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The purpose of this study is to further our understanding of the effects of service employees’ accents on service outcomes and to investigate the boundary conditions of service type, service criticality and accent-service congruence.

This study reports on three scenario-based experiments with between-subject designs to assess customer reactions to service employees with nonstandard accents.

The findings revealed that the three service-related extraneous factors investigated in this study influence the direction and strength of accent’s impact. Service employees’ nonstandard accents generally negatively influence customers’ satisfaction with a service provider and purchase intentions. This effect is stronger for credence services than for experience services. While customer satisfaction with the service encounter tends to stay the same regardless of service criticality, they have less purchase intention in high service criticality situations when they deal with service employee with a nonstandard accent. Accent-service congruence enhances both satisfaction and purchase intention.

This study makes contributions to the accent in service interaction literature by enabling the authors to have a more complete understanding of how accent effects drive customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Future studies can take customer-related factors such as customer-service employee relationships, customers’ ethnic affiliation and ethnocentrism into consideration when examining the effects of accent in service interactions.

Service managers need to be aware when nonstandard accents’ negative effects will elevate – credence service and service with higher criticality are better provided by service employee with a standard accent. A nonstandard accent that matches the service improves customer satisfaction and purchase intention and could be used to its advantage.

This study contributes to the service literature about service employees’ interaction with customers and is particularly relevant in multicultural societies with increasingly diverse workforces.

The study investigates how the congruence of online deal popularity and star rating influences service quality expectation in online group buying (OGB) websites. It also investigates the role of authenticity perceptions of online cues.

Two experiments are used to assess the effects of congruence between deal popularity and star rating on service quality expectation for service deals in an OGB website.

The findings suggest that a combination of congruently high deal popularity and high star rating has a stronger effect on expected service quality than a combination of congruently low cues. The findings further suggest that expected service quality is greater under the combination of high deal popularity and low star rating than the combination of low deal popularity and high star rating, showing the differences between incongruent cue combinations. The findings also show the moderating effect of consumer authenticity perceptions of cues on the expected service quality.

The novel contribution of the study is to extend cue congruence theory to explain how congruent online information cues and the consumers' authenticity perceptions of the cues influence consumers' judgment of online deals. The contribution is validated empirically in the context of OGB. The findings advance current knowledge concerning how consumers use online information cues.

Drawing on social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test an integrative model of internal and external factors determining employee perceptions of their organizational service climate.

Data are collected from a sample of 549 service employees in local and foreign-owned service firms in the emerging market of Vietnam. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypothesized relationships.

Leadership commitment to service quality, internal processes and service standards, work facilitation resources and service-oriented human resource practices are positively associated with service climate. Internal customer service mediates the effects of these variables on service climate, with the exception of work facilitation resources. Furthermore, competitive intensity negatively moderates the impact of the internal drivers on service climate. The results also suggest that, depending on the ownership types (local vs foreign firms), the influences of the internal drivers of service climate might differ.

Despite the recognition of the role of organizational resources in fostering service climate, the integration and processes by which such resources influence service climate have not been fully examined. In particular, little is known about the external factors facilitating or hindering service climate, especially from an emerging market perspective. By examining both internal and external drivers of service climate under different ownership types, this paper enriches the existing knowledge on service climate and provides important implications for service firms operating in emerging markets.

This study aims to identify key factors driving consumers' adoption of Open Banking. It extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by integrating perceived risk, initial trust and financial literacy into an overarching conceptual model.

Measurement items of the theoretical constructs included in the conceptual model were adapted from related literature and a set of hypotheses was developed. The hypotheses of the conceptual model were subsequently assessed with partial least squares structural equation modeling using a dataset of 456 Australian survey respondents.

The model has strong explanatory power with an R² of 69.5%. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and perceived risk are direct antecedents of consumers' usage intention of Open Banking. Social influence has a strong mediating effect on usage intention through performance expectancy. The effect of perceived risk is alleviated by effort expectancy and initial trust, while initial trust positively affects the effects of performance expectancy and effort expectancy on consumers' usage intention of Open Banking. Finally, financial literacy lowers initial trust towards Open Banking, possibly inducing consumer skepticism.

The results suggest that practitioners should focus on performance expectancy as a primary driver of Open Banking adoption, while understanding the role of other drivers, such as social influence and perceived risk in developing marketing strategies. Policy makers are recommended to adopt a governance approach to build initial trust amongst consumers.

This research contributes by providing an integrated and comprehensive model for explaining consumers' FinTech adoptions by extending the existing technology adoption model UTAUT to the Open Banking domain and integrating perceived risk, initial trust and financial literacy, thereby advancing and enriching the conceptual horizon of the extant literature.

This study aims to provide an understanding of how the participation of vulnerable customers in the co-creation of health-care provision influences their individual well-being outcomes. Using self-determination theory, it demonstrates that co-creation at the point of care and at an organisational or system level impacts individual hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.

A qualitative approach is adopted to identify the various customer well-being outcomes. Two case studies of health-care organisations, comprising ten in-depth interviews and eight focus groups, as well as documents and noted observations are used for thematic analysis.

The study demonstrates ways in which vulnerable customers integrate resources to co-create value outcomes. It shows how differing co-creative role of customers with mental illness lead to different customer well-being outcomes. These roles manifest not only the hedonic well-being characteristics of pleasure and happiness but also eudaimonic well-being, which provides a sense of achievement and purpose to customers. The study used self-determination theory to identify different forms of eudaimonic well-being derived from the co-creation roles of co-producer, strategic partner and community citizen.

The co-creation and transformative service literature is extended by demonstrating that a feeling of self-efficacy and self-determination because of value co-creation foster customer well-being. This study demonstrates that co-creation at the point of care and at an organisational or system level impacts individual hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.

The growing concern around sustainability highlights the need to change individual consumption behaviour. Using evolutionary theory, the purpose of this paper is to present a framework that demonstrates the process by which a consumer’s ultimate motives (thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that come from the evolutionary motives) impact sustainability campaign message persuasiveness (SCMP).

The framework was tested using partial least squares analysis with data from an online survey of 237 consumers.

Ultimate motives influence the SCMP through a mediating relationship, via a consumer’s sustainable consumption attitude and behaviour. The perceived sense of urgency around sustainability issues and the consumer’s connection to nature were also identified as key moderators that impact relationships between ultimate motives and consumers’ sustainability attitudes and behaviours.

Future research could explore the impact of other factors, such as values, social norms, culture and governmental regulations, on individuals’ reactions to sustainability marketing.

The findings indicate the importance for managers to grasp the multifaceted nature of ultimate motives. By heightening particular ultimate motives, marketers can steer individuals towards sustainable attitudes and behaviours, consequently increasing the probability of favourable reactions to sustainable consumption messages.

This study addressed the two main limitations of research into SCMP by providing a theoretical grounding and focusing on the drivers of consumer behaviour, instead of campaign messaging aspects (e.g. framing). The empirical analysis, including identifying interactions between ultimate motives, supports the use of evolutionary theory to explain SCMP.

Service providers and consumers alike are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence service agents (AISA) for service. Yet, no service quality scale exists that can fully capture the key factors influencing AISA service quality. This study aims to address this shortcoming by developing a scale for measuring AISA service quality (AISAQUAL).

Based on extant service quality research and established scale development techniques, the study constructs, refines and validates a multidimensional AISAQUAL scale through a series of pilot and validation studies.

AISAQUAL contains 26 items across six dimensions: efficiency, security, availability, enjoyment, contact and anthropomorphism. The new scale demonstrates good psychometric properties and can be used to evaluate service quality across AISA, providing a means of examining the relationships between AISA service quality and satisfaction, perceived value as well as loyalty.

Future research should validate AISAQUAL with other AISA types, as they diffuse throughout the service sector. Moderating factors related to services, the customer and the AISA can be investigated to uncover the boundary conditions under which AISAQUAL is likely to influence service outcomes. Longitudinal studies can be carried out to assess how ongoing use of AISA can change service outcomes.

Service managers can use AISAQUAL to effectively monitor, diagnose and improve services provided by AISA while enhancing their understanding of how AISA can deliver better service quality and customer loyalty outcomes.

Anthropomorphism is identified as a new service quality dimension. AISAQUAL facilitates theory development by providing a reliable scale to improve the current understanding of consumers’ perspectives concerning AISA services.

The primary objective of this article is to investigate customer reactions to service employees with accents that differ from a non-native accent taking into account customer emotions.

This article reports on a study with a 2 (accent of service employee: Australian or Indian) × 2 (service employee’s competency: competent or incompetent) × 2 (customer’s affective state: positive or negative) between-subject experimental design to uncover the effects of service employees’ accent on customers’ reactions.

The findings revealed that hearing a service employee with a foreign accent was not enough on its own to influence customer responses. However, when the service employee is incompetent or the customer was in a negative affective state, a foreign accent appeared to exacerbate the situation.

While the findings indicate that accents are used a cue for customers to evaluate service employees, further research should also take service types, service outcomes, customer-service employee relationships, customers’ ethnic affiliation and ethnocentrism into consideration when examining the effect of accents.

Service managers need to be aware that accents will exacerbate perceptions of already difficult service situations. Providing competent service will help breakdown stereotypes and improve the acceptance of diversity at the customer–employee interface.

This article contributes to the service literature about service attributes and is particularly relevant to economies such as the USA, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia where immigrants are a large part of the service work force.

The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the attitudes, feelings and perceptions of Australian consumers towards service frontline employees with accents that differ from Standard Australian English, taking into consideration service‐country image and customer emotions.

This paper reports on a qualitative study designed to uncover the attitudes and perceptions of Australians towards service personnel with foreign accents.

The findings revealed that hearing a service provider with a foreign accent, particularly in services encounters without face‐to‐face contacts, often evokes a negative predisposition to certain accents, reduces the customers' level of tolerance and increases the perception of the service provider's lack of understanding. This negative stereotype bias seems to be moderated by the accent (a proxy of ethnicity) and service‐country image and influenced by customer emotions in the service interaction.

Future studies could also use a controlled experimental design where accent could be used as a sensory cue to further test the validity and reliability of the current findings while controlling for factors such as ethnic background, employment, education and age. Further research should also take service types and service outcomes into consideration in examining the effect of accents on customer service evaluation.

Accent as a service employee attribute influences customers' evaluation of the service encounter because of the stereotype customers have. Training in language skills, cross‐cultural interpersonal skills and authority to deviate from the script should be given to minimise the negative effect of service employee accent. Service firms also need to develop strategies to manage customer emotions and reactions.

This paper contributes to the service literature about service employee attributes and is particularly relevant to economies such as the USA, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia where immigrants are a large part of the service workforce.

Human resources information systems (HRIS) are becoming increasingly important in helping modern organizations manage their human assets effectively. Yet, HRIS adoption remains an under‐researched phenomenon. The purpose of this paper to isolate the factors that influence the organizational adoption of HRIS in public sector organizations.

Adopting the technology‐organization‐environment model as an analytical framework, the paper draws on qualitative evidence from 16 interviews across 11 Australian public sector organizations.

The authors find that champions in public sector organizations should demonstrate HRIS benefits before their adoption can succeed. With standardization trends adopted by HRIS vendors, complete organizational fit between adopted HRIS and business processes may be elusive for adopters suggesting that post‐adoption vendor support must be negotiated if costly customizations are to be minimized. In addition to various organizational factors, including management commitment and human capability, the authors also find that broader environmental factors including regulatory compliance can have a deep impact on the success of HRIS adoption by creating urgency in adoption intentions.

There is paucity of research concerning HRIS adoption in the public sector which presents unique challenges due to its idiosyncrasies. This paper contributes to the existing body knowledge by investigating the role of technological, organizational, and environmental factors and their interactions. It provides an improved understanding of the challenges related to HRIS adoption in public sector organizations.