Jos Lemmink

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at Maastricht University

Purpose In spite of offering clear benefits and increased availability, relatively few service research studies rely on eye-tracking. Therefore, this paper aims to assist service researchers in harnessing the vast capabilities of eye-tracking technologies and methods for their own inquiries. Design/methodology/approach In addition to systematicall...

Marketers today are increasingly using storytelling to engage their audiences. However, the design of narrative visuals is often inspired by a text-centric understanding of narratives. Despite the fast increase in visual content and the distinct processing it induces, extant research on visual narrativity remains fragmented, lacking a comprehensive...

Aims TeleCheck-AF is a novel remote on-demand mobile health infrastructure around teleconsultations for patients with atrial fibrillation. Social media (SoMe) communication on Twitter contributed to the dissemination of this healthcare innovation by using the hashtag #TeleCheckAF. This study aims to analyse the SoMe network behind #TeleCheckAF and...

Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background TeleCheck-AF is a novel remote on-demand mobile health (mHealth) infrastructure supporting teleconsultations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media (SoMe) communication on Twitter contributed to the rapid dissemination and implementation of this health care innovation into 41...

Conversational agents are increasingly used to substitute or augment human service employees. Due to their ability to use human‐like communicative behaviors, these agents are theorized to establish social connections with customers. However, the existing literature is ambiguous on how conversational agents should verbally communicate with customers...

Purpose Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly important issue for service brands in fast fashion retailing, as consumers' negative impressions about retailers' CSR activities influence brand experience. Consumers' impressions of CSR efforts arise based on agendas communicated through many channels from different sources. The pape...

Collaborative creativity is an essential part of modern teamwork and is often supported by formal techniques, such as design thinking. Current support tools are often limited in scope as understanding the time-varying nature and structure of team communication is insufficient. We investigate how collaborative creative activities in new product deve...

Despite the importance of team communication for successful collaborative problem solving, automated solutions for teams are notably absent from the literature. One promising avenue of research has been the development and integration of speech-based technology for team meetings. However, these technologies often fall short of meeting the needs of...

Despite the increased popularity of virtual teams, in-person teamwork remains the dominant way of working. This paper investigates to what extent social signals can be used to infer the work domain of team meetings. It reveals insights into the complex nature of team dynamics, that are not often quantified in literature, during the design thinking...

Purpose Conversational agents (chatbots, avatars and robots) are increasingly substituting human employees in service encounters. Their presence offers many potential benefits, but customers are reluctant to engage with them. A possible explanation is that conversational agents do not make optimal use of communicative behaviors that enhance relatio...

Purpose – Service technologies are transforming the business landscape rapidly. This paper aims to explore the current scope of research in regard to emerging service technologies by comparing the content of articles in academic journals with practitioner-oriented publication outlets. Methodology – A total of 5,118 technology-related articles from...

Purpose Nowadays, customers have big chunks of information on their smartphones and can acquire information and make decisions rapidly, oftentimes with the use of specific apps. Most of the research on this topic to date has been conducted from the perspective of the provider, or the company, therefore missing the value that is created with these...

Consumers are frequently bombarded with a myriad of marketing tactics. One tactic regularly employed by thrift-oriented brands is to highlight low prices, discounts, and sales promotions. When consumers encounter these low-price signals, they may adopt a price conscious mentality, that is, a singular focus on getting the cheapest deal. A price cons...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the superiority of comparative evaluation or relative attitudinal measurement approach in which the respondent evaluates one object with direct comparison with other objects. The study uses comparative and non-comparative approaches to examine the effects of service quality, value, and customer satis...

One of the main goals of service managers is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the service delivery and to improve the service experience continually. Online feedback provided by customers offers service managers a valuable source of information to help achieve these goals. Despite the usefulness of reading such comments, service manager...

Service interactions run a gamut from an instrumental self-focus to full social appreciation. Observing another customer’s incivility toward a frontline employee can emphasize social concerns as guiding principles for the observer’s own service interaction. Five studies test these dynamics; the results reveal that an incivility incident leads obser...

Purpose – Brand alliances take various forms, yet academic research has not investigated how value spillovers differ between partners. The purpose of this paper is to address psychological mechanisms to uncover consumers’ perceptions of a service alliance when a strong service brand partners with a weak one. Design/methodology/approach – An experi...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to craft a future research agenda to advance smart service research and practice. Smart services are delivered to or via intelligent objects that feature awareness and connectivity. For service researchers and managers, one of the most fascinating aspects of smart service provision is that the connected object...

Marketers commonly assume that health claims attached to otherwise unhealthful food stimulate consumption because such claims offer justification for indulgence and reduce guilt. This article proposes a generalized theory of healthful indulgences, identifying when and why people overconsume versus regulate food intake in response to health claims....

This paper is based on the results of a European study aimed at identifying and exploring success parameters of high (quality) performance and their possible interrelationships. The study was conducted in three service sectors (the hospital, road freight transport and banking sectors) in three European countries (Spain, UK and the Netherlands) earl...

Marketers cultivate brand relatedness in their brand portfolios to increase marketing efficiency through positive spillover of brand equity. However, creating linkages between brands may also make them vulnerable to negative spillover. This research investigates the structure of relatedness in a brand portfolio to understand the nature of spillover...

Marketers cultivate brand relatedness in their brand portfolios to increase marketing efficiency through positive spillover of brand equity. However, creating linkages between brands may also make them vulnerable to negative spillover. This research investigates the structure of relatedness in a brand portfolio to understand the nature of spillover...

As much of the work of service employees is supported by IT, the quality of the service often depends on how the technology is used. Most employees only use a fraction of the functionality available on their desk-top. This may also depend on their personality. We performed research on the relationship of personality and technology acceptance.In our...

In the past decades the service sector has turned out to be more predominant and extremely profitable compared to the more traditional industries. It is very dependent on reliable, instant and meaningful information in order to fulfill customer needs and thus create satisfaction. This high level of information dependency and fierce competition incr...

The effectiviness of decision-making has been associated with how well managers adapt their cognitive style to task requirements. In this paper, theories regarding decision-making under uncertainty, and the use of judgment and intuition are reviewed and integrated. The Cognitive Continuum Theory (CCT), positing a one-dimensional continuum of cognit...

Drawing from the organizational behaviour and services marketing literature, we develop a conceptual model of self-managing team (SMT) service climate, taking into account characteristics of the organizational context, the SMT, and the individual employee. In order to assess the impact of SMT service climate, we include a number of internal consequ...

Purpose – Looks back at five years of the author's editorship of IJSIM and seeks to answer the question whether or not one of the journal's objectives – i.e. more multidisciplinary research – was achieved. Design/methodology/approach – Analyses articles published in IJSIM over the last five years in terms of authors and content. Findings – Based...

Developing and estimating structural models is becoming a routine practice in marketing. In this study, the possibilities of applying such models in managerial decision making under uncertainty are investigated. In particular the feasibility of exploiting the inherent probabilistic nature of structural models to buttress decision making is demonstr...

On the basis of current literature on customer dis(satisfaction) a model is developed and tested on the influence of emotions on customer loyalty subsequent to service-related failures. Emotions are shown to be a prime motivator for customer loyalty. A study of actual complaint letters sent to one of Australia’s largest multi-channel Pay-TV compani...

Successful innovation is crucial for firm survival in high-technology service industries. This article reports on an empirical study, exploring internal innovation success factors—success factors associated with the innovating firm's competencies—by taking a decision-making perspective. The likelihood of innovation success is associated with the sy...

Our study examines the effect of customer emotions and contact employee performance in creating encounter and relationship satisfaction. It investigates the performance of the contact employee from an interactive perspective by specifying the employee performance into employee-specific and interaction-induced behaviors, using a multilevel approach....

In this article, the authors examine antecedents and consequences of the service climate in boundary-spanning self-managing teams (SMTs) that deliver financial services. Using data from members of 61 SMTs and their cus- tomers, the authors show a differential impact of the SMT service climate on various marketing performance mea- sures. Furthermore...

The authors have performed an experimental study to assess whether an extension with relatively low service intensiveness compared to the parent product is evaluated differently from an extension with higher service intensiveness. The empirical evidence from this article indicates that the quality of an extension product will be evaluated more favo...

The paper explores the effect of customer satisfaction with online supporting services on loyalty to providers of an offline core service. Supporting services are provided to customers before, during, or after the purchase of a tangible or intangible core product, and have the purpose of enhancing or facilitating the use of this product. The intern...

This article examines antecedents and consequences of the adoption level of standardized information technology (IT) versus customized IT in self-managing teams (SMTs) in a financial services institution. Linkages between specified antecedents and the adoption levels of standardized and customized IT were investigated using data collected from bank...

Due to a tight labour market, some Western organisations are now looking for new ways to attract highly qualified applicants. This paper examines the influence of the corporate image and the company employment image on the application intentions of graduate business students. We begin by investigating the dimensional composition of these images, bo...

The paper explores the effect of customer satisfaction with online supporting services on loyalty to providers of an offline core service. Supporting services are provided to customers before, during or after the purchase of a tangible or intangible core product, and have the purpose of enhancing or facilitating the use of this product. The Interne...

Decision-making effectiveness has been associated with how well managers adapt their cognitive style to task requirements. In this paper, theories regarding decision-making under uncertainty and the use of judgment and intuition are reviewed and integrated. Cognitive Continuum Theory (CCT), positing a one-dimensional continuum of cognitive styles a...

Although researchers have suggested that the performance of the salesperson during sales encounters is critical, many of the underlying mechanisms that govern the interaction between salespersons and customers are still unclear. In this research, we investigate sales encounters from a new approach based on the field of research of interpersonal per...

Effective measurement and analysis of service quality are an essential first step in its improvement. This paper discusses the development of neural network models for this purpose. A valid neural network model for service quality is initially developed. Customer data from a SERVQUAL survey at an auto-dealership network in The Netherlands provide t...

Models link between employees’ behavior and short- and long-term customer perceptions. Subjects were confronted with five different video taped non-routine service encounters (study 1) and eight manipulated routine service encounters (study 2). In study 1, two judges encoded behavior of service employees. With three types of behavior it was possibl...

The prime objective of our study is to assess whether consumer segments based on relational aspects, service aspects, or price aspects have different preferences concerning these three key decision making variables when buying a car. In addition, we assessed consumer segments resulting from simultaneously incorporating relationships, service packag...

This research explores the effect of emotion on satisfaction with after sales services. Emotional content is derived from the respondent's answers to the so-called critical incident question in order to classify the information according to established categories and the object responsible for evoking the emotional response. The emotional content i...

The level of complexity and inherent perceived risk involved in customer relationships in high-technology markets leads to an intricate interplay of factors determining commitment and trust that in turn affect customer intentions to remain in the relationship. In this article, we develop a model in which aspects of the product, relationship managem...

Branding decisions are becoming increasingly important in services, but little service-specific research has focused on this domain so far. This is surprising, as the service industry accounts for an ever-growing share of the global economy, whereas service aspects have become increasingly important for all goods. Marketing managers may want to cap...

Recently, many companies have turned their service delivery into a self-managed team effort. This article examines the antecedents (i.e., employee perceptions) and consequences (i.e., customer perceptions) of team commitment to service quality in self-managed service groups. We begin by demonstrating that team commitment to service quality in self-...

In international marketing channels customer service has become an important factor in supplier and purchase decisions. In evaluating supplier performance several trade-offs are taken into account by actors operating at various channel levels. These are trade-offs among customer service elements and between customer service elements and costs. With...

It is commonly acknowledged that service quality can be measured by using attribute-based and incident-based measurements. Both methods are distinct in nature, but can be used complementarily. However, in the literature a simultaneous empirical investigation of the power of critical incidents in relation to attribute scores is lacking. In this pape...

Two salient features of modern economic growth are the rise in aggregate savings rates and the steady increase in life expectancy. This paper links these processes, showing that under certain conditions economic theory supports the hypothesis that increased longevity leads to higher aggregate savings in steady state. The analysis is based on a life...

The implementation of a superior service strategy strongly depends on the attitude and behavior of customer contact personnel in service organizations. However, conflicting demands of organizational constraints, service managers, service teams, and customers frequently lead to role stress of service employees. In this article, the authors investiga...

Introduction Are services millennium-proof? Certainly not. At least not at this moment. There is no thorough research needed to derive that conclusion, simply ask around. The evi­ dence is overwhelming. True horror stories exist of all types of services in all types of sectors. It is even becoming a business in itself. Television shows that are bas...

Productivity in retailing usually has been narrowly defined in short term economic performance. Although this is important, underlying salespersons' decisions are at work. As the core encounter of the entire value adding process from beginning to end, the interaction between salespeople and customers in the final step before consumption must be vit...

In the services marketing literature only scant attention has been paid to the concept of customer value as a basis for evaluative judgment. So far, value has been defined primarily in monetary terms (“value for money”). In this paper the role of customer value in the service delivery process is examined. On the basis of axiology, value is position...

Quality networking comprises transaction activities between members of regional and inter(national) networks that enable the exchange of knowledge and experience in the field of quality, in order to increase quality awareness and improve companies' performance. This paper presents the results of a study into quality networking in Europe. We disting...

Recent research linking service quality and service satisfaction has raised issues which require conceptual and empirical elaboration. Among these are the formation of satisfaction during the service delivery process and the role of customer value. In this article, the focus is on how different stages in the service delivery process can be profiled...

Notes that after-sales field service has become an established competitive differentiator among equipment manufacturers. From the service provider’s perspective, effective field service management is essential for operational productivity, customer satisfaction and retention, and profitability. Benchmarking is a process for measuring a firm’s perfo...

The role of customer value has been left relatively unexplored in the field of services marketing. Generally, value has been narrowly conceptualized as “value-for-money” The authors present a value-based approach to the measurement of service quality. A conceptual framework is presented in which value is conceived as consisting of three dimensions:...

States that providing quality customer service is increasingly regarded as an important basis for establishing and maintaining solid and long-term relationships between manufacturers and distributors in marketing channels. Discusses the results of a research project which was undertaken to study the relationship between perceived service quality, s...

In today's marketplace for fast-moving consumer goods, many brands exist with similar characteristics. Development and maintenance of product differentiation becomes increasingly difficult to realize for manufacturers. Consequently, non-price competition particularly by offering high quality customer services, becomes increasingly important as a ma...

The measurement of perceived service quality using the SERVQUAL approach has been criticized by a number of authors recently. This criticism concerns the conceptual basis of this methodology as well as its empirical operationalization. Presents a complementary approach to measuring service quality based on conjoint analysis. Discusses the applicati...

Generally it is assumed that quality improvements are important tools for companies to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. The result of product quality improvements depends, for example on the reaction of competitors. If competitors react intensively and quickly, the outcome of a product quality improvement might be different from what was e...

The positive influence of customer satisfaction on brand and dealer loyalty is often taken for granted. In this study we attempted to prove whether this relationship really exists. In order to do so we examined the case of an automobile‐dealer network. Three different types of customer satisfaction were distinguished: (a) satisfaction with the car;...

This article focuses upon the perceived quality of after sales services. It is a case study about a large supplier of office e equipment active in the Dutch market. The perceptions of the industrial customer on after sales services are compared with the view the service managers in the company have about these customer perceptions. Some striking di...

Several authors have claimed that there is an increasing demand for multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work in service science, management and innovation. Especially in the service area there is a need to break down the barriers between disciplines. At the same time here is evidence that joint multidisciplinary work by authors in academic jou...