation of modular offerings in care provision versus their creation in goods production, since the findings are the exact reverse of the state‐of‐the art knowledge in manufacturing modularity.

The empirical part of this paper is limited to providers of elderly care and services in The Netherlands and is exploratory in nature. However, the newness of care and service modularity justifies the exploratory research approach.

This paper offers elderly care organizations in‐depth understanding of their complex and multi‐faceted specification process. The insights help both care and service providers to make well‐considered decisions as to what level of client involvement to allow and the type of modularity to apply.

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on service modularity.

For successful servitization, manufacturing firms must understand how their customers adopt new services. The purpose of this paper is to explore customers’ readiness for a manufacturer’s new services to complement its goods. The goal is to increase knowledge of the aspects that manufacturers should consider when bringing new kinds of services to market.

A qualitative case study design is used to analyze readiness for services and interest in service adoption in three customer firms of a manufacturer. The interview data were collected from 14 persons at customer sites and were content analyzed.

The results show that readiness – a concept that is often used in the field of technology – is relevant also for the service adoption process. In a business-to-business context, readiness for service adoption concerns the individual and organizational levels, and hence a new dimension of organizational culture and habits had to be added to the concept that originally focuses on individuals. People consider different factors when making consecutive decisions during the service adoption process and these factors can vary even within a company. The cornerstone for new service adoption is the customer firm’s actual need for the service.

The results offer new knowledge about service adoption in a business-to-business context by taking a customer firm’s perspective. They, thus, complement previous studies on the supplier perspective of servitization and service adoption in consumer business. The contributions help manufacturers focus their efforts when bringing new services to market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of perceived product similarity and comparative ad claims on brand responses.

This study uses a two (similarity between the target product and the comparison product: relatively similar vs dissimilar) by three (product attributes of the target product: common to the comparison product, distinct from the comparison product, and a combination of common and distinct attributes) between-subjects factorial design with 300 Thai undergraduate students.

It finds that when perceived similarity between the products is high, a combination of superiority (distinct) and parity (common) ad claims lead to the best brand responses. When perceived similarity is low, superiority claims bring about the best brand responses.

It extends comparative advertising and category-substitution research by addressing the research gaps in perceived similarity and claim type.

Companies should emphasize a product’s superior attributes in general but a combination of common and superior attributes when the product is relatively similar to other products in comparative advertising.

This study provides new evidence that perceived product similarity moderates the effect of comparative ad claims on brand responses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether customer-company identification (CCI) can transfer from one organization to the next within the context of service alliances.

A between-subjects experiment using a fictitious alliance and a field study focused on a real alliance tests identification transfer at the time of a service alliance announcement and while the service alliance is in operation.

Identification transfer is enabled by an exclusive service alliance but not an inclusive one. For identification transfer to be maintained, customers must perceive the companies as a coherent group (i.e. high entitativity) and have close physical proximity to the alliance.

By drawing heavily on self-categorization theory for the proposed effects, the current research provides a new theoretical framework to the service and brand alliance literature that contrasts with the attitude-based theories commonly used. Furthermore, the current research explores how company-company relationships influence CCI whereas most research has focused on characteristics of the customer-company relationship. These two differences suggest service alliances provide more value to the companies and customers than currently realized.