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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the individual mechanisms that mediate the relationship between marketing practices and growth-quality of work life ambidexterity.

Data were collected from small service firms via an online survey questionnaire electronically distributed to 7,271 owners of small firms in Australia. Partial least squares was used to test our mediation hypotheses on the data obtained.

The authors demonstrate the mediation effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and passion for work in enhancing the relationship between marketing practices and growth-quality of work life ambidexterity.

The findings indicate that being good at marketing does not always lead directly to achieving growth-quality of work life ambidexterity. The results suggest that achievement in both domains requires owners of small service firms to have a strong self-belief that they can perform their job successfully (entrepreneurial self-efficacy) as well as a strong passion to do the job they are doing (passion for work). Policy makers or small firm advisors can include this information to develop enactive mastery measures to promote efficacy and passion for work which can increase small firm survival rates.

The high percentage of business terminations reported without financial loss underscores the importance of including both financial and non-financial goals for small firms. The approach to conceptualize and operationalize growth-quality of work life ambidexterity as a dependent variable representing firm performance assists by providing a more detailed and practical understanding of the organizational and individual variables that enable small firms to realize both.

Much of the success of a relationship marketing program rests on the consumers' choice to participate in a service relationship in the first instance. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree to which this desire of the consumer to engage in a relationship impacts on their perceived cognitive‐state gains (motivation, confidence and affiliation) and key measures of consumer‐to‐business relationship success (relationship strength, satisfaction and retention intentions).

Following a qualitative study, the main quantitative study used a self‐administered survey of 334 service consumers to understand relationship perceptions. Structural equation modeling was then used to test the hypotheses.

Analysis revealed that consumers desire to participate in a relationship influenced their level of motivation, degree of confidence and these, in turn, impacted on the consumers' sense of affiliation with the service provider. A consumer's sense of affiliation subsequently influenced the strength of their relationship and their level of satisfaction with the relationship. Additionally, the effect of relationship desire on relationship strength and satisfaction was apparent. Consumers' desire indirectly impacted on retention intentions, suggesting that service managers should be careful not to assume that consumers' deliberate choice to participate in a relationship will routinely result in loyalty.

Practitioners and academics have sought to determine why some consumers, and not others, participate in relationships. This study adds to knowledge in this area by empirically demonstrating the extent to which the desire of a consumer to participate in a service relationship effects the gains accrued to the consumer and the relationship outcomes.

This chapter examines the underpinnings of collective resistance in a nonunion factory. I begin by acknowledging the important contribution made by Randy Hodson and others who have uncovered key material structural underpinnings of collective resistance in workplaces. Such an approach, however, leaves large unanswered questions about collective agency. I argue that a focus upon the potential links between lived culture and collective resistance can bring us closer to an understanding of collective agency. To this end, I present key findings of an ethnographic study of culture and resistance at window-blinds factory. I outline the informal collective resistance enacted by the workers in the factory and offer an analysis of the structural factors underpinning the considerable resistance at this factory. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to outlining the everyday Stayin’ Alive culture on the shopfloor and to analyzing the dotted lines that led from this culture to the collective resistance.

Although customer relationships transpire through a process of time, encounters and experience, few studies have examined the dynamics of service relationships. This paper aims to address this issue by examining the effect of experience on the association between relational benefits and relationship quality, and between relationship quality and loyalty.

Using a national sample of 376 service consumers and nine service industries, the study examines whether the impact of relationship benefits on perceptions of satisfaction, trust and commitment, and ultimately customer loyalty, differs significantly between novice and experienced customer cohorts.

The results indicate significant differences between novice and experienced cohorts. Specifically, the impact of confidence, social and special treatment benefits on perceptions of satisfaction, trust and commitment, and ultimately customer loyalty, differ significantly based on a customer's level of relationship experience.

The findings of this study have tactical and strategic implications for service firms, including effective customer asset management, resource allocation, and relationship strategy.

This study makes a significant new contribution to theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a scale (SITUZAP) to measure the situational factors that trigger channel switching, specifically within the television environment.

The domain construct is defined and 14 potential scale items were drawn from the literature and qualitative research. The scale was purified during the pilot phase and three scale items removed. The scale was re‐tested during the main study via an independent sample, confirming the two‐dimensional nature of the scale.

Reliability analysis indicates that the scale is internally consistent with co‐efficient alpha high across both pilot and main studies. Moreover, confirmatory factor analysis supports the two‐factor measurement model – “advertising triggers” and “RCD empowerment”. The test‐retest result (r=0.662) further provides evidence of stability within the scale. The scale has also been verified for content, criterion, discriminant, and nomological validity. All other indicators are within the acceptable range of statistics.

This is the first scale that measures the effect of situational factors on channel switching.

Demand for long-term care services increases with population aging. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of elderly customers’ health-care experiences to explore the antecedents, mechanisms and outcomes of social participation in long-term care service organizations.

Using a two-phase data collection approach, this study collects data from 238 elderly customers in a long-term care service organization. The final data are analyzed through structural equation modeling.

The results show that care management efforts (i.e. customer education, perceived organization support, role modeling, perceived other customer support and diversity of activity) influence elderly customers’ psychological states (i.e. self-efficacy and sense of community), leading to increased social participation. In addition, high levels of social participation evoke positive service satisfaction and quality of life, both of which alleviate switching intention.

This study is one of the first conclusive service studies focused on the role of elderly customers’ social participation in their long-term care experience. The findings contribute to health-care service marketing and transformative service research, and expand understanding of elderly customers’ health-care experience, especially in long-term care service settings.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an automated machine learning (AutoML) and multi-agent system approach to improve overall product delivery satisfaction under limited resources.

An AutoML method is purposed to model delivery satisfaction of individual customer, and a heuristic method and multi-agent system are proposed to improve overall satisfaction under limited processing capability. A series of simulation experiments have been conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

The simulated results show that the proposed method can effectively improve overall delivery satisfaction, especially when the demand of customer orders is highly fluctuating and when the customer satisfaction models are highly diversified.

The proposed framework provides a more dynamic and continuously improving way to model delivery satisfaction of individual customer, thereby supports companies to provide personalized services and develop scalable and flexible business at a lower cost, and ultimately improves the overall quality, efficiency and effectiveness of delivery services.

The proposed methodology utilizes AutoML and multi-agent system to model individual customer delivery satisfaction and improve the overall satisfaction. It can cooperate with the existing delivery resource planning methods to further improve customer delivery satisfaction. The authors propose an AutoML approach to model individual customer delivery satisfaction, which enables continuous update and improvements. The authors propose multi-agent system and a heuristic method to improve overall delivery satisfaction. The numerical results show that the proposed method can improve overall delivery satisfaction with limited processing capability.

The paper aims to investigate the practices facilitating the transformation of healthcare services, understanding the resulting outcomes in terms of well-being and uplifting changes. a systematic literature review (SLR) focusing on analyzing the healthcare sector under the transformative service research (TSR) theoretical domain is conducted to achieve this goal.

Employing a structured SLR developed based on the PRISMA protocol (Pickering and Byrne, 2014; Pickering et al., 2015) and using Scopus and WoS databases, the study identifies and analyzes 49 papers published between 2021 and 2022. Content analysis is used to classify and analyze the papers.

The SLR reveals four transformative practices (how) within the healthcare sector under the TSR domain, each linked to specific well-being outcomes (what). The analysis shows that both practices and outcomes are mainly patient-related. An integrative framework for transformative healthcare service is presented and critically examined to identify research gaps and define the trajectory for the future development of TSR in healthcare. In addition, managerial implications are provided to guide practitioners.

This research is among the first to analyze TSR literature in the context of healthcare. The study critically examines the TSR’s impact on the sector’s transformation, providing insights for future research and offering a roadmap for healthcare practitioners to facilitate uplifting changes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of transformational leadership behavior of salespersons on the level of customers' trust and customers' relationship commitment with the salespersons in the Sri Lankan corporate banking sector.

Based on the literature, it was hypothesized that idealized influence behavior and individualized considerate behavior of salespersons positively affect customers' trust and customers' relationship commitment. A survey was undertaken among 47 sales persons in the Sri Lankan corporate banking sector, and the regression analysis was performed to test hypotheses.

It was found that idealized influence behavior of salespersons positively influences customer trust, which, together with individualized consideration of salespersons, in turn influences customer commitment. It was also found that the joint effect of both customers' trust and individualized considerate behavior of the salesperson is greater than each alone on customers' relationship commitment.

The small sample and non‐probabilistic sampling procedure demand further corroboration of the findings. As the relationship marketing literature stresses the coexistence of both relationship and transactional marketing, future researchers may use the full‐range of leadership model.

This study shows how the two facets of transformational leadership behavior of salespersons implicate their customers' relationship marketing behavior, and thus points out how leadership development training can be adapted to improve relationship marketing skills of sales persons.

The present paper illustrates how transformational leadership provides a more appropriate knowledge domain for understanding relationship marketing dynamics at salesperson‐individual customer level.