Journal of Service Theory and Practice最新文献

Purpose

Despite the increasing attention given to product-service integration (PSI), little is known about this innovation strategy from a key decision-maker’s perspective. To address this gap, our study draws from personality psychology and decision-making (DM) logics theory to better understand why and how companies’ decision-makers strategize for PSI.

Design/methodology/approach

Using an abductive, empirics-first approach, we identify the study’s theoretical building blocks, followed by an exploratory quantitative analysis to generate new theory. We propose a fit-as-mediation conceptual framework suggesting that (1) specific personality traits [i.e. honesty-humility (H), emotionality (E), extraversion (X), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C) and openness to experience (O) (HEXACO)] make decision-makers more likely to include PSI in their company’s strategy and (2) depending on their personality, they apply different DM logics (i.e. causation or effectuation) to do so. To empirically examine this, we use data from 289 SMEs’ decision-makers.

Findings

We report several meaningful relationships among our key theoretical constructs. For instance, we find that conscientious decision-makers are more likely to develop a PSI strategy via causation, whereas extravert decision-makers are more likely to do so via both causation and effectuation.

Originality/value

This service study is the first to apply the well-established HEXACO Personality Inventory to companies’ key decision-makers. Moreover, it contributes to the microfoundations of PSI strategy and DM logic theories.

Purpose

The importance of service firms cooperating with digital platforms is widely acknowledged. The authors study three contractual relationships (fixed-cost, cost-sharing, and profit-sharing) between service firms (specifically hotels) and digital platforms in a highly fragmented service supply chain to examine which of these contract types optimizes profits.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors extend prior models analyzing the optimal expected total profit from the travel service firm (hotel)–digital platform relationship, providing new insights into each contract type’s ability to coordinate decentralized systems and optimize profits for both parties.

Findings

This study finds that fixed cost contracts cannot coordinate the decentralized system. Cost-sharing contracts can coordinate the decentralized system but only allow one channel profit split. In contrast, profit-sharing contracts may not always perfectly coordinate the decentralized system but support alternative profit allocations. Practically, both profit-sharing and cost-sharing contracts are preferable to fixed-cost contracts.

Practical implications

The paper includes implications for travel service firm managers to consider when structuring contracts with digital platforms to focus on profit optimization. Profit-sharing contracts are most preferable when cost and revenue data are fully shared between parties, while cost-sharing contracts are preferable over fixed-cost contracts.

Originality/value

This study extends prior investigations into the utility of different contract types on the optimal profit of a travel service firm (hotel)-digital platform provider relationship. The research fills a gap in the literature concerning the contracts used in these relationship types.

Purpose

Given resource constraints such as time and staffing, hotels cannot respond to all negative online reviews (NORs). Therefore, this study investigates (1) what types of NORs hotels should prioritize responding; and (2) what response strategies are more effective in handling different types of NORs to minimize the negative ramifications.

Design/methodology/approach

Four experiments in the context of hospitability were used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Our findings show that NORs with implicit conclusions (e.g. “I do not believe that is a good choice, you know what I mean.”) are more dissuasive than NORs with explicit ones (e.g. “Do not buy it.”) because the former NORs are perceived as more objective than the latter NORs. More importantly, our results show that firms do not need to respond to explicit NORs. When responding to implicit NORs, firms should prioritize those related to service failures caused by external (e.g. weather, technological misfunction) rather than internal (e.g. poor management, employee skills) factors.

Research limitations/implications

Our studies focus on the language styles of Chinese NORs, and future research should investigate how language styles influence dissuasion in other languages.

Practical implications

Our results show that NORs with implicit conclusions negatively impact consumer attitude and thus hurt performance more significantly than those with explicit conclusions. Therefore, firms should allocate limited staffing and resources to NORs with implicit conclusions. When responding to implicit NORs, firms should select NORs that can be attributed to external factors.

Originality/value

Our findings shed light on the importance of the language styles of NORs and provide marketers with insights into how to handle NORs. Our results reveal that consumers perceive higher objectivity of NORs when these reviews are implicit than when they are explicit. Furthermore, this study contributes to the online review literature by suggesting that firms should tailor their response strategies for NORs based on the reviewers’ language styles.

Purpose

Customer transformation is currently overlooked in service research. This article aims to conceptualize customer transformation and develop a research agenda to encourage more exploration in this area.

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual article builds on the literature on transformation and related topics in psychology, sociology, education and anthropology.

Findings

The presented definition of customer transformation distinguishes itself from other related concepts such as minor change. The research agenda, structured around five themes, reveals four distinctive attributes of customer transformation that warrant academic investigation. These include the inability of businesses to guarantee transformations, the potential tension between transformational aspirations and immediate needs and well-being, the imperative of cultivating long-term engagement and the likelihood of encountering customer resistance. This highlights the criticality of embracing a customer-centric approach in transformational services.

Research limitations/implications

Given the vastness of the topic, the literature review is limited and the research agenda could be widened. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of the subject introduces the possibility that the conceptual framework and research agenda may become outdated. Lastly, the universal applicability of the findings and the proposed conceptual framework are uncertain, necessitating potential validation across diverse contexts. The practical implications may also fall short of addressing the specific challenges encountered by different industries or businesses.

Practical implications

The article provides insights on customer transformation and strategies for businesses to support ongoing transformations, emphasizing personalized engagement and co-creating value to meet evolving customer aspirations.

Social implications

The need for development and growth is more pressing and decisive than ever. This need is often not well understood and, as a result, is not addressed by either scholars or companies. This paper helps address that social need.

Originality/value

The research enriches the service literature by paving the way for a crucial subfield in service research. Additionally, it establishes a shared understanding of customer transformation by highlighting its distinct characteristics and analyzing their implications for service management, proposing a conceptual framework and research agenda.

Purpose

As a smart service, location-based advertising (LBA) integrates advanced technologies to deliver personalized messages based on a user’s real-time geographic location and needs. However, research has shown that privacy concerns threaten the diffusion of LBA. This research investigates how privacy-related factors (i.e. LBA type, privacy self-efficacy (PSE) and consumer generation) impact consumers’ value-in-use and their intention to use LBA.

Design/methodology/approach

This study developed and examined an LBA value-in-use framework that integrates the role of LBA type, consumers’ PSE and consumer generation into the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data were collected through two experiments in the field with a total of 374 consumers. The proposed relationships were tested using PROCESS modeling.

Findings

The results reveal that pull (vs push) LBA causes higher value-in-use in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, leading to greater usage intention. Further, the differences in the mediated relationship between pull- and push-LBA are larger among consumers of low PSE (vs high PSE) and Generation Z (vs other generations). The findings suggest that the consumer value-in-use brought about by LBA diminishes when using push-LBA for low PSE and Generation Z consumers.

Originality/value

This research is the first to integrate the privacy-related interactions of LBA type and consumer characteristics into TAM to develop a TAM-based LBA value-in-use framework. This study contributes to the literature on service value-in-use, smart services and LBA by clarifying the boundary conditions that determine the effectiveness of LBA in enhancing consumers’ value-in-use.

Purpose

The aim of this research is to provide insight into how organizations can co-create value with family members engaged in service journeys of customers experiencing vulnerabilities, thereby paying attention to their organizational practices (i.e. recursive or routinized patterns of organizational actions and behaviors).

Design/methodology/approach

To investigate, this research relies upon a multiple case study in a group of nursing homes in Flanders that had the ambition to engage family members in service journeys of their loved ones while measuring their value perceptions as a performance indicator (here, satisfaction with nursing home services).

Findings

The case evidence shows that nursing homes co-create value with family members through caring practices that focus on their role as secondary customers (i.e. welcoming, connecting and embedding) and empowering practices that focus on their role as partial employees (i.e. teaming up, informing and listening practices). However, the way in which the different caring and empowering practices are enacted by the nursing home and its staff affects their value co-creation potential.

Originality/value

By focusing on the practices with which organizations can co-create value with family members engaged in service journeys of their loved ones, this research bridges the service literature with its attention for value co-creation practices and the literature on customers experiencing vulnerabilities with its focus on extended customer entities.

Purpose

This study examines whether engagement with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-focused specialized training programs enable senior public officials (focal actor) to collectively deliver on public services that have a transformational societal impact over time. Further, the study explores the factors that impede and facilitate the delivery of such services. The authors do so by using service mechanics theorization and drawing on the lens of actor and collective engagement.

Design/methodology/approach

This study undertakes a longitudinal exploratory qualitative study design. SDG-focused training programs were delivered, as interventions, for two cohorts of senior public officials from Bangladesh in an Australian University in 2017 and 2019. In-depth interviews were conducted upon the training's completion and then after 8- and 12-month intervals to assess the short- and long-term impact respectively.

Findings

An empirical framework is proposed from the study findings. It shows that engagement – cognitive, emotional and behavioral – with SDG-focused specialized training programs enables focal actors (i.e. senior public officials) to engage other actors (other public officials, community members) in networks, facilitated the delivery of SDG-aligned public services. Such engagement results in a transformative impact that spans micro (individual), meso (organizational) and macro (societal) levels over time. Factors that impede and facilitate SDG-aligned delivery of public services are also identified.

Research limitations/implications

Theoretically, the authors contribute to the literature that relates to actor and collective engagement, SDG-focused capacity-building training programs and service mechanics. Practically, this study informs organizations about the ways that they can effectively engage their senior employees with capacity-building training programs that focus on sustainability.

Originality/value

This study is one of the few that connects the interface between public service delivery for enacting societal changes and SDG-focused capacity-building training programs through service mechanics theorization and using the lens of actor and collective engagement.

Purpose

The authors' research examines how negative electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) alters focal customers' post-recovery justice perceptions and attitudes to determine their future behavior with the service provider. Specifically, this paper develops and tests a conceptual model to investigate how negative e-WOM alters focal customers' perceptual and attitudinal outcomes after the service recovery experience. It also examines the post-recovery effect of negative e-WOM on focal customers’ willingness to patronize the service after their recovery experience.

Design/methodology/approach

To test the hypotheses, two pretests and two experimental studies with created scenarios in the retail context were conducted.

Findings

The authors' findings reveal that services are judged during and well beyond failure and recovery occurrences. To maintain a loyal customer base, service managers should develop processes that address service complaints both within and beyond the service consumption stage. The authors also find that despite a favorable recovery, focal customers gravitate toward the failure experience and develop unfavorable attitudes toward the service provider, leading to likely defections.

Originality/value

The authors' research demonstrates the persuasive power of negative e-WOM at the post-service recovery stage, making a unique contribution to the service recovery literature. This research also contributes to the persuasive effect of negative e-WOM, demonstrating message context as a boundary condition of negative e-WOM effects. In general, the authors' work highlights the importance of understanding the psychological processes involved in eliciting the persuasive influence of negative e-WOM in the post-service recovery stage that may lead to the defection of “so-called” successfully recovered customers.

Purpose

Service failures usually occur in front of third-party customers. Third-party customers react emotionally and behaviorally to service failure and recovery efforts aimed at focal customers. However, there is a gap in the literature on how third-party customers react to a service failures incident and a recovery over another customer, depending on how socially close or distant they are from. This study investigates the effect of third-party customers' emotions on consumer forgiveness, negative word-of-mouth (WoM) and repatronage intentions in the service recovery process by comparing close and distant third-party customers.

Design/methodology/approach

This study utilizes a 2 (social distance to the focal customer: close, distant) × 2 (service recovery: yes, no) between-subjects design. The authors used a scenario-based experiment to test the proposed hypotheses. A total of 576 respondents were involved in the study.

Findings

The results from the authors' scenario-based experimental study show that positive and negative emotions felt by distant third-party customers are higher than those of close third-party customers. In addition, the effect of positive emotions on customer forgiveness is more substantial for distant third-party customers. Third, moderated-mediation analysis indicates that social distance has a moderator effect only on the relationship between positive emotions and customer forgiveness.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the service literature by comparing socially close and socially distant third-party customers' reactions to service failure and recovery attempts.