Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product.

Service organizations are increasingly managing customer experiences to promote differentiation and customer loyalty. This article examines the design of experience-centric services, particularly t...

Service Design for Experience-Centric Services

This article advances our understanding of the influence of affect in consumers’ responses to brief, nonpersonal service encounters. This study contributes to the services marketing literature by examining for mundane service transactions the impact of customer-displayed emotion and affect on assessments of the service encounter and the overall experience. Observational and perceptual data from customers were matched with frontline employees in 200 transaction-specific encounters. The results of this study suggest that consumers’ evaluations of the service encounter correlate highly with their displayed emotions during the interaction and postencounter mood states. Finally, the findings indicate that frontline employees’perceptions of the encounter are not aligned with those of their customers. The managerial implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

The Role of Emotions in Service Encounters

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to put forth an expanded servicescape framework that shows that a perceived servicescape comprises physical, social, socially symbolic, and natural environmental dimensions.Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper offers an in‐depth literature review on servicescape topics from a variety of disciplines, both inside and outside marketing, to advance a logical framework built on Bitner's seminal article (1992).Findings – A servicescape comprises not only objective, measureable, and managerially controllable stimuli but also subjective, immeasurable, and often managerially uncontrollable social, symbolic, and natural stimuli, which all influence customer approach/avoidance decisions and social interaction behaviors. Furthermore, customer responses to social, symbolic, and natural stimuli are often the drivers of profound person‐place attachments.Research limitations/implications – The framework supports a servicescape paradigm that links marketing, environmen...

An expanded servicescape perspective

Reducing perceived health risk to attract hotel customers in the COVID-19 pandemic era: Focused on technology innovation for social distancing and cleanliness

In recent years service researchers have increasingly given attention to the multitude of relationships that may occur in the production, delivery and consumption of services. An important driver of this tendency has been the rise of the relationship marketing paradigm. This paradigm has equipped marketing management with a theoretical foundation for going beyond the customer-supplier dyad and incorporating other relationships. The customer-to-customer relationship is one such relationship. Although it can occur in a number of different contexts, this paper concentrates on direct interactions between customers taking place in physical service settings, that is, customer-to-customer interaction (CCI). The paper seeks to answer two questions:
1 What have been the main accomplishments of CCI research?
2 What directions might be fruitful for advancing our understanding of CCI and its management?

New directions for customer‐to‐customer interaction research

Interactions between service customers are increasingly the focus of service management research The customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) literature has, however, focused overwhelmingly on same-culture interactions CCI has seldom been researched in a cross-cultural context This is a serious deficiency given the increasingly cross-cultural nature of consumption in services such as the hospitality industry As interactions between customers from different cultures are a potentially significant influence on customer satisfaction, it is important that hospitality industry managers are aware both of the forms these interactions may take and of the possibilities for managing them This paper: draws attention to the increasing incidence of cross-cultural CCI (CC-CCI); outlines some CCI-related managerial challenges; identifies some pertinent research directions; and proposes methods for conducting such research

Customer‐to‐customer interaction (CCI): a cross‐cultural perspective

Purpose – This study aims to explore the relevance of customer age-differences (CAD) in the context of customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) within various service domains. It provides a thematic framework for understanding customer age-difference related CCI and critically identifies new directions for research into CAD-related CCI.

Design/methodology/approach – Using a narrative literature review approach, different perspectives in the literature on age-differences and CCI are analysed towards highlighting and emphasising valuable new themes.

Findings – Three coherent domains: the desire for social contact; fellow customer behaviour; and social identity issues are identified to interconnect a fragmented diversity of literature. Many themes for future research directions in the study of CAD-related CCI are identified. 

Research limitations – Whilst a wide selection of literature sources is critically reviewed the fragmented nature of the literature on age-differences and CCI prevents the review covering all publications.

Practical implications – The paper provides service marketing managers and scholars with strategic CCI insights into better serving a diverse age-range of customers. These insights will undoubtedly stimulate timely investigation of new avenues to enhance service customer compatibility and satisfaction in increasingly age-diverse societies.

Originality/value – This paper provides the first overview of a wide range of strategic considerations aimed at explaining the impact of customer age-differences on CCI in service environments. Essentially, the paper elaborates opportunities and challenges in CAD-related CCI as critical themes for further investigations.

Other customer age: exploring customer age-difference related CCI

Interactions between Service Customers : Managing On-Site, Customer-to-Customer, Interactions for Service Advantage

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the capacity of frontline employees (FLEs) to provide insights into customer-to-customer
interaction (CCI) and its management in service organisations.

Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study used focus groups and semi-structured in-depth interviews with FLEs to investigate their
experiences and reflections in dealing with CCI in a complex service setting in the UK.

Findings – FLEs are able to recall CCI encounters, both positive (PCCI) and negative (NCCI), with ease. They are capable of conceptualising and
exploring complex nuances surrounding CCI encounters. FLEs can distinguish levels of seriousness of negative CCI and variations in customer
sensitivity to CCI. FLEs vary in their comfort in intervening in negative CCI situations. Whilst FLEs draw on skills imparted in an employee-customer
interaction context, they would benefit from CCI-specific training. Propositions are advanced for further empirical testing.

Research limitations/implications – The authors studied FLE views on CCI in a customer-centric service organisation in the UK. Future research
should further address the FLE perspective on CCI in less service-driven organisations and in other countries. A wide range of themes for further
research are proposed.

Practical implications – The insights presented will assist service managers to assess the CCI context of their own organisation and develop
strategies and guidelines to support FLEs in detecting, understanding and responding to CCI encounters.
Social implications – The paper highlights and discusses the complexity of intervening in negative CCI encounters in socially inclusive service
environments.

Originality/value – Based on FLE-derived perceptions of CCI, the paper contributes conceptually to CCI knowledge by identifying the existence of
“concealed CCI”, distinguishing between gradual and sudden CCI intervention contexts and exploring the human resource development
consequences of this distinction, with original implications for service management. The study also contributes to extending the scope of research
into triadic service interactions.

/pdf/managing-customer-to-customer-interaction-cci-insights-from-2uzfebw3nj.pdf

Richard Nicholls

Papers

New directions for customer‐to‐customer interaction research

Customer‐to‐customer interaction (CCI): a cross‐cultural perspective

Other customer age: exploring customer age-difference related CCI

Interactions between Service Customers : Managing On-Site, Customer-to-Customer, Interactions for Service Advantage

Managing customer-to-customer interaction(CCI) – insights from the frontline