Ruth N Bolton

Arizona State University | ASU · Department of Marketing

This study investigates how retailers can leverage their brand to shape customers' satisfaction with service encounters. It develops and tests hypotheses about how brand, store, and consumer factors moderate customer responses to experience clues during retail service encounters. Six meta-regression analyses synthesize and compare results from 842...

This study investigated how touchpoints moderate the antecedents of customer satisfaction with service encounters by comparing online and in-store encounters. Construal level theory was used within the Touchpoint, Context, Qualities (TCQ) Framework (De Keyser et al., 2020) to integrate a comprehensive model of how touchpoints-websites or stores-inf...

Prior research has established that it is valuable for members to have strong organizational identification with nonprofit service organizations. However, research has not examined whether and how members are influenced by other members of a nonprofit. This paper analyzes how peer identification influences member retention and donations using surve...

This paper examines the link between a supplier's marketing and service operations and its business customers' subsequent repatronage behavior. We develop a dynamic model of service contract renewal for an individual firm, at the contract level, recognizing interdependencies among service contract renewal decisions due to the firm's purchase of mul...

Many service organizations have embraced relationship marketing with its focus on maximizing customer lifetime value. Recently, there has been considerable controversy about whether there is a link between customer satisfaction and retention. This research question is important to researchers who are attempting to understand how customers' assessme...

This file contains a link to an online article that discusses the published academic paper. The online article identifies some of the key principles of interest to managers.

This commentary offers reflections on how scholars can advance the marketing discipline and contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is part of an Australasian Management Journal special issue that examines the SDGs from the perspective of a for-profit organization  an important and under-researc...

The faculties of collegiate schools of business have an abundance of talented scholars who are equipped to address today’s urgent societal challenges such as climate change, persistent poverty, economic inequality, and global health. With their expertise in subjects such as financial modeling, human behavior, complex-system design, risk management,...

This paper studies how customers of a global firm evaluate their experiences within and across 44 countries. It focuses on customers’ emotional, cognitive, sensory and behavioral responses to the catalog experience. It develops a theory-based model of satisfaction with the catalog experience as a function of experiential attributes and control vari...

The business research ecosystem can be transformed by responsible research principles. This commentary offers concrete guidance for developing high impact theory; it provides a tool to assess research benefits and identify participating stakeholders. It also calls for improving doctoral training, countering risk aversion in research topic selection...

First United Methodist Church of Winter Garden (FUMCWG) celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2021, and this book was prepared for its anniversary celebrations. The aim of this book is to present an engaging account of the work of the church (Matthew 20). Part 1 (Chapters 1-6) describes FUMCWG's life today and over the past 25 years, encompassing the...

[Published online in Entrepreneur.] The coronavirus pandemic completely reshaped shopping in the space of a few short weeks and left many retailers struggling to survive. Neiman Marcus, JCPenney, J. Crew, and other popular chains filed for bankruptcy. According to a report from Yelp, 41% of businesses that shut their doors during the crisis have c...

Relationships with customers are market-based assets of the firm, where the role of marketing is to effectively manage its customer portfolio. Marketing strategy entails offering competitive value-propositions, co-creating value with customers and other market entities, and managing relationships to capture value for shareholders (Srivastava, Sherv...

Robert F. (Bob) Lusch has made many contributions to scholarly research on macromarketing, especially on how business —and especially marketing– can and should contribute to society. His insights are important in understanding how business practices are evolving over time. In addition, they are prescient in identifying new ways for scholarly resear...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to suggest some ways that service scholars can shape the future of the service discipline by building knowledge that is useful to businesses, individuals, communities, institutions, society and the bio-environment. Design/methodology/approach This paper explicitly considers how global trends are likely to influ...

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to suggest some ways that service scholars can shape the future of the service discipline by building knowledge that is useful to businesses, individuals, communities, institutions, society and the bio-environment. Design/methodology/approach-This paper explicitly considers how global trends are likely to influe...

Retailing scholars can bring about a better world by following Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) principles (Community for RRBM 2017). RRBM is a virtual organization dedicated to encouraging business research that builds knowledge to help make the world a better place (See: https://rrbm.network/). The concept of responsible res...

Kollaborativer Konsum, der durch eigentumsersetzende Dienstleistungen ermöglicht wird, ist eine Form der Markttransaktion, die zunehmend verbreitet ist. Im vorliegend Beitrag wird zunächst kollaborativer Konsum von verwandten Konstrukten abgegrenzt. Hierzu werden drei Kriterien herangezogen: (1) Anzahl und Typ von Akteuren, (2) Art des Austausches,...

A marketing simulation represents a comprehensive and integrative business environment in which students actively manage firms that compete against each other. This article describes how marketing simulations harness digital disruption to enhance learning processes and outcomes and (ultimately) prepare students for their future careers. The article...

This introduction briefly reviews some of the highlights in the evolution of conceptual work on customer engagement. It discusses the origins of customer engagement, managerial questions, early academic research, how conceptualizations of customer engagement deepened, the influence of empirical work, how customer engagement is related to other cons...

Service managers and researchers have long recognized that service timing is critical. Studies of how waiting time and reliability are important to customers and service firms began more than 50 years ago. Current research explores how customer engagement, co-production and co-creation unfold over time. This article reviews prior research and model...

Innovating the customer experience (CX) requires an understanding of customers’ context-dependent preferences, where the context changes over time. Four factors are critical to a successful CX—the relevance of the relationship to customers’ social identity, the firm’s reputation (i.e., trust and brand strength), the fit or compatibility of the firm...

This introduction briefly reviews some of the highlights in the evolution of conceptual work on customer engagement. It discusses the origins of customer engagement, managerial questions, early academic research, how conceptualizations of customer engagement deepened, the influence of empirical work, how customer engagement is related to other cons...

How many marketing academics have been influenced by Dr. Jagdish Sheth? No one can say, but my guess is that almost all of us - around the world - have been been touched by his efforts to develop marketing scholars and scolarship. Jag's contributions to marketing science and practice are prodigious and well known. Hence, in this essay, I will share...

I offer my recollections about the editorial review process for the path-breaking article, “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing” by Stephen L. (Steve) Vargo and Robert F. (Bob) Lusch, which was published in the Journal of Marketing (JM) in 2004. This essay offers my recollections and – with the advantage of hindsight - advice for authors...

Purpose: This article explores innovations in customer experience at the intersection of the digital, physical, and social realms. It explicitly considers experiences involving new technology-enabled services, such as digital twins and automated social presence (i.e., virtual assistants, service robots). The challenges and opportunities facing serv...

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to explore innovations in customer experience at the intersection of the digital, physical and social realms. It explicitly considers experiences involving new technology-enabled services, such as digital twins and automated social presence (i.e. virtual assistants and service robots). Design/methodology/approac...

Retailer pricing is a key element of retailer strategy that critically shapes retailers’ fortunes. Many retailers live and die by their pricing strategy. This article reviews emerging retailer pricing trends and practices and offers a framework to guide retailers toward profitable pricing strategies. It builds on previous work on retailer pricing (...

Collaborative consumption (CC) is an increasingly prevalent form of exchange. CC occurs within a triangle of actors: a platform provider (e.g., Uber), a peer service provider (e.g., an Uber driver) and a customer. The platform provider's main role is matchmaking, so that a customer can access assets of a peer service provider. This paper has three...

Collaborative consumption (CC) is an increasingly prevalent form of exchange. CC occurs within a triangle of actors: a platform provider (e.g., Uber), a peer service provider (e.g., an Uber driver) and a customer. The platform provider’s main role is matchmaking, so that a customer can access assets of a peer service provider. This paper has three...

Purpose My goal is to describe my life in marketing over more than 36 years and to help readers better understand (from my personal perspective) the history of marketing. I also aim to lift the curtain on some aspects of service within the marketing community. Design/methodology/approach This article is an autobiographical sketch. It describes s...

The Customer Experience is the sensory, cognitive, emotional, social and behavioral dimensions of all activities that connect the customer and the organization over time across touch points and channels. It encompasses all activities involving the customer where the organization is the focal object, including pre-purchase activities (such as exposu...

Researchers and managers typically recognize “customer risk” by considering the probability of customer defection, as well as by discounting cash flows using the cost of capital. However, in the finance literature, risk is associated with unexpected variability in future cash flows. An understanding of cash flow variability is critical for firms to...

Purpose – Service organizations and marketers have focussed too much of their energy on their core service's performance and too little emphasis on designing a customer journey that enhances the entire customer experience. There is nothing wrong with firms seeking continuous improvement in service quality and customer satisfaction. These efforts ar...

Purpose – Service organizations and marketers have focused too much of their energy on their core service’s performance and too little emphasis on designing a customer journey that enhances the entire customer experience. There is nothing wrong with firms seeking continuous improvement in service quality and customer satisfaction. These efforts are...

Researchers have investigated how to achieve mutually beneficial long term relationships from different theoretical perspectives, using a wide variety of research methods. This chapter reviews and synthesizes extant scholarly work by considering four broad questions: 1. What managerial and theoretical perspectives have enhanced our understanding of...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review what we know – and don't know – about Generation Y's use of social media and to assess the implications for individuals, firms and society. Design/methodology/approach The paper distinguishes Generation Y from other cohorts in terms of systematic differences in values, preferences and behavior that ar...

Purpose. Service managers and researchers are especially interested in Generation Y’s social media usage because it may be a harbinger of how people will behave in the future. The purpose of this paper is to review what we know – and don’t know – about Generation Y’s use of social media and to assess the implications for individuals, firms and soci...

Service firms seek customers with high revenues, profits, or lifetime value. However, they frequently ignore variations in consumption that lead to cash flow variability and adversely influence service operations and financial performance. This study shows that variation in individual customers' consumption or spending on services can be decreased...

Many firms strive to create relationships with customers, but not all customers are motivated to build close commercial relationships. This article introduces a theoretical framework that explains how relationshipspecific attachment styles account for customers' distinct preferences for closeness and how both attachment styles and preferences for c...

Service firms seek customers with high revenues, profits or lifetime value. However, they frequently ignore variations in consumption that lead to cash flow variability and adversely influence service operations and financial performance. This study shows that variation in individual customers’ consumption or spending on services can be decreased i...

like to thank Roland and the organizers of the Symposium for inviting me to participate in the Symposium. I'm also happy to be back to visit the marketing faculty at the University of Illinois. I notice that there are many doctoral students here today. As you will inevitably discover, the academic marketing community is relatively small and members...

Customer engagement (CE) is a key research priority of the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) due to its importance to marketers, the need for more research-based knowledge on CE, the potential for achieving critical insights, and the extent to which the study of CE can benefit from collaboration between practitioners and academics (MSI 2010). Altho...

Relational orientations vary across customers, so marketing activities should be customized to individual customers or marketsegments. However, little is known about the underlying processes that influence how customers bond with a service firm and its employees. This article explains customer-firm and customer-employee relationships using attachme...

This article discusses how Journal of Marketing (JM) has influenced marketing science and practice by publishing articles on substantive topics relevant to customers, managers, organizations, markets, and society. The journal's 75th anniversary coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Marketing Science Institute (MSI). Frequently, JM and MSI have...

During 2011, the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) celebrated 50 years of influencing and shaping scholarly research in marketing and marketing practice. The creation of MSI was a groundbreaking effort by marketing pioneers. In 1961, 29 companies responded to a membership appeal by Thomas McCabe, Sr., former President of Scott Paper Company. They e...

Marketing managers can increase shareholder value by structuring a customer portfolio to reduce the vulnerability and volatility of cash flows. This article demonstrates how financial portfolio theory provides an organizing framework for (1) diagnosing the variability in a customer portfolio, (2) assessing the complementarity/similarity of market s...

The spread of global culture is being facilitated by the proliferation of transnational corporations, the rise of global capitalism, widespread aspiration for material possessions, and the homogenization of global consumption. The extent of convergence of cultural values across nations has been debated by international marketing researchers. Howeve...

The increasing emphasis on understanding the antecedents and consequences of customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions is one of the essential developments of customer management in recent years. This interest is driven much by new online environments that enable customers to be connected in numerous new ways and also supply researchers’ access to ri...

This commentary begins with a story about my first exposure to Kent’s landmark article on buyers’ subjective perceptions of price (Monroe 1973). Then, it provides some reflections on how Kent’s work has influenced marketing science and practice over the ensuing years. Then, it considers some of the pricing issues that marketers will face in 2010 an...

In today's volatile economy, innovation in providing interactive services to consumers through a variety of channels is critical in retailing. Interactive service innovations offer opportunities for retailers by creating new markets or offering new benefits in existing markets. They also pose threats as existing customers encounter new alternatives...

The retail landscape is being significantly altered by retail consolidations, changes in manufacturers’ practices, advances in technology, and the emergence of e-tailing. In this new retailing environment, there is a renewed emphasis on profitable pricing strategies. We have described the effects of these trends on retailer pricing and analyzed suc...

Essential Readings in Marketing (c) 2010) Marketing Science Institute - Introduction Recently, Reibstein, Day and Wind (2009) wrote: “There is an alarming and growing gap between the interests, standards, and priorities of academic marketers and the needs of marketing executives operating in an ambiguous, uncertain, fast-changing, and complex mar...

This article briefly reviews marketers' current knowledge about interactive services. It defines interactive services as services that have some form of customer–firm interaction in an environment characterized by any level of technology (i.e., a high or low technology environment). Customers may interact with the firm's physical elements (includin...

This paper is an earlier MSI working paper the explores the ideas developed in depth in the JSR and JMR papers on attachment.

This article develops a model of a business customer's decision to upgrade service contracts conditional on the decision to renew the contract. It proposes that the firm's upgrade decision is influenced by (1) decision-maker perceptions of the relationship with the supplier, (2) contract-level experiences, and (3) interactions between firm-and cont...

This article develops a model of a business customer's decision to upgrade service contracts conditional on the decision to renew the contract. It proposes that the firm's upgrade decision is influenced by (1) decision-maker perceptions of the relationship with the supplier, (2) contract-level experiences, and (3) interactions between firm- and con...

As discussed in Chapter 1, organizations with a strong market orientation are more profitable. A service-centered view is consistent with a strong market orientation because it focuses on relationships with customers. In this chapter, we highlight service because it has a unique ability to create bonds between organizations and their customers (as...

Marketing scientists and practitioners devote consider-able attention to services marketing strategies and tactics, buttheir focus recently has intensified with the dual realizationthat all businesses are service businesses and that “compet-ing through service” provides new perspectives and optionsfor organizations that are striving to create value...

The call for a return to “Big M” marketing—that is, marketing as a general management responsibility— rather than “small m” marketing—that is, marketing as an organizational function—has been reinforced by many distinguished scholars (cf., Brown, Web- ster, Steenkamp, Wilkie, Sheth, Sisodia, Kerin, MacIn- nis, McAlister, Raju, Bauerly, Johnson, Sin...

Customer metrics are pivotal to assessing and monitoring how firms perform with customers and other publics. The authors contend that customer metrics used by firms today are predominantly rear-view mirrors reporting the past or dashboards reporting the present. They argue that companies need to and can develop “adaptive foresight” to be positioned...

This study investigates how people's satisfaction judgments are modified after they interact with other group members. It integrates research on customer satisfaction and social influence to develop hypotheses about how an individual's satisfaction is influenced by discrepancies between her expectations about the satisfaction of other group members...

This foreword introduces a book of essays on the Service Dominant Logic of Marketing. It reflects on the ground-breaking article by Vargo and Lusch that appeared in the Journal of Marketing in 2004 and discusses its implications for the marketing discipline.

No abstract available.

Companies are increasingly focused on managing customer relationships, the customer asset, or customer equity. Customer relationship management explicitly recognizes the long run value of potential and current customers, and seeks to increase revenues, profits and shareholder value through targeted marketing activities directed toward developing, m...

Published in European Retail Digest Issue 49 How prevalent are price discounts or ‘every day low price’ (EDLP) strategies? What retailer pricing strategies are likely to be successful in today’s competitive markets? In recent work, these questions have been addressed in a large- scale empirical study (Bolton & Shankar, 2003; Shankar & Bolton, 2004...

This book compiled abstracts of award winning articles published in premier marketing journals prior to 2006. (Abstracts are reprinted with permission from the publishers.) They are organized around MSI Research Priorities, with some commentary to synthesize them. This volume was updated with a second book on 2010.

My three-year term as editor of Journal of Marketing concludes with the October 2005 issue. On the basis of my interactions with various people in the marketing community, I believe that marketing science and practice are in transition, bringing change to the content and boundaries of the discipline. Thus, I invited some distinguished scholars to c...

The goal of this preface is to describe how the special section on customer relationship management (CRM) wasdeveloped. In May 2003, Richard Staelin, Executive Director of the Teradata Center for Customer RelationshipManagement at Duke University, proposed that Journal of Marketing (JM) publish a special section. The proposalincluded activities tha...

Most research in customer asset management has focused on specific aspects of the value of the customer to the company. The purpose of this article is to propose an integrated framework, called CUSAMS (customer asset management of services), that enables service organizations (1) to make a comprehensive assessment of the value of their customer ass...

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of retailers' pricing decisions. It finds that competitor factors explain the most variance in retailer pricing strategy. Only in the cases of price-promotion coordination and relative brand price do category and chain factors explain much variance in retailer pricing. These findings are derived...

In January 2002, Donald R. Lehmann, Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, submitted a proposal for a JM Special Section, “Linking Marketing to Financial Performance and Firm Value.” The proposal included activities to promote interactions among marketing academics and practitioners, designed to advance research on this topic. I was...

Most research categorizes grocery retailers as following either an Every Day Low pricing (EDLP) or a High Low (Hi-Lo) pricing strategy at a store or chain level, whereas this paper studies retailer pricing and promotions at a brand-store level. It empirically examines 1,364 brand-store combinations from 17 chains, 212 stores and six categories of c...

In business-to-business marketing, managers are often tasked with developing effective global pricing strategies for customers characterized by different cultures and different utilities for product attributes. The challenges of formulating international pricing schedules are especially evident in global markets for service offerings, where inten-...

Technological innovations---such as the telephone, television, and the Internet---enable new capabilities that may create long-lasting changes in organizational structure, conduct, and performance. E-commerce currently accounts for a small portion of the U.S. economy, and an even smaller portion of the economies of other developed countries. Hence,...

This article explores how the exchange of social resources delivered by service employees and economic resources provided through service operations creates social and structural bonds that enhance business-to-business relationships. It describes an empirical study of experienced business customers of a large telecommunications company. The study s...

This study examines the role of customer emotions in the context of service failure and recovery encounters. It investigates how customers' emotional responses to service failures influence their satisfaction judgments after accounting for cognitive antecedents of satisfaction. The study also considers how customers' emotional responses to service...

This article develops a framework for assessing how marketing actions affect customers’lifetime value to the firm. The framework is organized around four critical actions that firms must take to effectively manage the asset value of the customer base: database creation, market segmentation, forecasting customer purchase behavior, and resource alloc...

Companies that offer loyalty reward programs believe that their programs have a long-run positive effect on customer evaluations and behavior. However, if loyalty rewards pro- grams increase relationship durations and usage levels, customers will be increasingly exposed to the complete spectrum of service experiences, including experiences that may...

Organizations are increasingly applying relationship marketing concepts in mass markets. The business press abounds with examples, ranging from Citibank usage rewards to Saturn picnics. These various pproaches to developing stronger bonds with customers are typically characterized as customer retention programs, loyalty based management or one-to-o...

Customers often react strongly to service failures, so it is critical that an organization's recovery efforts be equally strong and effective. In this ar-ticle, the authors develop a model of customer satisfaction with service failure/recovery encounters based on an exchange framework that inte-grates concepts from both the consumer satisfaction an...

As firms seek ways to manage customer relationships over the long term, understanding the dynamics of the service provider–customer rela-tionship becomes a key priority. In this article, the authors develop and test a dynamic model of customer usage of services, identifying causal links between customer's prior usage levels, satisfaction evaluation...

This study develops a model that addresses the following: (a) How does a customer's satisfaction with a service failure and recovery encounter affect cumulative satisfaction judgments and repatronage intentions? (b) To what extent do a customer's prior assessments of overall satisfaction and repatronage intentions formed before the service failure...

Over the past six years, GTE has worked to enhance the quality of the information it obtains through its surveys -- focusing on improvements to its customer satisfaction questionnaires. Our experiences have led to the development of a new pretesting methodology that identifies respondents' cognitive difficulties as they form answers to survey quest...

This paper investigates the influence of customers' complaints to a service firm with their subsequent decision to exit from a relationship with the firm. The context is a longitudinal study of cellular communications customers' behavior. The study shows that overall satisfaction with a firm and customer complaint behavior are related to exit behav...

This study makes a first effort to understand the factors affecting customers' decisions to invoke warranties, and to distinguish this behavior from the factors affecting customer perceptions of service quality. The study context is GTE's introduction of a warranty program as part of a telecommunications repair service for small business customers....

This paper discusses pricing strategies for new residential services in the telecommunications industry, focusing on price bundling. It describes characteristics of these markets that affect the formulation of a pricing strategy and market research techniques that can provide critical information for the evaluation of alternative pricing strategies...

The growing influence of quality improvement philosophies has had a major impact on service organizations. At GTE Corporation, customer surveys play an important role in every strategic business unit. With revolutionary changes occurring in the telecommunications industry, we have increasingly focused on translating customer needs into company acti...

Published in Marketing Research: A Magazine of Management and Applications In short, it sometimes will be cheaper and more accurate to combine the results of two different sampling methods. Dual sampling frames may be an attractive option when a researcher wants to combine two types of estimates: * Precise estimates, which are derived from a large...

Organizations have traditionally managed services by manipulating engineering and operational attributes and observing market outcomes. In recent years, customer satisfaction ratings have become an important component in this process. Hence, managers are keenly interested in the effect of service changes on customer satisfaction, customer behavior...

Conventional questionnaire pretesting methods focus on directly identifying question defects, such as an ambiguous question. This paper proposes a new method that identities respondents' cognitive difficulties as they form answers to survey questions. It entails a content analysts of concurrent verbal protocols elicited during pretest interviews. T...