Digitization, artificial intelligence, and service robots carry serious ethical, privacy, and fairness risks. Using the lens of corporate digital responsibility (CDR), we examine these risks and ...their mitigation in service firms and make five contributions. First, we show that CDR is critical in service contexts because of the vast streams of customer data involved and digital service technology’s omnipresence, opacity, and complexity. Second, we synthesize the ethics, privacy, and fairness literature using the CDR data and technology life-cycle perspective to understand better the nature of these risks in a service context. Third, to provide insights on the origins of these risks, we examine the digital service ecosystem and the related flows of money, service, data, insights, and technologies. Fourth, we deduct that the underlying causes of CDR issues are trade-offs between good CDR practices and organizational objectives (e.g., profit opportunities versus CDR risks) and introduce the CDR calculus to capture this. We also conclude that regulation will need to step in when a firm’s CDR calculus becomes so negative that good CDR is unlikely. Finally, we advance a set of strategies, tools, and practices service firms can use to manage these trade-offs and build a strong CDR culture.
Graphical Abstract
Brave new world: service robots in the frontline Wirtz, Jochen; Patterson, Paul G; Kunz, Werner H ...
International journal of service industry management,
11/2018, Volume:
29, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Purpose
The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the ...eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature.
Findings
The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.
Practical implications
This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots.
Originality/value
This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.
Luxury services Wirtz, Jochen; Holmqvist, Jonas; Fritze, Martin P
International journal of service industry management,
06/2020, Volume:
31, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
PurposeThe market for luxury is growing rapidly. While there is a significant body of literature on luxury goods, academic research has largely ignored luxury services. The purpose of this article is ...to open luxury services as a new field of investigation by developing the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings to build the luxury services literature and show how luxury services differ from both luxury goods and from ordinary (i.e. non-luxury) services.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a conceptual approach drawing upon and synthesizing the luxury goods and services marketing literature.FindingsThis article makes three contributions. First, it shows that services are largely missing from the luxury literature, just as the field of luxury is mostly missing from the service literature. Second, it contrasts the key characteristics of services and related consumer behaviors with luxury goods. The service characteristics examined are non-ownership, IHIP (i.e. intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, and perishability), the three additional Ps of services marketing (i.e. people, processes, and physical facilities) and the three-stage service consumption model. This article derives implications these characteristics have on luxury. For example, non-ownership increases the importance of psychological ownership, reduces the importance of conspicuous consumption and the risk of counterfeiting. Third, this article defines luxury services as extraordinary hedonic experiences that are exclusive whereby exclusivity can be monetary, social and hedonic in nature, and luxuriousness is jointly determined by objective service features and subjective customer perceptions. Together, these characteristics place a service on a continuum ranging from everyday luxury to elite luxury.Practical implicationsThis article provides suggestions on how firms can enhance psychological ownership of luxury services, manage conspicuous consumption, and use more effectively luxury services' additional types of exclusivity (i.e. social and hedonic exclusivity).Originality/valueThis is the first paper to define luxury services and their characteristics, to apply and link frameworks from the service literature to luxury, and to derive consumer insights from these for research and practice.
Platforms in the peer-to-peer sharing economy Wirtz, Jochen; So, Kevin Kam Fung; Mody, Makarand Amrish ...
International journal of service industry management,
10/2019, Volume:
30, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine peer-to-peer sharing platform business models, their sources of competitive advantage, and the roles, motivations and behaviors of key actors in their ...ecosystems.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, tourism and hospitality, and strategy literature.
Findings
First, this paper defines key types of platform business models in the sharing economy anddescribes their characteristics. In particular, the authors propose the differentiation between sharing platforms of capacity-constrained vs capacity-unconstrained assets and advance five core properties of the former. Second, the authors contrast platform business models with their pipeline business model counterparts to understand the fundamental differences between them. One important conclusion is that platforms cater to vastly more heterogeneous assets and consumer needs and, therefore, require liquidity and analytics for high-quality matching. Third, the authors examine the competitive position of platforms and conclude that their widely taken “winner takes it all” assumption is not valid. Primary network effects are less important once a critical level of liquidity has been reached and may even turn negative if increased listings raise friction in the form of search costs. Once a critical level of liquidity has been reached, a platform’s competitive position depends on stakeholder trust and service provider and user loyalty. Fourth, the authors integrate and synthesize the literature on key platform stakeholders of platform businesses (i.e. users, service providers, and regulators) and their roles and motivations. Finally, directions for further research are advanced.
Practical implications
This paper helps platform owners, service providers and users understand better the implications of sharing platform business models and how to position themselves in such ecosystems.
Originality/value
This paper integrates the extant literature on sharing platforms, takes a novel approach in delineating their key properties and dimensions, and provides insights into the evolving and dynamic forms of sharing platforms including converging business models.
When customers express anger, do they gain greater returns, as suggested by the proverb “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”? If so, does the intensity of the squeak matter? In four studies, we ...explore employee compensation responses to customers who express relatively high- versus low-intensity anger in service-failure settings. The studies demonstrate that the cultural value of power distance (PD) moderates the relationship between emotional intensity and customer compensation: High-PD service employees offer less compensation to customers expressing higher intensity anger, and low-PD service employees offer more to customers expressing higher intensity anger. For high-PD service employees, this relationship between emotional intensity and compensation is mediated by the perceived appropriateness of the anger expression; for low-PD employees, it is mediated by perceived threat. However, when perceptions of threat are mitigated, low-PD service employees offer higher compensation to lower intensity anger, and this effect is mediated by perceptions of appropriateness. This research is the first to examine the effect of anger intensity in service-failure settings. For managers, the findings illuminate the importance of adopting a cultural lens when designing emotion management training programs and when setting practices for compensating angry customers.
Cost-effective service excellence Wirtz, Jochen; Zeithaml, Valarie
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,
2018/1, Volume:
46, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This article integrates relevant literature to develop a conceptual model on the potential avenues to achieve service excellence at low unit costs, which we term
cost-effective service excellence
...(CESE). To gain a deeper understanding of these strategies, their applicability and interrelatedness, we analyze how 10 organizations have achieved CESE. Our findings show that CESE can be achieved through three core strategies. First, a
dual culture strategy
provides a comprehensive set of high-quality services at low cost, largely driven by leadership ambidexterity and contextual ambidexterity. Second, an
operations management approach
reduces process variability and thereby allows the increased use of systems and technology to achieve CESE. Third, a
focused service factory strategy
can enable CESE through a highly specialized operation, typically delivering a single type of service to a highly focused customer segment. The use of the three approaches ranges from “pure” (e.g., mostly pursuing a dual culture strategy) to combinations of the latter two approaches with the dual culture strategy (e.g., a focused service factory strategy combined with dual culture). Our conceptual model provides an integrated view of the strategic options available to organizations that aim to pursue a strategy of CESE.
Purpose - This study aims to examine the role of environmentally induced stimulation in influencing impulse buying. In addition, the authors seek to investigate the impact of two social factors ...(perceived crowding and employee friendliness) on unplanned purchases.Design methodology approach - A wide variety of retail outlets in Singapore were selected as the context for this field study, ranging from small cosmetics shops (e.g. Body Shop) to mega furniture outlets (i.e. IKEA).Findings - The results of this study indicate that perceived over-stimulation (higher than desired) has a positive impact on impulse buying. Moreover, the two social factors jointly influence consumers' unplanned purchases.Research limitations implications - The sample size was relatively small (n=138) and data collection took place in Singapore. Thus, future research with a bigger sample and tested in other cultures is needed to enhance the generalizability of the findings.Practical implications - The study findings suggest that over-stimulation has a positive impact on impulse purchases. Store managers can look at a number of environmental design variables to increase stimulation in their shops. The findings further indicate that perceived crowding and employee friendliness jointly influence impulse buying, and hence these two factors need to be considered together in store design.Originality value - Retailers are fully aware of the power of impulse buying in enhancing their revenues, yet little is known about how the store environment influences unplanned purchases. This study addresses that gap in the services literature.
Retailers have long understood the importance of store environment in enhancing the shopping experience, and past research has examined the main effects of many pleasant ambient stimuli such as music ...and scent. To further our theoretical understanding, we extend the notion of Gestalt to consumers’ perceptions of retail environments and demonstrated that consumers perceive Servicescapes holistically. Specifically, we suggest that the arousing quality of ambient stimuli is one dimension along which holistic evaluations occur, and that pleasant ambient stimuli are perceived more positively when their arousing qualities match rather than mismatch.
We manipulated scent and music in a 3 (no music, pleasant low arousal and high arousal music) by 3 (no scent, pleasant low and high arousal scents) factorial design in a field setting. Our findings show that when ambient scent and music are congruent with each other in terms of their arousing qualities, consumers rate the environment significantly more positive, exhibit higher levels of approach and impulse buying behaviors, and experience enhanced satisfaction than when these environmental cues were at odds with each other.
In this article, we argue that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) offers new opportunities and harbours threats that companies are not able to address with existing business models. ...Entrepreneurship and Transaction Cost Theories are used to explore the conditions for designing nonownership business models for the emerging IIoT with its implications for sharing uncertain opportunities and downsides, and for transforming these uncertainties into business opportunities. Nonownership contracts are introduced as the basis for business model design and are proposed as an architecture for the productive sharing of uncertainties in IIoT manufacturing networks. The following three main types of IIoT-enabled business models were identified: (1) Provision of manufacturing assets, maintenance and repair, and their operation, (2) innovative information and analytical services that help manufacturing (e.g. based on artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and analytics), and (3) new services targeted at end users (e.g. offering efficient customisation by integrating end users into the manufacturing and supply chain ecosystem).
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