This article contributes, in two ways, to our understanding of the nature, scope, and significance of conversations between strangers in service environments. First, a framework is introduced that provides both academics and practitioners with a summary of the key issues associated with the...

Explores observable oral participation (OOP) of customers at the front stage of the service delivery system within a retail store setting. Spoken interactions between a customer and a sales assistant are denoted as OOP1, and those between one customer and another as OOP2. The respective front...

Purpose: This paper aims to provide a personal view of the institutions underpinning the academic publishing service ecosystem as a basis for a discussion of change and innovation. Design/methodology/approach: A 25-year comparison of the norms, rules, practices, meanings and symbols in the...

Purpose – Proposes exploring the opportunities for reciprocal learning between the fields of crisis management and services marketing, and stimulating research on crises experienced by service organisations through the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach. Design/methodology/approach –...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore poor service encounters from the customer's perspective. Design/methodology/approach – Multiple autoethnographic accounts of overwhelmingly dreadful customer experiences at a department store were gathered and analyzed. The writers of the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a consumer‐centric perspective on experiences and interactions that is consistent with the foundational premises of the service‐dominant logic of marketing, and which incorporates an increased understanding of the value derived from...

Observable oral participation (OOP) of customers, in the service delivery system in general and in a store format retail setting in particular, occurs in many forms and frequencies. Focusses on customer‐to‐customer observable oral participation (OOP2), studied in relation to the more...

The first objective of the study was to identify and classify product‐related information that customers expect to receive in interpersonal encounters with employees in a given retail environment. The second objective of the study was to compare the “ability” of both service employees and...