The paper presents a model that suggests that four relationship variables traditionally found to affect behavior beneficial to the firm also increase consumers’ disclosing intimacy. Employee benevolence, credibility, image, and consumers’ satisfaction with the relationship to the employee...

This paper sheds light on how trust works in professional services encounters. Service delivery often takes place over time and this has led to a focus upon relationships developed during the cycle of service creation. One facet of a relationship is the need for trust to be present. This paper...

Research on customer relationships has documented that customers focus not only on the functional benefits they receive, but also the relational benefits. This study examines the underpinnings of customer relationships designated as professional relationships, casual acquaintances, personal...

Purpose – As service organizations continue to expand internationally, the need to be able to understand consumers in faraway places is increasing. Marketing research is a key mechanism through which service companies understand their current as well as potential customers. As service...

Purpose – This study seeks to examine the impact of brand management strategies on the employee role in the deliverance of the service experience consistent with the brand from a management perspective. In doing so, furthers understanding of an area that, to date, has received little empirical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply customer lifetime value models to assess the overall value of the service encounter and to establish implications that such an assessment has for managing customer relationships under a fixed‐size salesforce. Design/methodology/approach –...

Purpose – The majority of research in marketing now represents loyalty as a multi‐dimensional construct; however, agreement on whether it has two or three dimensions is lacking, and measurement of these dimensions has been inconsistent. The purpose of this paper is to utilize theory from the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how customers with different relational bonds respond to the same service failure. In particular, the framework to service failure and recovery devised by Fournier and Mick is applied. Design/methodology/approach – To uncover rich emotional...

Purpose – The purpose of this conceptual paper is to show how a company can improve the interface by treating employees as customers and customers as employees. Design/methodology/approach – This article presents a conceptual model (reinforced with a review of extant literature and numerous...

Purpose – This research seeks to test a model examining the potential links between customer orientation, expertise, and relationship quality at the interpersonal level and the link between relationship quality and positive service outcomes at the firm level, such as loyalty and positive word...