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This study aims to focus on understanding the consumer-luxury brand relationships among Generation Z. Generation Z is an up-and-coming generational cohort that has received limited research attention in the domains of both consumer-brand relationships and luxury branding, despite its growing size and purchasing power. Therefore, this study highlights the distinctive patterns of Generation Z’s relationship with luxury by identifying their choice of a luxury brand, the nature of the brand relationships, what characterizes these relationships and the internal and external influences that shape these relationships.

This study used brand collage construction. A total of 56 Generation Z respondents created brand collages that covered 38 different luxury brands. The data from the collages and their accompanying descriptions were evaluated using content analysis.

This study identifies Generation Z’s unique yet expansive view of luxury that encompasses not only traditional luxury but also masstige and non-traditional luxury brands. Moreover, the findings generally support that Generation Z’s relationships with luxury brands are characterized by “like” rather than “love”; while Generation Z may feel a high level of loyalty toward luxury brands in terms of attitudes and behaviors, they do not necessarily have strong, passionate feelings for them.

The findings of this study offer a comprehensive understanding of Generation Z’s brand relationship with luxury. Luxury marketers need to recognize that for Generation Z consumers, luxury is an integral part of their everyday lifestyle more than a display of success, which is clearly different from previous generations.

Displaying a sense of humour provides various interpersonal benefits including reducing tension and promoting conflict resolution, but should a firm use humour in response to publicly viewable online customer complaints after a service failure? The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that a firm’s use of humour in response to negative online consumer reviews has both positive and negative effects on perceptions of corporate image from a customer-as-onlooker perspective.

Three experimental studies are conducted and analysis of variance is used to empirically test the hypotheses.

Although humorous responses have an unfavourable influence on perceived trustworthiness of the firm, they have a favourable influence on perceived excitingness of the firm. The former influence is tied to lower perceived firm sincerity, whereas the latter is tied to higher perceived firm innovativeness and coolness. Furthermore, humour within the customer complaint itself is shown to moderate the influence of humorous responses on perceptions of the firm. Finally, regardless of the type of humour used (i.e. affiliative or aggressive humour) in the humorous response, the positive effect of humorous response remains strong, although aggressive humour further aggravates the negative impact of humorous response on trustworthiness.

The experimental set-up may limit external validity of the study, and the research is limited to the variables examined.

Humorous response is identified as a non-traditional approach to online customer complaints that poses a double-edged sword for managers of service organizations. Firms should avoid using humour in online service recovery if perceptions of trustworthiness are critical or if complaints are written in a neutral tone. However, such responses may be successfully used when a firm wants to position itself as exciting and if complaints are also humorous. Finally, firms are advised to avoid aggressive humour.

The present research represents one of the few studies in marketing to examine the potential of injecting humour into complaint management and service recovery. In addition, this study considers the consumer-as-onlooker perspective inherent in social media.

The intention-behavior gap that occurs when one’s actions do not align with their intentions has been the topic of interest of many researchers. However, the effects of the various constructs that influence the intention-behavior gap in service failure and recovery remain under-explored to date. To fill this gap, this study aims to examine the relationship between switching intention (i.e. intention) and customer exit (i.e. behavior) and the moderating roles of failure severity and service recovery satisfaction.

To test the proposed hypotheses, the authors used a longitudinal panel involving 821 customers who actually experienced a service failure and recovery in 38 fitness centers in Brazil. The data analysis is composed of logistic regression and cross-tabulation.

The results confirmed the significant role of switching intention on customer exit and the moderating effect of failure severity (but not service recovery satisfaction) in the relationship between switching intention and customer exit. Most of all, switching intention had low explanatory power for customer exit, confirming the presence of the intention-behavior gap. The authors further identified a weaker presence of the intention-behavior gap for female (vs male) customers and for those who experienced process failure (vs outcome failure).

Although the authors confirmed the intention-behavior gap, the biggest proportion of the variance remains unexplained. Thus, it is important to explore the roles of other possible drivers, moderators and mediators.

As switching intention is not a strong predictor of customer exit, managers should not assume that those who appear to be on the verge of switching will immediately exit the service provider.

As researchers question the explanatory power of intention for actual behavior, this paper confirms that there is an intention-behavior gap in service failure and recovery. Moreover, given that most researchers have focused on the positive outcomes of service recovery efforts, such as customer loyalty and commitment, studying negative outcomes, including switching intention and customer exit, is a key contribution of this research.

In managing hierarchical loyalty programs (HLP), firms often use a reward point expiration and status demotion policy to reduce financial liability and to encourage repeat purchases. This study aims to examine how point expiration and status demotion policies affect customer patronage, the role of extension strategies in mitigating the negative effects of these policies on customers and the moderating role of status endowment in the effect of point expiration on customers patronage following status demotion experience.

Three experiments were conducted using the hotel industry as the context. The hypothesized relationships were tested using ANOVA and a serial moderated mediation analysis using SPSS PROCESS Macro.

Customers subjected to reward point expiration exhibited a higher level of anger and perceived severity of the problem than those subjected to status demotion in HLP. Consequently, when customers experienced both point expiration and status demotion, the point extension strategy rather than the status extension strategy was found to be a more effective remedy for reducing perceived unfairness, although there was no change in the level of patronage reduction between the two extension strategies. Importantly, the effect of point expiration on patronage reduction was stronger among endowed-status customers than earned-status customers, serially driven by heightened feelings of embarrassment and perceived unfairness.

The study adds to the existing literature on HLP by comparing the effects of point expiration and status demotion on customer patronage with practical insights for HLP managers.

The luxury experience is a growing and crucial component of luxury marketing. Experiences inspire consumers to engage with luxury brands. Although several research studies have shed light on the origin, development, and prominence of luxury experiences among consumers, there is a scarcity of research that analyzes the current knowledge holistically. As a result, this study uses a systematic literature review technique to better understand the trends in the luxury experience and consumer behavior literature and suggests future research directions to further develop the subject area.

Using the theory-context-characteristics-methodology (TCCM) framework, this study examines 130 articles on the luxury experience and consumer behavior.

Most research on luxury experiences has focused on the luxury service experience in the context of hospitality and tourism. Future researchers should explore avenues for providing luxury experience to consumers in the luxury products industry. In addition, more research is needed into the influences of the recent COVID-19 outbreak and technological advancements on consumers' luxury experiences.

The study is unique as it (1) presents a state-of-the-art understanding of the luxury experience and consumer behavior literature by analyzing the applied theories, research contexts, study characteristics, and methods used in the past studies and (2) suggests future research opportunities to advance the field. The findings will also assist luxury brand managers in designing a consumer's exceptional luxury experience.

Research on showrooming has focused on investigating its antecedents, motivators and characteristics, leaving a gap regarding its consequences. Our study intends to build a comprehensive framework to examine the role of showrooming behaviour on showrooming satisfaction and customer loyalty while exploring its antecedents.

Data collection took place in Brazil through an electronic form distributed on social media, reaching 393 people. After eliminating responses from those who had no showrooming experience, the final sample consisted of 310 respondents. The questions captured the costs and benefits of showrooming, internet savviness, showrooming behaviour, satisfaction with showrooming and customer loyalty (i.e. repurchase intention and positive word-of-mouth). We performed partial least squares data analysis by means of the statistical package Smart PLS 4.

The results show that showrooming behaviour is positively influenced by internet savviness and the perceived benefits of showrooming but not by the perceived costs of showrooming. In addition, showrooming behaviour positively influences satisfaction with showrooming and customer loyalty (i.e. repurchase intention and positive word-of-mouth). Finally, we identify satisfaction with showrooming as a mediator between showrooming behaviour and customer loyalty.

Given that the implications of showrooming behaviour on customer loyalty remain understudied, this work contributes to the marketing literature by demonstrating the influence of showrooming behaviour on satisfaction with showrooming and its consequential effect on customer loyalty. Moreover, we confirmed the mediating role of customer satisfaction in the relationship between showrooming behaviour and customer loyalty.

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.

Although service guarantees are generally believed to give firms a competitive edge, much remains to be learned about the value of, and return on, this customer relationship management strategy. This study aims to examine the influence of implicit service guarantees on two important aspects of business performance: customer satisfaction and return on investment.

The study hypotheses are tested utilizing three different sources of secondary data to assess the study variables.

Over a four-year period, top implicit service guarantee provider firms generated superior market and financial performance in terms of customer satisfaction and return on investment than their industry peers

Research limitations/implications

The number of top implicit service guarantee provider firms used to test the study hypotheses is relatively small due to inherent constraints associated with using secondary data. Testing more exemplar firms against their respective industry averages would have been preferable and may have yielded even more robust findings.

Firms recognized for leveraging customer service skills and resources to “make right” any sources of customer dissatisfaction may achieve positional advantages associated with superior business performance. Therefore, focusing on building a firm's reputation for exceptional customer service provision may be a more effective approach than offering an explicit service guarantee.

This research offers support for contentions that customers value the implicit service guarantees associated with firms recognized for outstanding customer service and responds to calls for research that evaluates the specific information that must be communicated to customers to enhance the credibility and effectiveness of service guarantees.

The relationship between supply chain management (SCM) competency and firm performance is not well established empirically. This is largely because proven metrics for quantifying the effects of SCM are scarce. Drawing on the strategic managerial concept of supply chain orientation as a source of competitive advantage, this paper aims to apply three independent sources of secondary data to examine the influence of SCM competency on two important firm performance metrics: customer satisfaction and shareholder value.

SCM competency is assessed with data from the expert opinion element of Gartner Supply Chain Group's (formerly AMR Research) supply chain top 25 rankings; the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) database and the recently developed Economic Value Added (EVA) Momentum financial metric are utilized as outcome measures.

Firms recognized by peers and experts for superior SCM competency exhibit higher levels of customer satisfaction and shareholder value than their respective industry averages.

Further evidence is required to prove causality does exist between these variables. Limitations associated with the use of secondary data restricted the number of top performer firms available for this analysis. Nevertheless, the strong correlations found between SCM competency and two critical firm performance metrics may help senior managers and managers from other functional areas to better understand potential advantages associated with developing greater SCM competency.

The assessment of two metrics that differentiate top SCM performers from their industry competitors may also help SCM professionals to better convey the impact of SCM competency to non‐supply chain managers and external participants in the supply chain whose support and cooperation are critical to the success of process improvement initiatives.

In addition to the study findings, blending qualitative expert opinion, formal customer satisfaction and quantitative financial performance secondary data represents a relatively novel and informative method that responds to contentions that different approaches should be employed to develop a more holistic understanding of SCM.