Valarie Zeithaml: autobiographical reflections

Purpose: By examining my personal development and career trajectory, I hope to share some insights into life as an academic. My particular path has contained, as most paths do, twists and turns. As I look back, they all seem somehow related to each other, but they were not all planned. Design/methodology/approach: I will discuss my life and career in chronological order, then reflect on my career and research philosophy. I will also discuss several of my most cited articles and how they emerged. Findings: I emphasize research that is both academically rigorous and relevant to business. I also show that passion for a subject, even one that is risky and not encouraged by others, has resulted in lifelong interest and inspiration for me. While not appropriate for all because of the risk, I found it worth taking a chance, largely because I was highly inspired by the subject. Practical implications: Research that is programmatic has benefits because it allows a scholar to own an area. Also, working with the right co-author teams – sometimes ones where different talents are distributed across the team is effective. Originality/value: The story and opinions are mine alone

Three Decades of Customer Value Research: Paradigmatic Roots and Future Research Avenues

The last three decades have witnessed a resurgence of research on the topic of customer value. In search of a comprehensive integration and analysis of this research—including conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement—we examined the myriad journal publications on the construct. We acknowledge that while some of the literature can be fully integrated, other parts are more difficult because they represent three different paradigms: positivist, interpretive, and social constructionist. We begin by briefly describing these three paradigms. Next, we detail the many studies representing the positivist paradigm, literature capturing customer value from just the customer’s perspective and using deductive logic. We designate the second paradigm as interpretive, in that researchers are interested in understanding the subjective nature of customer value along with its emergence through inductive logic. The third paradigm, the social constructionist, frames customer value as emerging from value co-creation practices in complex ecosystems. Building upon the commonalities and differences among research studies stemming from the positivist, interpretive, and social constructionist paradigms, we propose how researchers can complement one another to move the customer value field forward

User-informed marketing versus standard description to drive demand for evidence-based therapy: A randomized controlled trial.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing represents a vital strategy to disseminate evidence-based therapies (EBTs). This 3-phase research program, informed by the marketing mix, developed and evaluated user-informed DTC materials for parents concerned about adolescent substance use (SU). Phases 1 and 2 consisted of qualitative interviews (n = 29 parents) and a quantitative survey (n = 411), respectively, to elicit parents’ preferred terms and strategies to disseminate EBT. Building upon prior phases, the current study (Phase 3) developed a user-informed infographic (128 words, 7th-grade level) focused on SU therapy. Parents were randomly assigned to view the user-informed infographic (n = 75) or a standard EBT description (n = 77) from the American Psychological Association (529 words, 12th-grade level). Logistic regressions examined the effect of marketing condition on parent-reported behavioral intentions and actual requests for EBT information, controlling for correlates of parent preferences in Phase 2 (parent education level; adolescent internalizing, externalizing, legal, and SU problems). Counter to hypotheses, condition did not have a main effect on either outcome. However, there was a significant interaction between condition and adolescent SU problems: among parents whose adolescents had SU problems, the user-informed infographic predicted 3.7 times higher odds of requesting EBT information than the standard description. Additionally, parents whose adolescents had legal problems were more likely to request EBT information than parents whose adolescents did not. The infographic was 4 times shorter and written at 5 grade levels lower, thereby providing a highly disseminable alternative. Findings highlight the value of specificity in DTC marketing, while advancing methods to create tailored marketing materials and communicate knowledge about psychological science

Progress in customer relationship management adoption: a cross-sector study

Although customer relationship management (CRM) is widely used by organizations to capture and manage customer data, the process of implementation can be problematic. This article takes a multi-sector view of CRM implementation in three areas of the UK services sector: banking and finance; professional services; and the government/public sector. The study captures variations in CRM practice and implementation across these sectors, applying an existing framework of CRM implementation to tease out progress in relation to people (the company's staff), the company itself, the customers, and the technology. The implications for organizations that have reached different implementation stages in their CRM journey are considered

Acceptance and Use of E-Learning Based on Cloud Computing: The Role of Consumer Innovativeness

Cloud computing and E-learning are the inevitable trend of computational science in general, and information systems and technologies in specific.However, there are not many studies on the adoption of cloud-based E-learning systems. Moreover, while there are many papers on information system adoption as well as customer innovativeness, the innovativeness and adoption in the same model seems to be rare in the literature. The study combines the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) and consumer innovativeness on the adoption of E-learning systems based on cloud computing. A survey was conducted among 282 cloud-based E-learning participants and analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings indicate that the adoption of cloud-based E-learning is influenced by performance expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, and habit. Interestingly, although innovativeness is not significant to use intention, it has a positive effect on E-learning usage which is relatively new in Vietnam

Customer emotions in service failure and recovery encounters

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences