Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review that highlights significant findings from empirical research examining the impact of music within various real and simulated service environments.

The paper examines the results of studies that have manipulated specific musical variables (genre, tempo, volume, and liking), and attempts to identify consistent patterns of findings to guide managers and researchers. The studies focus upon a range of dependent variables including evaluation of the environment, perceived wait and stay duration, consumption speed, affective response, and spending. Possible explanations for apparently inconsistent findings are discussed.

A variety of studies reveal the positive influence of musical congruity upon desired outcomes. Future research proposals identify the need to examine defining‐attribute and prototype theories of musical congruity.

The review highlights a range of implications drawn from the studies that will be of value to service organization managers who use music as a key component of their servicescape in order to enhance desired cognitive and affective responses.

Despite the relatively low cultural status of department store music, it is proposed that music – the shopping soundtrack – is capable of transforming perceptions of the environment in which it is heard, and eliciting immediate emotional and behavioural responses, thus underlining the influence of music, regardless of whether it is passively heard as a background element or actively listened to as a live performance in a dedicated venue.

This study addresses a gap in the marketing literature for introspective research evaluating the experience of music in service environments. It draws upon auto‐ethnographic data through which participants ponder their own consumption experience and provide detailed, subjective accounts of events and memories.

When considering the effects of music upon emotional, cognitive and behavioural responses, it highlights the importance of musicscape response moderators.

The service environment appears more exciting and attractive and may encourage increased spending when background music is congruous with other servicescape elements. Music with positive autobiographical resonance elicits pleasurably nostalgic emotions, positive evaluations and longer stay. However, the aural incongruity of unexpected silence in music‐free zones produces feelings of discomfort leading to negative store evaluation and departure.

Qualitative data are deliberately represented using typically positivist discourse to encourage resolution of the inherent tension between interpretivist and positivist perspectives and stimulate increased methodological integration (e.g. through future studies of music combining quantitative and qualitative data).

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide a detailed profile of the jazz festival audience in terms of age, gender, degree qualifications, home ownership levels, newspaper readership, frequency of attending live jazz performances, interest in attending other festivals and CD purchase behaviour. In addition, it seeks to examine the cultural diversity of improvisation.

Survey data were collected from patrons at the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival in order to establish the demographic profile of the jazz audience and distinguish between two broad categories of jazz fan (modern and hybrid). Hybrid jazz fans are categorised as those purchasing traditional/mainstream jazz CDs who may also purchase modern jazz CDs, thus distinguishing them from exclusively modern jazz fans who do not purchase traditional/mainstream jazz CDs.

Results identified a statistically significant difference between modern and hybrid jazz fans in terms of gender profile, newspaper readership, CD purchase behaviour, overall concert attendance and interest in attending a variety of other festivals.

Differences in purchase behaviour and festival preferences suggest likely differences between segments in terms of the potential demand for cross‐selling of other live entertainment services and related merchandise. Increased awareness of such differences creates the opportunity for more effectively targeted sponsorship.

The paper focuses upon the audience for an art form that has been relatively neglected by the management literature.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce restorative servicescapes. The work demonstrates that younger‐aged consumers may remedy symptoms associated with directed attention fatigue, including adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), by patronizing third places, such as video arcades and coffee shops.

This paper evaluates a servicescape's restorative potential by drawing on established measures. Attention restoration theory (ART) has been explored in natural and environmental psychology, rather than marketing. The first study uses survey methodology to explore whether teenagers who patronize a video arcade sense its restorative potential. The second study uses survey methodology to explore the relationship between patronizing a restorative third place and being at risk for ADHD.

Study 1 reveals that video arcade patrons sense the arcade's restorative potential. Therefore, commercial servicescapes may possess restorative qualities. Study 2 reveals that college‐aged students, who patronize a restorative servicescape, are significantly less likely than other students to be at risk for experiencing ADHD.

Although the data reveal a relationship between restorative servicescapes and ADHD risk, a diagnosis is not obtained. Furthermore, because survey methodology is employed, the causal influence of restorative servicescapes cannot be evaluated on their customers' health. However, commercial servicescapes can mimic the restorative properties found in nature. Thus, the health potential of public places on health may be profound.

Educational institutions, governmental agencies, and parents should consider publicly supporting third places for teenagers because doing so can remedy symptoms associated with mental fatigue.

The paper brings ART into the marketing discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the internal branding process from the employees' perspective; it will empirically assess the relationship between internal branding and employees' delivery of the brand promise as well as the relationships among their brand identification, brand commitment and brand loyalty.

On a census basis, a quantitative survey is carried out with 699 customer‐interface employees from five major hotels.

Internal branding is found to have a positive impact on attitudinal and behavioural aspects of employees in their delivery of the brand promise. As employees' brand commitment does not have a statistically significant relationship with employees' brand performance, it is not regarded as a mediator in the link between internal branding and employees' brand performance. Furthermore, the study shows that brand identification is a driver of brand commitment, which precedes brand loyalty of employees.

A number of significant managerial implications are drawn from this study, for example using both internal communication and training to influence employees' brand‐supporting attitudes and behaviours. Still, it should be noted that the effect of internal branding on the behaviours could be dependent on the extent to which it could effectively influence their brand attitudes.

The results provide valuable insights from the key internal audience's perspectives into an internal branding process to ensure the delivery of the brand promise. It empirically shows the relationship between internal branding and the behavioural outcome as well as the meditational effects of employees' brand identification, commitment and loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a service development process that is adapted to manufacturing companies and to discuss its implications for companies with a traditional focus on product development and product sales.

The paper looks at new service development (NSD) literature and argues for a rationale to study NSD processes in a manufacturing context. Next, a generic NSD framework for manufacturing companies is presented. Examples are given based on an explorative multiple case study (ten companies) with in‐depth interviews and focus groups. The analysis reveals organizational requirements and other critical factors related to each stage of the NSD process.

A four‐stage service offering development framework is presented. Critical aspects of NSD in a manufacturing context are highlighted. The importance of considering both NSD and new product development (NPD) together is also emphasized.

The limitations are based primarily on methodology; the case studies focused only on the service organizations of the manufacturing companies studied.

Managers need to be aware of the inter‐relationship that exists between NSD and NPD and on the specificities of service development in companies where an industrial logic dominates. A number of managerial implications are proposed and discussed.

The paper emphasizes the importance of latter stages in NSD, something that has not previously been extensively studied or addressed. In addition, to explicitly discuss NSD in a manufacturing context is novel.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not emotions experienced in customer relationships – linked to actual behavior – could enhance understanding of their future development.

A number of individual‐level relationships between customers and telecom operators are investigated. The empirical data consist of 113 switching stories reported during 81 interviews with telecom customers.

In the analysis, emotional experiences are related to customers' activity or passivity and to the stability (switching or not) in the relationships. The most important research contribution is the identification of different emotions related to actual behavior. Less stable customers are pessimistic about the operators and show nervousness, while stable customers may have initially been depressed in their relationships, becoming more relaxed and optimistic over time. Emotions do not seem to have the capacity in themselves to cause stability or instability, but they confirm through their connection to different types of trigger whether the relationship will be stable or unstable.

The findings of the present study are based on a longitudinal empirical study, but only in one industry. Although, the telecom industry may provide a very fruitful context for the longitudinal study of stability in customer relationships because of the turbulence it has experienced during the last decade, the industry representation is narrow.

Customers do not sever their emotional ties with the previous relationship when they enter the new one. On the contrary, they linger in the switched‐from relationship at least at first, which is indicated in the various emotional expressions they use. The present study takes some initial steps towards enhancing understanding of the dynamism in providing an insight into customers' differing emotional reactions connected to triggers during one and the same relationship.

Taking a longitudinal approach from the customers' perspective produces a set boundaries of customer relationships that may not coincide with the set boundaries seen from the service providers' perspective. According to the findings of the present study, it seems almost impossible to understand customer relationships without following customers on an individual level in both previous and current relationships. Despite the fact that dynamism in customer relationships is widely discussed in previous research, few studies have applied such a perspective.

The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to review existing schools of thought and to identify present research fields in new service development (NSD) and service innovation research, and, secondly, to discuss future research opportunities.

The literature review is based on a search for “service innovation” and “NSD” in titles, abstracts and keywords of articles. As a result of looking at the references, as well as through analysis of papers which cite the articles identified, additional publications are included in this study.

Four schools of thought and five distinct research fields are presented. Herein, the authors show that there is a lack of studies of organisational innovations, and that differences in the drivers for radical or incremental innovations may be of degree rather than of kind. Further, contradictory results in the research field on differences versus similarities of new product and NSD are identified. In addition, the authors propose possible pathways for future research for each research field and school of thought.

The scope of publications included in this review may be subject to criticism as book‐publications may be under‐represented in this review. Also, the keywords used for the initial search could include additional words.

The paper groups previously scattered research activities from various backgrounds such as marketing and operations into distinct research fields, and presents both the status quo and a discussion of possible directions for future research.

The internet driven information revolution is frequently cited as one of the key drivers (re‐)shaping contemporary consumption. In particular, the internet has been seen as disrupting established conventions in professional services. Popularly, it has been viewed as a liberating medium, a mechanism by which consumers and citizens have been able to challenge the authority of the professional establishment. Yet for consumers, the internet can equally be viewed as generating new uncertainties and challenges in terms of negotiating a new settlement with professionals and reconfiguring the service encounter. The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences of consumers with the use of internet derived information in respect of complex professional services and the impact of such information utilisation on the format of the service encounter.

Empirical data is generated through interviews with professionals (n=24) and consumer focus groups (n=10/53).

The paper argues that the multi‐faceted nature of the internet creates informational “spaces” which present both opportunities and threats to consumers in renegotiating the service encounter. Balancing the paradoxes created by these informational spaces is at the core of the challenge confronting contemporary service consumers. Irrespective of the nature of that space, the effect is to create a driver for change, challenging the established practices of both consumer and professional to reshape the service encounter.

Focus group research does not enable a judgement about the prevalence or distribution of behaviours among consumers. Nevertheless, this paper advances understanding of contemporary consumption practices and provides a new perspective on nature of consumer utilisation of information within the consumption process.

It is inevitable that professionals and service organisations will be required to respond to a complex and rapidly evolving set of consumer behaviours and rethink approaches to the delivery of professional services.

The paper addresses an emergent phenomenon and provides unique insights into the changing dynamics of consumption practices in the contemporary knowledge economy.