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When people think about what an economy produces, they tend to think in terms of solid objects: cars, appliances, clothes, houses, food. But US consumers are in the midst of a long-term shift away from consuming goods and toward consuming services. Here’s an illustrative figure from the Congressional Budget Office (The Budget and Economic Outlook: … Continue reading US Consumers: Goods Shrink, Services Rise
The post US Consumers: Goods Shrink, Services Rise first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Although access-based services (ABS) offer many benefits, convincing consumers to use these service innovations remains challenging. Research suggests that contamination concerns are an important barrier to consumer adoption of ABS; they arise when a person believes someone else has touched an object and transferred residue or germs. However, systematic examination of this phenomenon is lacking. We conduct four experiments to determine (1) the impact of contamination concerns on consumer evaluations of ABS, (2) when such concerns become salient in ABS, and (3) how ABS providers can reduce these concerns. The results reveal that consumers experience more contamination concerns about objects used in proximity to their bodies, especially when those objects are shared with unfamiliar users, and that such concerns negatively influence their evaluations of ABS. Consumers also exhibit less contamination concerns about ABS that have high brand equity because of their elevated stereotype-related perceptions of the competence of those users. Firms' advertisements depicting physical contact between shared objects and other users negatively influence ABS evaluations by consumers whose contamination concept is activated. This article provides insights for developing product, branding, and communication strategies to reduce consumers' contamination concerns and maximize ABS adoption.

The author in her article presents services as a market product which is more and moreoften an innovative product. A particular attention is paid to the services' features which have an important impact on behaviour of the services market participants. Introduction to the market of new, improved, technologically advanced services requires a competent consumer.

Advocating a "postmoralist" position in the analysis of consumer culture, this article holds that it is a mistake to identify political action with public-spirited motives and consumer behavior with self-interested motives. Both political behavior and consumer behavior can be either public-spirited or self-interested. Consumer choices can be expressly political and public-spirited, and styles of consumer behavior can enlist and enshrine values that serve democracy, from going to coffee-houses in eighteenth-century London to eating at McDonald's in twenty-first-century Beijing. Political behavior, meanwhile, may be a particular kind of consumer behavior, and political practice often turns out not to be public-spirited but egocentric and grasping. The article concludes with some suggestions for making political activity more like the experience of consumer choice, that is, more like a situation in which people can take their own preferences seriously because there is a reasonable prospect that they will ultimately matter.

PurposeThis paper aims to uncover service worker behaviours and service setting facets contributing to satisfaction/dissatisfaction during critical service encounters in the context of interpersonal services in elaborate servicescape from consumers' perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThe study used the method of critical incident technique (CIT). In total, 371 critical service encounters were investigated. Actual service experience, with any one of the eight prominent interpersonal services, was collected from adult service consumers living in the national capital region of India.FindingsDominant worker behaviours and setting facets contributing to satisfaction/dissatisfaction in critical service encounters are identified. Analysis of behaviours confirms behavioural categories suggested by previous research, i.e. recovery, adaptability, spontaneity, courteous, information sharing, connecting and identified one additional category, namely professional behaviour. Service setting facets are ambient condition, interior, exterior and other tangibles.Research limitations/implicationsData were collected only from adult service consumers living in the national capital region of India (urban area) with a minimum education qualification of graduation. Initial encounters are not treated separately.Practical implicationsThe identification of dominant behaviours and service setting facets in this research will help the managers to better manage and monitor service encounters leading to more satisfied customers.Originality/valueThis is a pioneer empirical work which investigated the various employee behaviours and service setting facets that have resulted in consumers' satisfying/dissatisfying service experiences in the context of interpersonal services with elaborate servicescapes. This study has also identified one additional category of service worker behaviour and developed a reliable classification scheme, to analyze critical service encounters, which may be of use to future researchers.