Martin Löfgren

With savings rates at record lows and inadequate long-term financial planning for retirement, financial well-being has become an important topic for individuals and households as well as for societies and countries. Research on the topic, however, remains scarce and scattered across disciplines. The present paper aims to consolidate and extend knowledge on financial well-being and makes a threefold contribution to the discussion. First, we propose a new definition based on a perceptual perspective of financial well-being and link it to an individual's current and anticipated desired living standard and financial freedom. We then develop a framework that distinguishes key elements of financial well-being; namely, interventions and financial behaviors, consequences, contextual factors, and personal factors. We then present a research agenda to guide future research on financial well-being. This work is designed to inspire researchers to continue expanding the knowledge so that financial institutions can take measures to increase financial well-being. Highlights • Research on financial well-being is still at an early stage. • We provide a new definition of financial well-being. • We develop a comprehensive framework of financial well-being. • We present a research agenda related to financial well-being.

"Recently, Gruber, Abosag, Reppel, and Szmigin’s [(2011). Analysing the preferred characteristics of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints – a crossnational
Kano study. The TQM Journal (Kano Special Issue), 23(2), 128–144] Kano study revealed that complaining customers in Saudi Arabia are less difficult to delight than UK customers. The present study investigates whether these differences are caused by different service-sector development stages, as suggested in their
study, or by cultural differences instead. Data were collected using Kano questionnaires from 151 respondents with complaining experience in Singapore. This country was chosen as it has a highly developed service economy (like the UK) but also a collectivistic culture (like Saudi Arabia). The analysis reveals that
Singaporean customers show the same preferences as those in the UK. We consider this as a strong indicator for the suggested impact of the stage of service-sector development rather than cultural differences on complaining customers’ preferences
of frontline employee attributes. Our results support the findings by Gruber et al. (2011). By doing so, they surprisingly refute previous research which concluded that national culture plays a significant role in shaping customer expectations during
complaint-handling encounters. Our study especially corroborates the notion of a life cycle of quality attributes that had been found for goods and services and the preferred attributes of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints."

Purpose–The purpose of this study is to shed further light on the dynamics of quality attributes, as suggested by the theory of attractive quality. The study aims to investigate the existence of the life cycle for successful quality attributes and to identify alternative life cycles of quality attributes. Design/methodology/approach–The research is based on two surveys in which a total of 1,456 customers (708 in 2003 and 748 in 2009) participated in the classification of quality attributes.

Purpose–Almost everything consumers buy in a store has a package. At point of purchase, the first moment of truth, the package functions as a silent salesman. Once the purchase is made, the product is consumed in the second moment of truth. The purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of how customers evaluate different aspects of the package in the first and second moments of truth.

Purpose–The purpose of this paper is to understand the differences between proactive and reactive market research techniques during the development of new market offerings. The study focused on the financial and innovative performance of traditional market research techniques, such as focus groups and in-depth interviews, in comparison to more co-creation-oriented techniques that are designed to capture customers' value-in-use. Design/methodology/approach–The study was a two-stage process.

Purpose–The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how new ideas generated by customers can be used in a process of attractive quality creation. In addition, it aims to discover whether ideas identified as attractive early in the innovation process have certain characteristics that separate them from other ideas. Design/methodology/approach–The study involved 30 customers of a company that designs and produces microwave ovens.