Today, we identify service articles published in Marketing, Management, Operations, Productions, Information Systems, and Practitioner-Oriented Journals in the last months.
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Behrens, R., A.-K. Kupfer and T. Hennig-Thurau (2024): There is business like show business! What marketing scholars and managers can learn from 40 years of entertainment science research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, (4173), pp.1-21
For over four decades, scholars have developed the field of entertainment science, establishing a thorough understanding of the business behind filmed, recorded, written, and programmed media products and services, encompassing consumer behavior and strategic decision-making. Building on six foundational characteristics that jointly define entertainment offerings (i.e., their hedonic, narrative, cultural, creative, innovative, and digital nature), we synthesize key findings from entertainment science research. Since each of these characteristics can be found individually in various industries, this review offers substantial potential for learning beyond the entertainment world. Leveraging the entertainment industry’s pioneering role in major cross-industry trends, including virtual worlds and generative AI, we then provide best practices for adapting to these developments. We conclude by proposing a comprehensive agenda for future research on each of the foundational entertainment characteristics within the field of entertainment science and beyond.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01057-2 [Google]
Arkadan, F., E. K. Macdonald and H. N. Wilson (2024): Customer experience orientation: Conceptual model, propositions, and research directions, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 52(4174), pp.1560-1584
Many firms are adopting customer experience management as a route to differentiation, but experience management in practice has only begun to be explored. Using a strategic orientation lens and a theories-in-use approach, a multiple-case study reveals the presence of a “customer experience orientation” (CXO) exhibiting six values and related behavioral norms. Three of these values—journey motivation, continual experience optimization, and experience empowerment—shape experience-based organizational learning through the collection, dissemination, and actioning of experience insight. Substantially extending prior work, a further three values—journey organization, experience mandating, and experience-purpose alignment—institutionalize this learning. Contextual moderators of the impact of CXO on customer experience appraisal and hence firm performance are proposed. Ambivalent effects on performance via increased or decreased costs are also identified, which may counteract or amplify the positive effects of CXO via enhanced experience appraisal. CXO emerges as a distinct, learning-based philosophy for organizational effectiveness, albeit one that draws on ideas from service, human resource management, agile design, and marketing.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01031-y [Google]
Tran, H.-A., Y. Strizhakova, B. Nguyen and S. G. B. Johnson (2024): Expressions of customer rumination in online posts and firm responses, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, (4175), pp.1-29
When faced with service failures, customers tend to
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01061-6 [Google]
Liu, Y., X. Zhu, M. Zhang, J. Fu, C. Yan, Y. Wang and Y. Zhai (2024): Different roles, different strokes: Disseminating e‐WOM in industrial Internet platform through multi‐actor value co‐creation, Psychology & Marketing, (4176), pp.1
Prior research has primarily focused on electronic Word of Mouth (e‐WOM) in consumer markets, lacking in‐depth exploration of its dynamics within B2B contexts. Addressing this gap, our study investigates e‐WOM in B2B markets on industrial internet platforms. Specifically, we examine how digital platform capabilities can be leveraged to create positive e‐WOM through multi‐actor value co‐creation processes. Utilizing a case study approach, we analyze heterogeneous data from multiple sources to understand how digital platform capabilities—such as digital ecological capability, digital coordination capability, and digital innovation capability—promote multi‐actor value co‐creation (including intrapreneurship within the focal firm, support for complementary products or services, and users’ reciprocal participation), thereby disseminating positive e‐WOM in B2B markets. Our findings provide insights into e‐WOM in B2B markets and reveal the mechanisms of multi‐actor value co‐creation through which digital platform capabilities activate e‐WOM. This study enriches the theoretical framework of e‐WOM in B2B contexts and underscores the significance of digital transformation in enhancing interaction and collaboration among multiple actors on industrial internet platforms.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22128 [Google]
Sui, J., H. Shen and X. Zhou (2024): Impact of cultural tightness on consumers’ preference for anthropomorphic AI services, Psychology & Marketing, 41(4177), pp.2841-2853
The current research examines how cultural factors shape consumer preferences for anthropomorphic AI services. The authors investigate the impact of cultural tightness‐looseness, a measure of the strictness of social norms and the tolerance for nonconformity, on the acceptance of anthropomorphic AI services. Through analysis of more than 12,000 product reviews and four experiments, the findings indicate that cultural tightness reduces consumer preference for AI services with anthropomorphic characteristics. The results pinpoint social interaction anxiety as a mediator, whereby increased anxiety due to high cultural tightness subsequently lowers the preference for anthropomorphic AI services. Perceived human identity threat as an alternative explanation for this effect is ruled out. The results further show that the effect of cultural tightness is context‐dependent, affecting preferences in public settings but not private ones. This research bridges a critical gap in knowledge about consumer preferences for AI services, highlighting the significant impact of cultural factors. These findings are crucial for designing products, crafting marketing strategies, and shaping policies in a world increasingly influenced by AI.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22086 [Google]
Wang, P., L. Wu, L. Gao and A. S. Mattila (2024): The Servicescape and Its Impact on Consumer Satisfaction: A Meta‐Analysis, Psychology & Marketing, (4178), pp.1
ABSTRACT Despite abundant research demonstrating the impact of servicescape on consumer responses, there is a lack of understanding of how each servicescape dimension distinctly influences consumer satisfaction. To bridge this gap, we utilize the affordance theory to examine the unique impact of various servicescape dimensions on consumer satisfaction. We conducted a meta‐analysis to synthesize previous empirical findings and validate our theorization. We also examined how the service sector and consumer culture moderate the impact of servicescape dimensions on consumer satisfaction. Theoretically, this research extends the literature by introducing the affordance theory as a theoretical lens to explain the influence of various servicescape dimensions on consumer satisfaction. We argue that the consumer’s primary consumption goals, shaped by the service sector and consumer culture, drive consumer satisfaction for each servicescape dimension. This research offers valuable insights for practitioners to prioritize specific servicescape dimensions based on the industry sector and cultural context.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22152 [Google]
Amorim, P., N. DeHoratius, F. Eng-Larsson and S. Martins (2024): Customer Preferences for Delivery Service Attributes in Attended Home Delivery, Management Science, 70(4179), pp.7559-7578
Retailers face increasing competitive pressure to determine how best to deliver products purchased online to the end customer. Grocery retailers often require attended home delivery where the customer must be present to receive the delivery. For attended home delivery to function, the retailer and customer must agree on a delivery time slot that works for both parties. Using online data from a grocery retailer, we observe customer preferences for three delivery service attributes associated with each time slot: speed, precision, and timing. We define speed as the expected time between the placement of an order and its delivery, precision as the duration of the offered time slot, and timing as the availability of choices across times of the day and days of the week. We show that customers not only value speed as an attribute of delivery service but that precision and timing are also key drivers of the customer’s time slot selection process. We also observe substantial customer heterogeneity in the willingness of customers to pay for time slots. Customers that differ in their loyalty to the retailer, basket value, basket size, and basket composition exhibit distinct differences in their willingness to pay. We show that retailers with the capability to tailor their time slot offerings to specific customer segments have the potential to generate approximately 9% more shipping revenue than those who cannot. Our findings inform practitioners seeking to design competitive fulfillment strategies and academics modeling customer behavior in the attended home delivery context. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management. Funding: This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [PTDC/EME-SIS/31908/2017]. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.01274.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.01274 [Google]
Basu, A., S. Bhaskaran and R. Mukherjee (2024): Compatibility and Information Asymmetry in Online Matching Platforms, Management Science, 70(4180), pp.7730-7749
Firms seeking business partners and individuals seeking life partners face several challenges in addition to finding available candidates. One of these challenges is uncertainty about a candidate’s compatibility with the match-seeker on various subjective criteria. Another challenge is authentication of objective quality features, particularly in online settings where credentials can be easily misrepresented. Online matching platforms can address these challenges through counseling services that help assess mutual compatibility of match-seekers and authentication services to validate match-seekers’ credentials. Using a stylized model, we show that the platform’s decisions to offer counseling and authentication services are influenced by match-seeker behavior in response to factors such as the platform’s counseling capability, the composition of the matching market, and the interactions between the two services. This leads to optimal strategies for the platform that are not obvious and can even be counterintuitive. For instance, offering better counseling does not necessarily result in higher revenues for the platform. And it may be optimal for the platform to reduce its access fee when it decides to offer an authentication service. We also show that when the platform’s counseling capability is modest, an increase in this capability increases the value of authentication (i.e., counseling complements authentication); however, when the platform’s counseling capability is high, counseling and authentication become substitutes, because narrowing the search to only high-value candidates based on authentication can exclude some compatible candidates. Our analysis and results provide valuable insights for platform operators on the relative value of counseling and authentication, and for researchers studying matching platforms for vertically and horizontally differentiated markets. This paper was accepted by Hemant Bhargava, information systems. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.03807.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.03807 [Google]
Guo, L. (2024): The Voice of Customers in Customization, Management Science, 70(4181), pp.7579-7596
Recent years have seen a growth in customized products and services. As a prerequisite for customization, private information on individual customers’ quality preferences needs to be uncovered. Sellers can listen to customers about their stated or self-reported preferences through direct communication (e.g., conversation, survey). Alternatively, customer preferences can be inferred from their behavior when they are given the rights to self-design the quality. In this research we endogenize the viability of customization by investigating whether and when customers may reveal their stated/inferred preferences truthfully. We find that, for either preference-learning approach, customers would voice their preferences faithfully if and only if they are sufficiently heterogenous. Equilibrium preference revelation, and hence endogenous customization, tend to be sustained by intermediate seller bargaining power or nonextreme production/selling costs. We examine how the preference-learning approaches may differ in the endogenous feasibility of customization, equilibrium qualities, and the parties’ expected payoffs. We show that giving up the design right need not always be harmful for the seller, and gaining it can make the buyers worse off, especially when fixed costs of customization are considered. This paper was accepted by Eric Anderson, marketing. Funding: This work was supported by a DAG grant offered by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.04025 [Google]
Lim, J. M., H. Song and J. J. Yang (2024): The Spillover Effects of Capacity Pooling in Hospitals, Management Science, 70(4182), pp.7692-7711
Off-service placement is a common capacity-pooling strategy that hospitals utilize to address mismatches in supply and demand that arise from the day-to-day variation in patient demand. This strategy involves placing patients in a bed in a unit that is designated for another specialty service. Building on prior work that documents the negative first order effects of off-service placement on patients who are placed off service themselves, we quantify the spillover effects of this practice on patients who are actually placed on service. Using an estimation strategy that combines the Heckman correction procedure and a heteroskedasticity-based identification approach, we find that off-service placement has substantial negative spillover effects on the efficiency of care delivered to on-service patients. In particular, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in the level of off-service placement during a patient’s hospitalization is associated with a 10.9% increase in length of stay. Through a series of counterfactual analyses, we propose alternate routing and capacity-planning policies that could meaningfully improve the efficiency of care in the inpatient setting. This paper was accepted by Stefan Scholtes, healthcare management. Funding: This work was supported by Claude Marion Endowed Faculty Scholar Award; Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02202.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02202 [Google]
Acocella, A., C. Caplice and Y. Sheffi (2024): Great Expectations: The Moderating Effects of Supplier Service Model and Market Dynamics on Relational Contract Performance, Production & Operations Management, 33(4183), pp.2121-2138
Under a relational contract, the value placed on expected future business must outweigh the short-term temptations to deviate for the buyer–supplier relationship to persist. Operational and relational factors that influence this trade-off have been explored, however, there is a considerable lack of research on the moderating effects of supplier and market characteristics. We offer insights into how supplier service models and market dynamics impact suppliers’ decisions to renege on the relational contract. Limited access to transactional and contractual data has restricted previous exploration. We overcome this limitation with a detailed dataset in the for-hire truckload transportation sector. We find that a third-party brokerage service model is better able to overcome operational demand challenges and maintain service due to lower capacity constraints and pooling effects as compared to asset-based providers. Furthermore, when the overall market is capacity-constrained, long-term relationships become less of a deterrent for suppliers to reject business. In addition, during tightly constrained markets, suppliers respond with higher rejection rates to short-term demand surges but not to historical demand variability.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241277463 [Google]
Divey, S. J., M. H. Hekimoğlu and T. Ravichandran (2024): The Role of Real-Time Event Monitoring in Dynamic Response to Disruptions, Production & Operations Management, 33(4184), pp.2031-2050
This paper investigates a risk-averse firm’s investment strategy in real-time event-monitoring technologies coupled with dynamic disruption response decisions. The firm does not know how long the disruption will last, and the event-monitoring solutions provide the firm with a quicker update regarding the length of the disruption. When the firm receives an update, it has the flexibility to revise its initial response action. We model a two-stage stochastic program to study this problem where risk aversion is modeled in the form of a Service-at-Risk constraint. Our paper makes four important contributions. First, it characterizes the optimal recourse strategies given an update and identifies the conditions when the firm benefits from the recourse. Second, we characterize the optimal investment and initial response strategies where we find that the investment behavior is non-monotone. Third, our paper shows an interesting impact of risk aversion on the investment decision such that the firm may benefit from investing in event monitoring at moderate degrees of risk aversion, but not necessarily at low or high degrees of risk aversion. Fourth, we find that a firm’s benefit from event monitoring is more profound when the capacity of contingency response is moderately limited.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241264797 [Google]
Luy, J., G. Hiermann and M. Schiffer (2024): Strategic Workforce Planning in Crowdsourced Delivery With Hybrid Driver Fleets, Production & Operations Management, 33(4185), pp.2177-2200
Nowadays, logistics service providers (LSPs) increasingly consider using a crowdsourced workforce on the last mile to fulfill customers’ expectations regarding same-day or on-demand delivery at reduced costs. The crowdsourced workforce’s availability is, however, uncertain. Therefore, LSPs often hire additional fixed employees to perform deliveries when the availability of crowdsourced drivers is low. In this context, the reliability versus flexibility trade-off which LSPs face over a longer period, for example, a year, remains unstudied. Against this background, we jointly study a workforce planning problem that considers salaried drivers (SDs) and the temporal development of the crowdsourced driver (CD) fleet over a long-term time horizon. We consider two types of CDs, dedicated gig-drivers (DDs) and opportunistic gig-drivers (ODs). While DDs are not sensitive to the request’s destination and typically exhibit high availability, ODs only serve requests whose origin and destination coincide with their own private route’s origin and destination. Moreover, to account for time horizon-specific dynamics, we consider stochastic turnover for both SDs and CDs as well as stochastic CD fleet growth. We formulate the resulting workforce planning problem as a Markov decision process whose reward function reflects total costs, that is, wages and operational costs arising from serving demand with SDs and CDs, and solve it via approximate dynamic programming. Applying our approach to an environment based on real-world demand data from GrubHub, we find that in fleets consisting of SDs and CDs, approximate dynamic programming (ADP)-based hiring policies can outperform myopic hiring policies by up to 19 % and lookahead policies with perfect knowledge of future information by up to 10 % in total costs. In the studied setting, we observed that DDs reduce the LSP’s total costs more than ODs. When we account for CDs’ increased resignation probability when not being matched with enough requests, the amount of required SDs increases.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241268602 [Google]
Wu, C., C. Jin and Q. Liu (2024): Bundling Variety, Usage, or Both? A Multi-Service Analysis of Pay-Per-Use and Subscription Pricing, Production & Operations Management, 33(4186), pp.1979-1996
We depart from the classic bundling literature on single-unit purchases and develop a multi-unit demand model in which customers decide both the variety and volume of their purchased products. We integrate product bundling with two commonly used usage-based pricing schemes in the service industry, pay-per-use and subscriptions, and examine pricing tactics that span both variety and usage. Our model captures customers’ diminishing margins of consumption, and we demonstrate an intricate interplay between product variety and usage that enriches existing results on the dominance of pure bundling over component selling in the classic single-unit demand model. Specifically, with multi-unit demands, component selling can outperform pure bundling under pay-per-use, whereas the reversal is true under subscriptions. We also analyze mixed bundling (on either variety or usage) and nonlinear pricing, and demonstrate how to leverage these more advanced pricing schemes for better revenues. Our results provide novel insights into firms’ bundling strategies jointly on variety and usage. Collectively, they highlight the critical role of the customer demand model (single-unit vs. multi-unit) in driving monopoly firms’ strategic choice of product (un)bundling.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241265480 [Google]
Feng, Y., J. Meng and J. H. Cheah (2024): From Virtual Trainers to Companions? Examining How Digital Agency Types, Anthropomorphism, and Support Shape Para‐Social Relationships in Online Fitness, Psychology & Marketing, (4187), pp.1
ABSTRACT The role of virtual trainers in online fitness has increasingly captured the attention of consumers and brands as digital technology becomes more interwoven with daily life. This study extends the para‐social relationship theory by developing and testing a research model through five studies that simulate online fitness interactions. In Study 1, we examine the model and find that three characteristics (interactivity, authenticity, and companionship) positively influence consumers’ social perceptions (perceived warmth and competence), para‐social relationship building, and intentions to continue using the service. Our findings also reveal that the moderating roles of coach types (human vs. avatar vs. agent) in Study 2, anthropomorphic appearance levels (high vs. low) in Study 3, and the nature of support provided (emotional vs. technical) in Study 4 significantly affect users’ social perceptions and their intentions to continue using the service. Interestingly, compared to humans and avatars, using agent coaches requires greater authenticity to strengthen the para‐social relationship. When using low‐anthropomorphic digital agents and avatars, building para‐social relationships more effectively promotes consumers’ continued usage intentions. Additionally, the relationship between para‐social relationship building and continued usage intentions was stronger in the emotional support group than in the technical support group. In Study 5, we found that continued usage intention positively affects online fitness subscription behaviors. These findings have implications for integrating digital agencies to enhance consumer experience and engagement in health‐focused digital environments, especially for physical fitness service providers and platform course designers.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22154 [Google]
Zhou, M., X. Li and G. Burtch (2024): Healthcare Across Boundaries: Urban-Rural Differences in the Consequences of Telehealth Adoption, Information Systems Research, 35(4188), pp.1092-1113
We study the impacts of telehealth adoption on geographic competition among urban and rural healthcare providers. We consider a quasinatural experiment: states’ entry into the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, wherein the entry events facilitate healthcare providers to adopt telehealth technology. By analyzing a representative sample of providers, we first establish the Compact entry shock’s validity and its positive effect on the supply of medical services. We then report evidence that there are service and payment shifts from rural providers to urban providers (i.e., urban providers are more likely to benefit from the Compact entry financially). Relying on patients’ telehealth reimbursement claim data, we observe two mechanisms contributing to the revenue redistribution: the substitution and gateway effects of telehealth. Finally, we show that telehealth readiness and service quality moderate the impact of telehealth adoption. These findings speak to both potentially positive and negative consequences for welfare. We study the impacts of telehealth adoption on geographic competition among urban and rural healthcare providers. We consider a quasinatural experiment: states’ entry into the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, wherein the entry events facilitate healthcare providers to adopt telehealth technology. By analyzing a representative sample of providers, we first establish the Compact entry shock’s validity and its positive effect on the supply of medical services. We then report evidence that there are service and payment shifts from rural providers to urban providers (i.e., urban providers are more likely to benefit from the Compact entry financially). Relying on patients’ telehealth reimbursement claim data, we observe two mechanisms contributing to the revenue redistribution: the substitution and gateway effects of telehealth. Finally, we show that telehealth readiness and service quality moderate the impact of telehealth adoption. These findings speak to both potentially positive and negative consequences for welfare. History: Erik Zheng, Senior Editor; Idris Adjerid, Associate Editor. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.0380.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.0380 [Google]