Kirk L. Wakefield and Jeffrey Blodgett
The purpose of the paper is to review the contribution of the paper, “The Importance of Servicescapes in Leisure Service Settings” to the discipline and to offer directions for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to review the contribution of the paper, “The Importance of Servicescapes in Leisure Service Settings” to the discipline and to offer directions for further research and developments in the research area.
Design/methodology/approach
Key findings from research streams in sports and entertainment, leisure and hospitality, and services and retail marketing, which emanated from the publication of the paper, are highlighted. Opportunities for future research are discussed.
Findings
The importance of the servicescape in leisure settings has become even greater on a national and global basis as individuals spend more time, money and effort pursuing hedonic consumption in service settings. More research is needed within specific service contexts among and between individuals, groups and cultures to determine the holistic and particular influences of the physical environment on consumer response.
Research limitations/implications
With increased co-production of service experiences, including the integration of technology and mobile/wearable devices, marketers and researchers must better understand the role of the physical surroundings on individual, group and organizational behavior in the evolving servicescape.
Originality/value
The original paper motivated significant, highly cited studies in multiple disciplines integrated and overlapping with services and retail marketing. Taking a historical perspective encourages other researchers to conduct research of personal interest to address theoretical, methodological and practical issues. The retrospective analysis by the authors gives insight into the thought processes associated with understanding key aspects of the servicescape that contribute to the historical development of services marketing and offers food for thought (if not ambience and layout) for future research directions.
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Robin Wakefield and Kirk Wakefield
Social media is replete with malicious and unempathetic rhetoric yet few studies explain why these emotions are publicly dispersed. The purpose of the study is to investigate how…
Abstract
Purpose
Social media is replete with malicious and unempathetic rhetoric yet few studies explain why these emotions are publicly dispersed. The purpose of the study is to investigate how the intergroup counter-empathic response called schadenfreude originates and how it prompts media consumption and engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
The study consists of two field surveys of 635 in-group members of two professional sports teams and 300 residents of California and Texas with political party affiliations. The analysis uses SEM quantitative methods.
Findings
Domain passion and group identification together determine the harmonious/obsessive tendencies of passion for an activity and explain the schadenfreude response toward the rival out-group. Group identification is a stronger driver of obsessive passion compared to harmonious passion. Schadenfreude directly influences the use of traditional media (TV, radio, domain websites), it triggers social media engagement (posting), and it accelerates harmonious passion's effects on social media posting.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited by the groups used to evaluate the research model, sports, and politics.
Social implications
The more highly identified and passionate group members experience greater counter-empathy toward a rival. At extreme levels of group identification, obsessive passion increases at an increasing rate and may characterize extremism. Harboring feelings of schadenfreude toward the out-group prompts those with harmonious passion for an activity to more frequently engage on social media in unempathetic ways.
Originality/value
This study links the unempathetic, yet common emotion of schadenfreude with passion, intergroup dynamics, and media behavior.
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Morris George and Kirk L. Wakefield
The purpose of this study is to model the consumer journey of admission-based membership services from initial purchase to full-season memberships. Particularly, the study pays…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to model the consumer journey of admission-based membership services from initial purchase to full-season memberships. Particularly, the study pays attention to customer-owned contacts (purchase behavior) and service-owned contacts (salesperson voice- and text-based communications), to examine longitudinal internal data to determine factors which hinder and propel customers toward full memberships.
Design/methodology/approach
On the basis of big data supplied by a National Hockey League team, the study uses three simultaneous equations in modeling to account for potential endogeneity related to the likelihood that sales and service personnel are more likely to contact frequent customers. The longitudinal data allow us to map the customer journey over the course of multiple years, compared to typical cross-section studies.
Findings
The findings show that as customers increasingly own committed points of contact, they are prepared to move to the next level – but rarely skip major steps in the relationship journey. The quantity, type and timing of customer contacts by the service firm may hinder or propel the customer down the path to purchase full memberships.
Research limitations/implications
The prevalence of big data among service firms should allow researchers to better understand how consumers respond to contact strategies over time, as well as fluctuations in firm performance. The research adds to the customer journey research stream, while meeting the call of researchers to bridge the gap between service marketing research priorities and current practice.
Practical implications
Sales practices and marketing automation tactics may come at the cost of burning leads and alienating future members. Frequent text-based contacts absent voice-based interactions hinder consumer journey and work against relationship building. Service marketers can learn how to better allocate resources, properly manage and motivate contact strategies and target campaigns to send the right message via the right media at the right time.
Originality/value
This is the first study to map customer journey for admission-based, membership services. The longitudinal approach across multiple years provides a deep understanding of how customers take steps toward loyal membership status, while also pinpointing potential drawbacks of current contact strategies.
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For contemporary American young adults (aged 18–29), coresidence with parents is now the most common living arrangement. Recent research on residential transitions out of and back…
Abstract
For contemporary American young adults (aged 18–29), coresidence with parents is now the most common living arrangement. Recent research on residential transitions out of and back into the parental home shows that residential independence is still common, meaning that many young adults coreside with parents after first leaving the nest. The timing of residential independence and subsequent coresidence is often tied to other life-course outcomes, such as relationships and employment, as well as characteristics of the family context, such as family structure and financial resources. A small body of research also demonstrates that residential transitions are common following criminal justice contact experiences such as arrests and periods of incarceration. While this association does not appear to be explained by the family context, the current study argues there are several reasons to anticipate heterogeneity in coresidence patterns based on the childhood family context. Drawing on data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I find that criminal justice contact is associated with coresidence with parents during young adulthood in a fairly consistent manner across different dimensions of family context (although parental education may play a role). These findings demonstrate the power of the criminal justice system in directing or redirecting residential trajectories and have implications for both individuals with contact and their families.
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The definition of the term “family” around the Western world is more heterogeneous than ever before and so are its roles and the social expectations of it. However, prisoners’…
Abstract
The definition of the term “family” around the Western world is more heterogeneous than ever before and so are its roles and the social expectations of it. However, prisoners’ families (specifically parents and siblings) are expected to support their incarcerated son/brother as they are perceived responsible for his choices and as having the closest relationship with him. Based on a study of parents and siblings of incarcerated men in Israel, this chapter’s goal is to shed light on families’ choice to support their incarcerated son or brother and the struggles this choice entails. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 17 parents and 10 siblings of incarcerated men in Israel showed that nuclear family members may experience various struggles throughout the legal proceedings, including family hardships, negative social experiences, and negative experiences with formal institutions – all leading to social self-exclusion. Looking through the intersectionality lens, the findings show that when accumulating hardships that prisoners’ families experience encounter perceived harsh institutional systems of oppression, preordained marginalization can be deepened as families operate in opposition.
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This chapter illuminates the central role of kin networks and the routines they construct to maintain family ties and support young fathers in jail. Recent research demonstrates…
Abstract
This chapter illuminates the central role of kin networks and the routines they construct to maintain family ties and support young fathers in jail. Recent research demonstrates variation in incarcerated fathers’ contact with children. There is less focus on variation in contact with extended kin networks and how kin networks contribute to father–child contact during an incarceration period. Forty-three incarcerated young fathers (ages 19–26) in three Southern California jails, 79% of whom self-identified as Latino, were interviewed to explore fathers’ descriptions of family contact during jail. Incarcerated young fathers rely on kin networks to coordinate routines for contact during jail, including father–child contact. Father inclusion in family life during jail depends not only on the mother of the child but – perhaps integrally – extended paternal kin. Available paternal kin can facilitate connectedness between children and incarcerated fathers in family contexts of complicated parental circumstances (e.g., parental relationship dissolution). Family members mitigate family challenges to maintain ties despite carceral policies meant to isolate fathers from families and children. A continued focus on kin networks and their role in maintaining family connectedness is crucial to understanding and reducing the collateral consequences to family members and incarcerated persons following release from jail.
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We propose to see, regarding the Venezuelan context and at the same time in dialogue with the literature on Latin American prisons, the prison through the prison-neighborhood…
Abstract
We propose to see, regarding the Venezuelan context and at the same time in dialogue with the literature on Latin American prisons, the prison through the prison-neighborhood correspondence. This includes, for example, looking at how the prison organizes crime outside, attributes social and reputational capital, extracts and redistributes illegal profits, export/import modes and logics of action and domination. The purpose is to (a) discuss the “hydraulic” theses on prison gangs, dominant in North American literature, which explain their emergence through conditions endogenous of the prison, and instead put the emphasis on the dynamics of exclusion and the “lumpen economies” in which the poor subsist, and (b) nuance the perspectives on the relations between prison and community from the point of view of the peripheral South, marked by high rates of exclusion, informality, and an economy strongly dependent on commodities and a significant labor surplus population, in contrast to the industrial economies of the Global North.
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Heather Schoenfeld, Rachel M. Durso and Kat Albrecht
Criminal law has dramatically expanded since the 1970s. Despite popular and academic attention to overcriminalization in the United States, empirical research on how court actors…
Abstract
Criminal law has dramatically expanded since the 1970s. Despite popular and academic attention to overcriminalization in the United States, empirical research on how court actors and, in particular, prosecutors, use the legal tools associated with overcriminalization is scarce. In this chapter, we describe three forms of overcriminalization that, in theory, have created new tools for prosecutors: the criminalization of new behaviors, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, and the internal expansion of criminal laws. We then use a unique dataset of felony filings and dispositions in Florida from 1995 to 2015 to test a series of hypotheses examining how overcriminalization influences prosecutorial practices given three changes to the political economy during this time: the decline in violent and property crime, the Great Recession, and a growing call for criminal justice reform. We find that prosecutors have been unconstrained by declining crime rates. Yet, rather than rely on new criminal statutes or mandatory minimum sentence laws, they maintained their caseloads by increasing their filing rates for traditional violent, property and drug offenses. At the same time, the data demonstrate nonviolent other offenses are the top charge in almost 20% of the felony caseload between 2005 and 2015. Our findings also suggest that, despite reform rhetoric, filing and conviction rates decreased due to the Recession, not changes in the law. We discuss the implications of these findings for criminal justice reform.
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Kirk L. Wakefield and Victoria D. Bush
Previous sales promotion research has focused primarily upon groceries and packaged goods. This research examines what motivates consumers to respond to sales promotions for…
Abstract
Previous sales promotion research has focused primarily upon groceries and packaged goods. This research examines what motivates consumers to respond to sales promotions for leisure services. Leisure services may offer price deals, but also frequently offer non‐price sales promotions which may add entertainment value for some consumers. We find that consumers who are likely to respond to leisure service price deals are motivated by primarily economic reasons. Emotional motives, on the other hand, are found to drive consumer responses to organization‐related non‐price deals.
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Stephen D. Strombeck and Kirk L. Wakefield
This study seeks to illustrate empirically how person‐situation variants influence customer assessments of service quality across multiple stages in the service drama.
Abstract
Purpose
This study seeks to illustrate empirically how person‐situation variants influence customer assessments of service quality across multiple stages in the service drama.
Design/methodology/approach
Using surveys that were systematically distributed to 3,000 passengers boarding 30 different flights (with 432 complete responses), the effects of consumption motive (hedonic versus utilitarian) and service duration (shorter versus longer service encounters) were examined in relationship to perceived time pressure within a multiple‐sequence service encounter.
Findings
The results indicate that the consumption motives (utilitarian‐hedonic) of passengers do influence perceptions of service quality, as well as altering perceived time pressure resulting from service delays. Also, the length of the service duration moderates the negative effects of time pressure on perceived service quality.
Research limitations/implications
Extrapolating the findings from this research to other service industries should be done with care given that consumption motives and perceived time pressures may vary greatly across different service industries.
Practical implications
This study suggests that managers must develop systemic solutions to service delays during early stages of the encounter as such delays may prompt a “domino effect” that transcends all subsequent stages in the service encounter. Service encounters that are longer in duration may also be more susceptible to critical service evaluations if these delays are not rectified.
Originality/value
This study demonstrates the critical issue of measuring service quality during each successive stage of a service encounter.