Dr Mohamed Hassan (Temerak)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is radically transforming frontline service encounters, with AI increasingly playing the role of employee or customer. Programmed to speak or write like a human, AI is poised to usher in a frontline service revolution. No longer will frontline encounters between customer and employee be simply human-to-human; rather, researchers must consider an evolved paradigm where each actor could be either human or AI. Further complicating this 2 × 2 framework is whether the human, either customer or employee, recognizes when they are interacting with a non-human exchange partner. Accordingly, we develop an evolved service encounter framework and, in doing so, introduce the concept of counterfeit service, interspecific service (AI-to-human), interAI service (AI-to-AI), and offer a research agenda focused on the implementation of AI in dyadic service exchanges.

RESEARCH QUESTION 

The competitive landscape facing branded running events demands insights into how to increase brand loyalty amongst participants. This study examines how participants need to engage with branded running events to stimulate brand loyalty; and how the social environment (i.e. the presence of other unacquainted participants), encourages participants to engage more with the event brand.

RESEARCH METHODS 

Data, collected via personally administrated survey, from 246 participants of the closing event of ‘Cairo Runners' were analysed by means of Partial Least Squares Structural Equations Modelling.

RESULTS AND FINDINGS 

Self-brand identification is enhanced by cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagement with the event brand. To encourage Word-of-Mouth requires emotionally and socially engaged participants. As a social stimulus, perceived similarity with other unacquainted participants acts as a major driver of social, behavioural and cognitive engagement. Positive perception of other participants’ physical appearance stimulates cognitive and emotional engagement but hinders social engagement. Suitable behaviour of other participants encourages social engagement.

IMPLICATIONS 

Theoretically, this is the first study on participatory sport events including the full spectrum of participant engagement with an event brand; highlighting the unique role the different ways of engagement play in stimulating aspects of brand loyalty. The findings quantify the largely overlooked stimulus effect created by the sheer presence of unacquainted participants on participant engagement. We highlight the central role of perceived similarity amongst participants as a driver of participant engagement. Event organisers are encouraged to identify alternative criteria that resonate with participants to create a sense of similarity amongst participants.

The sharing economy (SE) has dramatically increased during the past decade. Today’s business demands have, in recent years, increased academic researchers’ interest, and a number of business models have been developed for SE platforms. This research focuses on the hybrid business model and SE, aiming to reach a clearer definition of the SE and the hybrid business model while considering the definitions of business model innovations. This research provides a systematic review of 126 articles published between 2010 and 2020 in order to clarify the intersections between the hybrid business model and SE platforms. It investigates the research methodologies, theories and findings of the reviewed studies. Additionally, it identifies directions for future studies in the reviewed articles. Accordingly, this research’s recent findings provide an essential outcome related to the sustainability of the hybrid business model and SE platforms and the extent to which the SE is important for the sustainability of the hybrid business model. This research also explains the recommendations for the directions of future studies.

The paper examines the influence of age and similarity in appearance to other customers on one's attitude to a resort, patronage and interactive intentions. In-depth interviews were conducted with ten resort guests, followed by a factorial between-subjects experiment on 189 young females using written scenarios along with sketches. The data were analysed from a dual-perspective depending on the subjects' preferences for either a burkini or a bikini by means of MANCOVA. The patronage and interactive intentions to other customers among those who preferred bikini swimsuits were found to be influenced by similarity in appearance only when unknown customers were young. The attitude to the resort and patronage intentions among customers who preferred burkini swimsuits were found to be unaffected by differences in appearance. Burkini-wearing females considered similarity in appearance as most important, followed by the age of unknown customers when they formed their interactive intentions toward others.

It examines the effectiveness of goal attainment (i.e. a value enhancement strategy) and switching costs (i.e. a defensive retention strategy) in enhancing customers’ staying intentions, where the service type is a key boundary condition. The data was collected using a survey design and analyzed using a multi-group SEM approach. Goal attainment played a stronger role in influencing staying intentions in services with passive customer participation and a low degree of customization (i.e. retail banking) than in services with active customer participation and a high degree of customization (i.e. stock brokerage). Different switching costs varied in importance across the two service industries

Today's communication landscape affords multiple service interfaces to promote customer engagement (i.e. adherence) with complex and prolonged services, but an understanding of how customers use them is limited. This study compares personal and non-personal interfaces that provide educational and/or emotional support for customers to develop the operant resources (i.e. competence and motivation) necessary for adherence. A survey of 270 subscribers to a weight-loss programme demonstrates that booklets and a website (non-personal interfaces) provide educational support that enhances role clarity and ability to adhere, respectively. For novices, it is customer forums (personal interface) that afford the educational support needed to develop ability. Group meetings (personal interface) provide emotional support that boosts customer motivation to adhere and, in turn, encourages them to help other customers. Our study distinguishes types of support for adherence, accessed via multiple service interfaces, has implications for management and highlights needs for future research into complex and prolonged services.

It is widely accepted that customers derive value through resource integration, by integrating their own resources with those provided by organization and other network actors. This perspective implies that customers must acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to be effective resource integrators as they engage in activities that facilitate or create value. Supporting customer learning, then, is a pressing new challenge for firms that recognize customers engage in resource integration in the course of their value-creating processes. This article builds on an interactive model of self-directed learning to develop a model of customer learning for resource integration that identifies the characteristics of learning contexts, interactive elements of the learning process and links learning to customers' effectiveness in resource integration activities. A future research agenda is set out, organized around the elements of our conceptualization that can generate much required managerial insights into the interactive process-based nature of customer learning and customers' effectiveness as resource integrators. For practitioners who recognize the resource integration roles customers play, the authors raise a set of questions that will assist in developing marketing programs that support customer learning.

Since observing customers outnumber focal customers in most service interactions, service managers aim to engage them despite triggers, such as service incivility. This research contributes to the understanding of the role of stress in observing customers’ engagement (CE). It answers two RQs: 1) What is the relationship between their stress and engagement?; 2) What are the triggers of stress?. Since ethnically different people pay different levels of attention to contextual and social factors, two sequential scenario-based experiments are adopted to study two triggers of stress (i.e., availability of information about an incivility incident, and ethnic similarity between the observing customer and the mistreated employee), which impacts CE in an intercultural service encounter. Study 1 compares being exposed to full vs partial information and demonstrates that full information about the incivility incident increases observers’ psychological stress, which reduces their behavioural and emotional engagement. Study 2 compares how white and black observers react to ethnic similarity between the observing customer and the mistreated employee. Results show that incivility triggers outward psychological stress in white and black observers. In turn, black observers’ outward stress reduces their behavioural engagement, while white observers’ behavioural engagement is reduced by both their inward and outward stress.

This paper contributes to the literature by examining xenophobia among tourism employees and its relationship with service sabotage, which was not previously explored. Two studies are conducted. A survey study is conducted with 194 frontline employees working in tourism, and 297 tourists participated in an experimental study. Based on the findings, xenophobia mediates the relationship between employee community attachment and service sabotage, with employees' moral identity and emotional regulation influencing this relationship. Furthermore, tourists' desire for revenge when experiencing service sabotage is both directly and indirectly affected by the attributions of cultural differences and discrimination. Notably, if tourists attribute the sabotage to xenophobia, this will not increase the desire for revenge. This research advances the understanding of the complex dynamics among employee xenophobia, service sabotage, and customer revenge in tourism.

An ambidextrous approach to selling, in which salespeople are concurrently responsible for both selling to and servicing the customer, has become a norm in today’s selling organisations. To date, the literature points to a ‘the more, the better’ mentality when it comes to servicing part of sales–service ambidexterity. However, little is known about the value of servicing across sales jobs with varying demands for selling effort. To address this gap, the authors first propose a more generalisable sales job typology that is based on the amount of effort salespeople are required to invest in selling, i.e. sales provision effort (SPe). Second, in two subsequent studies, they show that the value of servicing depends on the type of sales job performed. Interestingly, servicing is less valued among customers in sales encounters with low levels of SPe, while salespeople in such jobs find high demands for servicing to be a welcoming challenge. For managers, this implies the need to find a balance between challenging their salespeople and ensuring effective direction of sales resources towards improvement of customer satisfaction and loyalty.