Frontline service employees are integral to the successful implementation of firms’ customer relationship management strategies. Conventional methods typically utilize explicit incentive contracts to motivate employees to align with organizational objectives. Nevertheless, the effects of new organizational goals without specified rewards (NOG-WSR) on employees’ performance are not well documented in the literature. Leveraging a quasi-experimental design, this study analyzed the impact of a new organizational goal on employees’ responses, introduced by a large service firm that did not specify explicit incentives to its branches. Empirical findings from 48,464 individual–month observations reveal that NOG-WSR has a positive short-term effect on employees’ goal-related performance. More importantly, we identified employees who are more likely to respond to the NOG-WSR. This study extends the expectancy theory and reveals that NOG-WSR is effective in motivating employees who have a higher expectancy of being able to attain the new goal and a higher expectancy of reward tied to the new goal. Contributions and implications are discussed.

Loyalty programs remain a cornerstone in the relationships between customers and service providers. While most previous research focuses on comparing the effectiveness of loyalty programs by comparing the consumption behaviors of members and non-members, few papers have investigated whether new enrollees are profitable and how such enrollments affect non-members. Results across data from two different firms demonstrate that enrolling new members in a loyalty program can increase profits. However, additional studies provide evidence that increased new member enrollment is associated with decreased non-member spending, with new members seeking more discounts than other customers. We show that non-members may feel that member benefits are undeserved, thus decreasing their own spending. Adopting a service management approach, we argue that non-members should not be neglected as they also form an important asset class. Also, we find that experienced managers and greater clarity about loyalty program rules may mitigate some of the negative effects of higher enrollments. The results suggest that managers of loyalty programs may need to more actively assess the return on investment of established reward members, new enrollees, and even non-members.

This research investigates how consumers experience and deal with the constrained sociality of everyday places in their neighborhood (shops, parks, etc.) in times of crisis, using the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic as a revelatory context. Everyday neighborhood places outside the home or workplace do not only satisfy functional needs; they also serve people’s social life and enhance well-being. However, a gap exists in the literature about the impact of sudden consumer agency constraints on the felt sociality of such places, which hinders knowledge and advice on how service managers can effectively address consumer needs in such times. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with consumers and service providers in French and German urban environments, we find that the enacted restrictions changed how people related to the self, to others, and to the environment. Using ‘sense of place’ as a theoretical lens, we show that constrained sociality modifies the dialectical relationships between people and places: while consumers attributed new meaning to natural environments and re-valued the social resources of their neighborhood, the public restrictions made them increasingly concerned about their own agency. Since consumers thrive on everyday sociality, we discuss different ways service managers can enhance the experience of everyday places during public crises.

Recent research has shown that consumers tend to behave more unethically when encountering artificial intelligence (AI) agents than with human agents. Nevertheless, few studies have explored the differential impact of AI agents on unethical consumer behavior. From the perspective of the power relationship between AI and consumers, we classify the role of an AI agent as that of a “servant” or “partner.” Across one field study and four scenario-based experiments (offline and online), we reveal that consumers are more likely to engage in unethical behavior when encountering servant AI agents than partner AI agents due to increased anticipatory moral disengagement. We also identify the boundary conditions for the moral disengagement effect of AI agents, finding that this effect is attenuated (a) among consumers with high moral identity, (b) with human-like AI agents, and (c) in the context of high behavioral visibility. This research provides new insight into the AI morality literature and has practical implications for service agencies using AI agents.

Optimizing complex service partnerships requires an understanding of multilevel value co-creation processes in a customer-supplier ecosystem. Such strategic business-to-business relationships impact supplier costs and revenues, necessitating dedicated personnel across hierarchical levels to co-create value. The authors study the customer-supplier ecosystem intra-organizationally across firm levels to understand value expectations and orientations, and extra-organizationally to identify supplier harmonization strategies for managing multilevel value co-creation. Empirically, the authors conduct a multilevel-multisource qualitative case study within a strategic partnership, with a service contract valued at over $100 million per year, that includes senior- and frontline-level interviews in the key account customer organization (32 participants) and supplier organization (22 participants). The analysis focuses on how institutions, spanning contracts, and behavioral norms within the business-to-business customer-supplier ecosystem, govern actions and aspirations. Findings typify the nature of divergent value expectations between customer hierarchies along with level-specific co-creation orientations. As future prognosis hinges on harmonizing practices and institutions to address discrepancies in value visibility across customer levels, such an assessment also enables actionable strategies to enhance reengagement. The findings collectively offer theoretical implications for key account management (KAM) research, influencing areas such as professionalization of KAM, effectiveness in KAM, and network dynamics within KAM.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a significant part of digital transformation that signifies new requirements for middle managers in AI-integrated work contexts. This is particularly evident in financial service industries. Given the significance and rapidity of this technological transition, this case study investigated how middle managers perceived the impacts of AI system integration on their work characteristics. Interview data were gathered from 25 middle managers of a company providing financial services. The data were analyzed using the Gioia method. The findings showed that the AI systems applied in the case company were perceived as technical tools (mechanical AI) or coworkers (thinking AI and feeling AI), which had different impacts on middle managers’ work characteristics and the relationship between humans and AI systems. The middle managers’ work characteristics included contextual, task, competence, social, and relationship characteristics. Regarding the relationship characteristics, this study shows theoretically distinct human–AI relationship types. The findings are organized into a conceptual framework. AI system integration in service teams is a complex phenomenon that makes middle managers’ work more demanding and requires balancing and managing multiple challenges and dialectical tensions. The findings inform the selection and training of managers according to changing work characteristics in the digital age.

Solo consumption has become an emerging trend in recent years. However, the service experiences of solo customers with the growing adoption of frontline humanlike robots remain unclear, particularly in direct comparison with joint customers. Building on the literature of anthropomorphism and information processing theory, this study examines whether and how frontline anthropomorphized robots (FAR) might improve the service experiences of solo customers relative to their joint counterparts. Data from four studies, including field and online experiments, reveal that solo customers are more likely than joint customers to perceive FAR as offering rapport but also as being eerie, leading to different service evaluations (both attitudinal and behavioral outcomes). Nevertheless, as parallel mechanisms, these levels of social rapport and eeriness are contingent on features of the FAR, the service delivery process, and customers’ consumption goals. The rapport (eeriness) mechanism is strengthened (weakened) when the robot is of in-group favoritism, the service process deprives customers of control, and customers have a hedonic consumption goal. With the boom in adopting frontline humanlike robots in hospitality services, this study offers managerially relevant implications for serving solo customers as an emerging segment along with the traditional segment of joint customers.

Some retailers encourage consumers to mention the names of frontline service employees when writing online reviews. As a result, although most consumers do not pay attention to frontline service employees’ names during consumption, they often see them in online reviews. The effect of this asymmetry on review persuasiveness is still unknown. This research examines the impact of mentioning frontline service employee names in online reviews on readers’ likelihood of being persuaded by them. The results of one secondary data analysis and four online experiments from China demonstrate that readers are less persuaded by positive online reviews mentioning (vs. not mentioning) frontline service employee names, and perceived deception mediates this negative effect. In addition, the level of required service expertise, occurrence frequency, and review valence moderate this negative effect. For services that require a high level of expertise, when the occurrence frequency of positive reviews mentioning frontline service employee names is low, and when the reviews are negative, the aforementioned negative effect diminishes. Our study offers a new direction for name research and identifies a new factor that influences online review persuasiveness. Our findings provide valuable managerial insights into online review management strategies in the Chinese context.

Despite the popularity of gamification to improve the quality of experience in a variety of services, there is a lack of evidence on its effective integration into service design and the long-term impact of repeated gamified activities on customer experience. Using 10 studies, including behavioral data, survey, field, and laboratory experiments, this research investigates the effects of repeated gamified activities on customer experience quality and behavioral engagement. We examine the phenomenon through the lens of satiation theory, which explains the declining enjoyment for initially pleasurable activities. Supported by this theory, our results show evidence for a negative impact of gamified services that are highly repeated on experience quality and behavioral engagement. Further, we demonstrate strategies to compensate for such satiation by introducing mechanism and reward variety, a recovery period, and a sense of being near-to-winning. This research makes theoretical and managerial contributions by showing the potential backfire effects of gamification when gamified activities are repeated. Furthermore, this paper feeds the ongoing debate on standardization and personalization of service experiences. This paper demonstrates how high exposure to the same service experience can become counterproductive and increase risks of satiation.