Search results

Nowadays, customers have big chunks of information on their smartphones and can acquire information and make decisions rapidly, oftentimes with the use of specific apps. Most of the research on this topic to date has been conducted from the perspective of the provider, or the company, therefore missing the value that is created with these apps in the customer’s own domain according to the customer-dominant logic (CDL) approach.

As compared with prior research, CDL requires a different type of research that is much more inclined towards customers and specific circumstances. This paper is positioned within CDL (Heinonen and Strandvik, 2015) and aims to quantitatively explore app usage in different customer contexts.

Seven apps were tested in two different usage contexts: a social vs an individual context and a calm vs dynamic context. It was found that for the social vs individual context there was no difference; thus, managers should not pay too much attention to whether the user of the digital service is in a social context. For the calm vs dynamic social context, it was found that customers’ satisfaction, enjoyment, pleasure and their overall rating of an app were higher when the customer as in a tranquil vs dynamic context.

The proposed method provides a highly relevant way to approach app development from a CDL perspective.

These findings provide evidence that context matters and that we should study customer behavior from a more integral and detailed perspective as has been advocated by CDL.

App research should incorporate a customer focused approach. This means that not only the customers’ needs need to be considered. The circumstances and context in which apps are used are highly relevant as well.

This research uses a CDL approach to provide evidence about the consequences for app usage and satisfaction and shows the necessity of incorporating specific circumstances, customer experience and usage variables to a larger extend than has been advocated in the past.

Service robots are now an integral part of people's living and working environment, making service robots one of the hot topics for service researchers today. Against that background, the paper reviews the recent service robot literature following a Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology (TCCM) approach to capture the state of art of the field. In addition, building on qualitative input from researchers who are active in this field, the authors highlight where opportunities for further development and growth lie.

The paper identifies and analyzes 88 manuscripts (featuring 173 individual studies) published in academic journals featured on the SERVSIG literature alert. In addition, qualitative input gathered from 79 researchers who are active in the service field and doing research on service robots is infused throughout the manuscript.

The key research foci of the service robot literature to date include comparing service robots with humans, the role of service robots' look and feel, consumer attitudes toward service robots and the role of service robot conversational skills and behaviors. From a TCCM view, the authors discern dominant theories (anthropomorphism theory), contexts (retail/healthcare, USA samples, Business-to-Consumer (B2C) settings and customer focused), study characteristics (robot types: chatbots, not embodied and text/voice-based; outcome focus: customer intentions) and methodologies (experimental, picture-based scenarios).

The current paper is the first to analyze the service robot literature from a TCCM perspective. Doing so, the study gives (1) a comprehensive picture of the field to date and (2) highlights key pathways to inspire future work.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the superiority of comparative evaluation or relative attitudinal measurement approach in which the respondent evaluates one object with direct comparison with other objects. The study uses comparative and non-comparative approaches to examine the effects of service quality, value, and customer satisfaction on attitudinal loyalty in a service setting.

The study uses the data collected from the survey of 300 customers of two large Indian banks.

The results provide partial support to the superiority of the comparative evaluation over non-comparative evaluation. Additionally, results indicate that service quality positively affects customer value, and both service quality and customer value have a direct positive effect on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction drives attitudinal loyalty which in turn leads to customers’ willingness to pay more.

In the study, two banks were used for comparative evaluation. Since consumers’ consideration set can consist of more than two alternatives, future studies can include more than two objects.

Non-comparative measurements do not always adequately explain customer loyalty and superior performance of firms. This could potentially lead to misinterpretations of effects of service quality improvement programs and thus sub-optimal management decisions. Managers should use comparative evaluation approach for measuring marketing variables wherever possible.

Although the use of comparative evaluation is suggested in the literature (Dick and Basu, 1994), extant research has not systematically examined its superiority over non-comparative evaluation. This study empirically tests the comparative evaluation approach against the non-comparative approach by examining a comprehensive model involving the interrelationships among service quality, value, customer satisfaction, and their impact on attitudinal loyalty and willingness to pay more.

Service technologies are transforming the business landscape rapidly. This paper aims to explore the current scope of research in regard to emerging service technologies by comparing the content of articles in academic journals with practitioner-oriented publication outlets.

A total of 5,118 technology-related articles from service journals, service conferences, business journals and business magazines are analyzed. Text-mining on abstracts is used for the thematic and semantic analysis. Common research themes and their relationships are depicted in a two-dimensional structured network. Further, the sample is analyzed regarding various technologies mentioned in the Gartner Hype Cycle.

The paper reveals differences in academic and business perspectives in regard to service technologies. In comparison to business journals, scientific service research is more focused on customer-related aspects of technology. Service research has a less concrete focus on technology than in business publications. Still, service conference articles show a broader scope of emerging service technologies than academic journal articles.

Scientific research should focus on more concrete service technologies. Business magazines serve as a good source for that and the paper identifies several promising new technology fields.

Although business magazines cover significantly more concrete service technologies, they miss the integrated perspective that academic articles usually offer. Academia can help business to better align concrete technologies with different internal and external perspectives.

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue Future Service Technologies. Additionally, a quantitative study of recent service technology research serves as a reality check for academic researchers on business reality and provides research and practical recommendations.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly important issue for service brands in fast fashion retailing, as consumers' negative impressions about retailers' CSR activities influence brand experience. Consumers' impressions of CSR efforts arise based on agendas communicated through many channels from different sources. The paper unravels the ‘wrinkles’, i.e. possible mismatches in CSR communication around service brands by studying differences between the three main sources of fast fashion brand-related CSR agendas: Autonomous company communication, news media and social media postings by consumers.

The authors use structural topic modeling (STM) to analyze a corpus of texts focusing on the CSR efforts of three major fast fashion service brands over three years. The texts included 89 items of company communication (CSR reports and press releases), 5,351 news media articles about the brands' CSR efforts and 57,377 consumer generated tweets about the brands.

The STM analysis extracted 26 different CRS-related topics from the texts. Results showed differences in how much the three sources emphasized topics. The brands' own communication puts emphasis on environmental responsibility. News media tended to report on economic issues, treatment of employees and specific CSR-related events. Twitter showed more activity in discussing incident-based and emotionally charged topics.

The results feed into the ongoing discussion about how companies' CSR communication relates to communication in the press and among consumers. The authors highlight themes in the individual topics that are emphasized by the three sources, and discuss how CSR themes emerge in the overall transformative agenda.

The paper highlights how fast fashion service brands can identify and understand different CSR agendas arising around their brand. Insight into such agendas can be used to tailor the brands' communication strategies.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the factors behind fashion service brands' CSR reputation, highlighting how the three main sources of CSR reputation (company reports, news and social media) emphasize different types of agendas.

In spite of offering clear benefits and increased availability, relatively few service research studies rely on eye-tracking. Therefore, this paper aims to assist service researchers in harnessing the vast capabilities of eye-tracking technologies and methods for their own inquiries.

In addition to systematically reviewing extant research in the service domain and the wider marketing field with respect to the fundamentals and practices of eye-tracking, this paper presents a concise, empirical eye-tracking demonstration. These contributions suggest future outlooks for how to incorporate eye-tracking more effectively in service research.

The systematic literature review informs a comprehensive framework for integrating eye-tracking in service research that comprises research question focus regarding higher-order psychological constructs of interest, appropriate study settings, sample composition, optimal eye-tracking equipment and operationalization considerations.

By establishing a common ground and recommended uses of eye-tracking for service research, this study equips service scholars with the knowledge they need regarding eye-tracking fundamentals, common practices and future outlooks. A simple, empirical example further demonstrates some options for unlocking the unique capabilities of eye-tracking in service research and uncovering the complexities inherent to service experiences and other core service concepts.

This paper compiles and contextualizes insights from existing eye-tracking research, which it uses to draw important lessons for deploying eye-tracking in service domains.

Conversational agents (chatbots, avatars and robots) are increasingly substituting human employees in service encounters. Their presence offers many potential benefits, but customers are reluctant to engage with them. A possible explanation is that conversational agents do not make optimal use of communicative behaviors that enhance relational outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to identify which human-like communicative behaviors used by conversational agents have positive effects on relational outcomes and which additional behaviors could be investigated in future research.

This paper presents a systematic review of 61 articles that investigated the effects of communicative behaviors used by conversational agents on relational outcomes. A taxonomy is created of all behaviors investigated in these studies, and a research agenda is constructed on the basis of an analysis of their effects and a comparison with the literature on human-to-human service encounters.

The communicative behaviors can be classified along two dimensions: modality (verbal, nonverbal, appearance) and footing (similarity, responsiveness). Regarding the research agenda, it is noteworthy that some categories of behaviors show mixed results and some behaviors that are effective in human-to-human interactions have not yet been investigated in conversational agents.

By identifying potentially effective communicative behaviors in conversational agents, this study assists managers in optimizing encounters between conversational agents and customers.

This is the first study that develops a taxonomy of communicative behaviors in conversational agents and uses it to identify avenues for future research.

In today's marketplace for fast‐moving consumer goods, many brands exist with similar characteristics. Development and maintenance of product differentiation becomes increasingly difficult to realize for manufacturers. Consequently, non‐price competition particularly by offering high quality customer services, becomes increasingly important as a marketing instrument by producers towards distributors. In this article, an empirical investigation has been conducted into the interrelationships between customer services offered by an international beverage manufacturer and customer sentiments towards partnership and dependence. It appears that despite the well‐established premium brand offered by the manufacturer and the context of a long‐term relationship, customer service significantly affects customer dependence and closeness of the relationship. Furthermore, a high degree of partnership increases customer perceptions of dependence and quality of services. In the long run, manufacturer‐distributor relationships striving for service quality and partnership will benefit from mutual reinforcement.

Looks back at five years of the author's editorship of IJSIM and seeks to answer the question whether or not one of the journal's objectives – i.e. more multidisciplinary research – was achieved.

Analyses articles published in IJSIM over the last five years in terms of authors and content.

Based on the characteristics of authors and content of the paper it is concluded that the number of studies devoted to customer satisfaction and quality decreased substantially. Furthermore, as an indication of collaboration between authors from different departments the number of bilateral co‐operations between different departments in the authors' team was counted. From all known pairs of authors, only 40 (25 percent) were cross‐disciplinary.

There is room for improvement in this respect. Contributions from 277 authors from 27 countries all over the world over a period of five years make the journal a leading academic outlet in the field of services marketing and management.

States that providing quality customer service is increasingly regarded as an important basis for establishing and maintaining solid and long‐term relationships between manufacturers and distributors in marketing channels. Discusses the results of a research project which was undertaken to study the relationship between perceived service quality, supplier power bases and perceived relationship strength in international marketing channels. Finds that two dimensions can be used for characterizing perceived service quality in international marketing channels: service elements controlled by intermediary personnel; and service elements controlled by management. Moreover reveals that perceived service quality is an important determinant of perceived relationship strength, in contrast to coercive power bases such as offering rewards or undertaking punitive action. Concludes that, particularly in long channel structures, perceived service quality forms an important marketing channel instrument for relationship marketing.