Purpose – Technological advances and new business models have contributed to the usage of self-service technology (SST) by firms. As SST continues to create organizational efficiencies, firms have jumped on the bandwagon without considering their own readiness to use SST. To date, there has...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify service design strategies to improve outcome-oriented services by enhancing consumers’ emotional experience, while overcoming customer variability. Design/methodology/approach An abductive, multiple-case study involves 12 service firms from...

The Internet is causing fundamental changes in the economics of service industries as new, network‐based global e‐business models emerge, where small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) have been identified as key users of Internet commerce. Initially the paper contextualises the...

The social interaction between customers and individual employees can be critical for business success. Similarly, factors such as customer convenience and value for money are important to repeat purchase. Frontline employees often face the dilemma of how much social interaction is appropriate....

The debate over how services should be advertised and communicated has raged on for decades. Much of the early work on services emphasized the use of tangible cues and was primarily issue and/or profession specific. There are no real communication guidelines that encompass all service marketers....

This paper presents a two‐dimensional model of service process that is linked to customer encounter satisfaction and is modified by a customer’s perceptual filters, including brand image and customer mood. The first dimension is comprised of fixed (structural) descriptors, while the second...

Purpose – This study aims to develop and test a comprehensive model that begins with management commitment/concern and progresses through intermediate links of service climate and in‐role frontline employee (FLE) performance to customer satisfaction and eventually to sales performance....

Explores the set of service firms actually considered by consumers for a purchase (the evoked set), the ratio of the evoked set to the total number of service providers, the number of evaluative criteria used to evaluate services, and the perceptions of risk associated with the purchase of...

Examines the relative importance of service recovery in determining overall satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Recommendations include suggestions for implementing a service recovery program and for encouraging dissatisfied customers to complain.

Demonstrates a method for examining service failures and recovery strategies in service industries and provides a typology of service failures and recoveries in the restaurant industry. Based on 373 critical incidents collected from restaurant customers, uses the critical incident technique...