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Reibstein et al. (2009) view that the needs of industry and the efforts of academia represents a growing gap and identify some "researchable topics" that would help fill this gap. In this article I discuss the considerable amount of well known research already undertaken in the four identified areas, which offers an excellent grounding for extending these research streams further. While not agreeing with all points in their article, I believe that their article is provocative and timely, prompting academics to reflect on their research priorities. I also discuss the needs of industry that I identified in Western Australia and how a top down approach is needed to reduce this industry-academia gap.

The Service Dominant Logic has generated a great deal of debate in the marketing domain, in particular within services marketing. However, the logic is still in its infancy, thus there is a raft of questions and issues relating to its relationship with other paradigms, its further conceptualisation and its measurement. These points are briefly addressed in this paper. The paper concludes that the paradigm may be more appropriate in some contexts than others and that a multi-paradigm approach is required in most cases. Focussing on the central S-D logic tenet of customers coproducing the service, thus cocreating value, evidence is presented from two consumer research projects on customer empowerment and customer participation that may assist in future operationalisation of the S-D logic.

PurposeThis paper aims to extend previous research investigating the effect of relationship benefits on firm outcomes by developing a model that includes the effect on individual employees in the buyer firm. The model also aims to address benefits beyond the functional in business‐to business (B2B) settings by including psychological and social benefits.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a survey of 275 B2B buyers in Australian manufacturing firms.FindingsThe findings reveal that functional benefits enhance firm‐level commitment to the relationship, whereas psychological and social benefits affect individual commitment to the relationship directly and firm‐level commitment indirectly, thereby emphasizing the importance of considering the individual as distinct from the firm. Given that the relationship is a process over time, and in recognition of the non‐static nature of relationship benefits, the paper also explores the changes in benefits over relationship stages, including their impact on commitment. In contrast to expectations results show that while all three types of benefits increase, there is no change in the impact of all three benefit types on commitment across relationship stages.Practical implicationsThe study recognizes that the individual in the firm also benefits from B2B relationships and offers a measure of both firm and individual relationship benefits for use in future studies. The measure may also be used as a point of discussion about relationship management.Originality/valueThe study is framed within social exchange theory and, is the first to simultaneously examine three types of relationship benefits and their interaction with both the individual and firm viewpoint. The study is also one of the first to empirically examine changes in relationships over the relationship stages.

Despite widespread recognition and application of the relationship marketing principle, little empirical work has been done in terms of adopting the relational metaphor at the consumer-brand level. A notable exception is a study by Fournier (1998) in the context of consumer goods. To our knowledge, however, no research has been conducted based on relationship marketing at the consumer-brand level in the service domain. This study seeks to address this limitation by examining the relational phenomena between consumers and service brands. Specifically, the study develops a typology of different relationship types.

Over the past 25 years, the Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) has established itself as a vibrant organisation for marketing academics in Australia and New Zealand. We trace ANZMAC's development, examine what has worked well and identify future challenges.

Service experiences often unfold over a series of consumption episodes, yet customer perceptions of these experiences are often treated as static events. This prevents a good understanding of the impact of consumption stage on service perceptions. Prior research reveals little about the variation in the salience of service quality attributes between novice and longer-term customers, especially in terms of contribution to overall service quality perceptions or about the effect of service quality and service satisfaction on behavioral intentions across consumption stages. This study examines these issues using cohort analysis within the context of ongoing health care services. Results indicate that the contribution of attributes to overall service quality differs across novice and longer-term customer cohorts, as does the interrelationship of service quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. These findings have important implications for managing service processes, improving service provider performance, and enhancing customer service.

Understanding the contribution of marketing to economic and social outcomes is fundamental to broadening the focus of marketing. The authors develop a comprehensive model that integrates the impact of service quality and service satisfaction on both economic and societal outcomes. The model is validated using two random samples involving intensive health services. The results indicate that service quality and service satisfaction significantly enhance quality of life and behavioral intentions, highlighting that customer service has social as well as economic outcomes. This is an important finding given the movement toward recognizing social and environmental outcomes, such as emphasized through triple bottom-line reporting. The findings have important implications for managing service processes, for improving the quality of life of customers, and for enhancing customers' behavioral intentions toward the organization.

This study examines the dual effect of country-of-origin (in terms of the country of source or manufacture and country of brand) on Australian consumer evaluations of uni-national and bi-national products. The product selected for this study was an apparel item, a shirt, which can be described as a relatively low involvement product category. The country of manufacture was found to have a dominant influence on product evaluations, suggesting that product quality perceptions generated by the brand do not compensate for the effect on image when production is sourced in less developed countries. Strategic implications are discussed.

In a marketplace characterised by more demanding and more active customers, both academics and practitioners have become increasingly drawn to the concept of customer engagement (CE). Despite the recognised importance of CE, research in this area remains fragmented with a variety of definitions and conceptualisations evident in the literature. This is concerning, as a lack of alignment may result in misinterpretations, causing further divergence in future research. This paper thus offers a systematic review of the extant literature on customer engagement dated from 2009-2018, reflecting: (i) leading conceptualisations and manifestations of CE, (ii) customer- and firm-related CE antecedents, as well as (iii) CE outcomes from the customer and firm perspectives. Hence, it provides conceptual, methodological and thematic guidance to scholars studying CE. Furthermore, we discuss an extensive list of research priorities, developed based on future-focused contributions of 12 distinguished international experts, providing a strong foundation for shaping CE literature in future.

The resources that customers have and are able to contribute or utilize may influence, shape, and determine the support that they receive from service providers. Yet, there is limited knowledge on the types of resources customers bring into the service process, that is, customer resource endowments and deficiencies, and how these relate to the service offered by providers. This study thus investigates the interplay and mobilization of specific resources between the customer and the service provider. Drawing on data from two online surveys in the financial planning and health-care contexts, the results demonstrate the fit between customer competencies measured in terms of sense of ownership, personal commitment, time availability, perceived complexity of situation, service-related skills, education, risk tolerance, and economic resources and the various service provider styles for value cocreation. Specifically, the discriminant maps show that service provider styles can best be differentiated not on the basis of a particular type of resource (i.e., physical, cultural, or economic) but rather according to a constellation of customer resource endowments and deficiencies. The insights provide unique opportunities for organizations to tailor support to customers' resources and thus enhance value cocreation efforts.

This article investigates the professional service provider's role in the customer resource integration process for value creation, by drawing on research in the areas of resource integration, service experience, and role theory. Roles are flexible, in that behaviors associated with a role may vary according to the situation, expectations, and learned behaviors of the actors involved. In the context of professional service providers who support a customer's resource integration, these role variations accordingly can be termed resource integration styles. Grounded in managerial practice, the current study relies on in-depth interviews to determine the styles that professional service providers use to support customer resource integration in a financial planning setting. The proposed typology of five styles (delegate, mentor, partner, coach, and validator), termed professional service providers' resource integration styles (PRO-RIS), can be described by eight resource integration activity dimensions: participation ratio, frequency of interaction, deliberation, decision-making, updating, educating, connecting, and motivating. This research thus provides rich qualitative insights into how professional service providers can support customers' resource integration processes, through the provision of appropriate resources. Notably, professional service providers can offer distinct benefits by varying the combination of resources provided to facilitate value creation. No single, best style exists; professional service providers should leverage the various styles described by PRO-RIS and adapt the eight resource integration activities as needed to support their customers.

This study investigates how particular motivations are associated with different eWOM message characteristics. This is examined from the sender's perspective in both positive and negative eWOM contexts. Responses from a sample of 201 consumers who had posted an online message about a financial service in the last 12 months were collected through an online survey. Results showed that cognitive and affective characteristics of messages were linked to different motivations to engage in eWOM, which further differed across positive and negative messages. Managers should encourage consumers to share more positive factual information and sort online reviews based on the subject matter, rather than just the positivity of a message.

This research developed and empirically validated a multidimensional hierarchical scale for measuring health service quality and investigated the scale's ability to predict important service outcomes, namely, service satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Data were collected from a qualitative study and three different field studies of health care patients in two different health care contexts: oncology clinics and a general medical practice. Service quality was found to conform to the structure of the hierarchical model in all three samples. The research identified nine subdimensions driving four primary dimensions, which in turn were found to drive service quality perceptions. The primary dimensions were interpersonal quality, technical quality, environment quality, and administrative quality. The subdimensions were interaction, relationship, outcome, expertise, atmosphere, tangibles, timeliness, operation, and support. The findings also support the hypothesis that service quality has a significant impact on service satisfaction and behavioral intentions and that service quality mediates the relationship between the dimensions and intentions.

Transformative service research is particularly relevant in health care where the firm and customer can contribute to individual as well as societal well-being. This article explores customer value cocreation in health care, identifying a hierarchy of activities representing varying levels of customer effort from complying with basic requirements (less effort and easier tasks) to extensive decision making (more effort and more difficult tasks). We define customer Effort in Value Cocreation Activities (EVCA) as the degree of effort that customers exert to integrate resources, through a range of activities of varying levels of perceived difficulty. Our findings underscore the importance of viewing health care service as taking place within the customer's service network that extends well beyond the customer-firm dyad to include other market-facing as well as public and private resources. Moreover, we demonstrate the transformative potential of customer EVCA linking customer EVCA to quality of life, satisfaction with service and behavioral intentions. We do so across three prevalent chronic diseases—cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Our findings highlight how an integrated care model has benefits for both customers and providers and can enhance customer EVCA.

There are few research-based insights into professional service firms' (PSFs) contemporary marketing practices. This is unfortunate as the professional services sector is a key contributor to growth in the Australian and other economies around the world. As professional services are unique in a number of ways and their operations and marketing activities inextricably intertwined, the present study investigated the extent to which PSFs practice marketing and whether this differs according to size. Depth interviews were held with thirty seven Australian senior managers in four key industries. We examined the extent of relationship marketing, conceptualised at an overall managerial level as well as four sub-practices identified in research by Coviello and colleagues. We found relationship management and interaction marketing were the most common practices, which is consistent with the inseparability concept, and that relationship management and database marketing were more common in larger firms, which is consistent with their relative resource strength.