Matthew Alexander

• PhD, MPhil, BA(hons), PgDip, PgCert, FHEA
• Reader at University of Strathclyde

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications in customer-facing settings are growing rapidly. The general shift toward robot- and AI-powered services prompts a reshaping of customer engagement, bringing machines into engagement conceptualizations. In this paper, we build on service research around engagement and AI, incorporating computer science, and...

Purpose Existing research on customer journeys has tended to focus on the customer’s purchase decision-making and firm-controlled touchpoints, overlooking indirect touchpoints where customer resources and behaviors influence the firm and other actors, beyond financial patronage. This article develops the concept of engagement journeys and discusses...

Purpose Tourists’ resource integration both offers opportunities and presents challenges to tourism service providers. Focussing on the tour guide perspective, the purpose of this paper is to explore how tour guides experience knowledge/information-based asymmetry in encounters with tourists and identifies the roles and coping strategies used by gu...

Customers proactively engage with firms’ offerings through behavioral manifestations such as brand-related social media posts, influencing other customers in online networks and, consequently, affecting brand value. With the growth of visually oriented social media platforms, interest has increased in understanding customer engagement behavior (CEB...

The concept of value co-creation (VCC) is central to service-dominant logic (SDL) and forms its second axiom, namely that “Value is cocreated by multiple actors, always including the beneficiary” (Vargo & Lusch, 2016, p.8). In parallel with the evolution of VCC in SDL, the term “value co-destruction” (VCD) has also emerged within the services and m...

Purpose COVID-19 vaccinations face a backdrop of widespread mistrust in their safety and effectiveness, specifically via social media platforms which constitute major barriers for the public health sector to manage COVID-19 (and future) pandemics. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of the public's engagement behavior toward COVID-19 v...

Research on engagement has shifted to a systemic, rather than a dyadic, view that considers the engagement of multiple actors in complex business settings. Existing literature suggests that actor engagement in business settings is dependent on, and inextricably linked with, service ecosystems, platforms, and the value co-creation process. However,...

Purpose: Combining institutional work and actor engagement (AE) literature, this paper aims to elucidate how the collective action of market shaping occurs through the interplay between market shapers' institutional work and engagement of other market actors. While markets are shaped by actors' purposive actions, and recent literature notes the nee...

Recent marketing and service research highlights the detrimental impact of negative customer engagement behaviour (CEB) in online social networks. Nevertheless, the extant literature captures the impact of what customers say about service providers in their negative reviews and fails to provide any understanding of different intensity levels of neg...

Purpose This paper aims to evaluate the possibilities associated with go-along technique and other mobile qualitative methods augmenting other qualitative methods as a novel approach to developing understanding of multifaceted organisations. Design/methodology/approach The study explores the challenges associated with “static” qualitative methods...

Purpose – This study shows how customers engage in negatively-valenced influencing behavior (NVIB) and what triggers customers to use different forms of NVIB in an online context. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative study is conducted using an unobtrusive netnography. Data collected comprises 954 negatively valenced online reviews posted o...

Ancestry has received limited attention within the tourism literature but is shown to play a crucial role in heritage tourism, especially for countries with extended diasporas such as Ireland, Italy India, China, and Scotland. The purpose of this study is to explore ancestral tourist motivations, and attain a broader understanding of this market. A...

Ancestral tourism in Scotland, a sector of the heritage tourism market sensitive to consumer personalisation, has particular propensities towards process-driven co-created experiences. These experiences occur within existing categories of object-based and existential notions of authenticity alongside an emergent category of the ‘authentically imagi...

This paper aims at showing how customers engage in negatively-valenced CEB, specifically, in one of its forms, namely, negatively valenced influencing behavior (NVIB) and what drives customers to use different forms of NVIB in an online context. A qualitative study is conducted using an unobtrusive netnography. Data collected comprise of 954 negati...

While extensive research has been carried out to explain the phenomenon of institutional isomorphism, less is known about the emergence of institutions across different structural fields such as the private versus the public sector. There is also limited research into examining desired outcomes of implementing certain practices within organizations...

• Purpose The purpose of our paper is to raise awareness of the mobilities paradigm by exploring the role of tourist mobilities in destination marketing. • Design/methodology/approach We use the context of the Jacobite steam train which runs in the Scottish Highlands. We draw on multiple qualitative methods including participant observation, i...

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to broaden extant understanding of actor engagement behavior beyond its currently dominant dyadic (micro-level) focus, by examining it from multiple levels of aggregation within a service ecosystem framework. Design/methodology/approach: This conceptual paper draws on service-dominant logic and structuration theory...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how community involvement can support the authors who are guided by the following research questions: how do community residents contribute to heritage marketing strategies that represent their local area? How does community involvement in heritage marketing encourage place identification? How can org...

Developing mutually beneficial outcomes in service encounters can be challenging due to resource asymmetry within co-created experiences. Such encounters can result in role conflict for service providers. Limited attention has been paid to the effect on service providers of highly collaborative exchanges which require specific customisation. An exa...

Heritage tourism is increasingly viewed as both an individual and experiential phenomenon as well as being related to specific attributes of a destination. Ancestral tourism fits the former perspective and centers on tourists traveling to sites which they perceive to be a “homeland” where, during the visit, they attempt to discover more about their...

For destinations to compete in a context of global competition, they rely on their destination image as a way to position themselves and resonate with prospective visitors. The image of the destination is created in part through the identity of the community. Despite longstanding efforts to move community-based initiatives more to the centre of tou...

In recent years, railway stations have come to be seen as non-places within society, points of transit and nothing more. The role of the station in place making is disputed with stations seen as both creating and destroying a sense of place within a community. Our study is located within the railway stations of Scotland and explores how local commu...

This book review looks at Ethics in Qualitative Research, which outlines the tensions between the often linear and mechanistic approaches of university ethics committees. It also examines the 'fluidity and inductive uncertainty' that pervade qualitative research where ethical dilemmas and concerns permeate the research process. The reviewer found t...

The importance of providing tailored solutions to customers, i.e. being solution oriented, is now recognized across organizational settings such as business-to-business, business-to-consumer, private and public sector contexts.

Recent developments in marketing and service research highlight the blurring of boundaries between firms and customers. The concept of customer engagement (CE) aggregates the multiple ways customer behaviors beyond transactions may influence the firm. However, the term is embryonic and academics and practitioners alike lack understanding on how CE...

This research explores the community role in the regeneration of social places for local tourism promotion in Scotland. We focus on the regeneration of railway stations by drawing on a recent example of community engagement called ‘Adopt a Station’. We use ethnographic research and highlight six key themes: roots, commitment, gateway, heritage, aes...

Purpose: This study explores how value co-creation occurs at a network level in a service system comprising representatives of business, consumer, and community actors. The research centres on the following questions: 1) what kind of operand and operant resources are contributed and integrated in the value co-creation process? 2) What value-in-use...

This paper addresses the role of training facilities within higher education hospitality departments. It identifies a range of historical and contemporary problems associated with these areas and reports on case study research undertaken with four UK institutions. The research identifies changes within the educational delivery provided by these ins...

This study was part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership project involving the University of Strathclyde and Royal Navy Base Faslane on the Clyde. The main focus was a market research study to assist in the development of a retail hub for service personnel and civilians to use while on the base. In the course of the study, it was noted how many obst...

Purpose – The aim of this conceptual paper is to assess the continued relevance of operations based training within hospitality management higher education programmes. The paper explores the purpose of a hospitality management degree programme and how this might have impacted upon curriculum development and the student learning experience. Design/...