Volker Kuppelwieser

This second Long Range Planning special issue on PLS-SEM in strategic management research and practice seeks to further progress towards this goal. The journal received 41 articles for its special issue on PLS-SEM, twelve of which completed a thorough review process successfully. Based on the number of high quality manuscripts, a decision was made to split the special issue. In the first Long Range Planning special issue on PLS-SEM in strategic management (Hair et al., 2012a; Robins, 2012), the focus was on methodological developments and their application (Becker et al., 2012; Furrer et al., 2012; Gudergan et al., 2012; Hair et al., 2012a,b,c; Money et al., 2012; Rigdon, 2012). This second special issue provides a forum for topical issues that demonstrate the usefulness of PLS-SEM by piloting applications of this method in the field of strategic management with strong implications for strategic research and practice. As such, the special issue targets two audiences: academics involved in the fields of strategy and management, and practitioners such as consultants. The six articles in this issue are summarized in the following paragraphs.

Only few models or frameworks can be found which address both service quality and customers in a group context, i.e. quality aspects of individuals co-creating a service encounter who are not just occasionally present when other consumers experience a dyadic encounter with a service provider. This is surprising especially in times of increasing numbers of customer communities and groups, virtual or physical. A customer’s own contribution and efforts as well as the efforts of other customers to co-create the service play a vital role in a group service encounter and influence one’s quality perceptions. Due to varying expectations, skills and experiences of the individual customer, group services are much more complex than individual services. The individual customer in a group exerts influence on other customers during the service encounter. These factors influence the process of co-creating the service and finally the perception of quality during the service encounter. The few models which address or attempt to concentrate on these issues are Rosenbaum and Massiah’s (2007) expansion of the SERVQUAL model taking the impact of inter-customer support into account, Sigala’s (2009) conceptual e-service quality model as an expansion of Collier and Bienstock’s (2006) model and Finsterwalder and Tuzovic’s (2010) model which explicitly denotes a “customer B” (Eiglier and Langeard 1977) as well as the socio-emotional and task-related activities of customers and service employees during a service encounter.
In this paper we empirically test a service quality model designed for a customer group experience. Drawing on a sample of 235 customers who have experienced a group service encounter we show how a customer’s individual effort as well as the contribution of the other group members (“other customers”), can influence perceived service quality.

Human beings are all individuals, yet in some societies recent academic and public debate has focused on whether there is a trend towards more self-centred individualistic behaviour of certain “social clusters” or generations. For example, terms such as Generation YOLO (“you only live once”) have recently been coined. Notwithstanding this discussion, humans are usually embedded in social networks and social systems created by people. Recent developments in technology appear to polarise the interplay between individualistic behaviour and the need for belonging to a social group. This interaction between the self and society has been discussed previously. For example, already Ichheiser in 1949 debates this issue.
It has been commonly agreed that individual orientations based on one’s personality, as well as other factors such as the environment, i.e. the (social) system itself, drive a person’s behaviour. Whilst scholars have been focusing on the usage situation and value creation during interactions, the nature of those interactions and the behaviour of service consumers grounded in personal orientations have not been analysed sufficiently in service research, although there is a long history of conceptualizing and measuring personal orientations and interaction styles in psychology. Particularly, no consideration has been given to investigate this in consumption experiences where multiple consumers interact and co-create a service, although customer-to-customer, customer group and consumer tribes studies have been recent emerging foci in research.
The conceptualization and measurement of co-created services, as well as managing the customer experience across customers, have been named as research priorities in service research. Therefore, this paper aims at establishing this missing link by exploring interaction patterns of customers in a joint service experience. Based on customers’ personal orientations, from an individual’s perspective this research analyses the change in perception of the service experience through subsequent group interactions. Three commonly used “layers” of a customer’s orientation have been employed, namely self orientation, social orientation and task orientation.
A quantitative multi-stage study has been carried out using the dimensions of task orientation, social orientation and self orientation of customers derived from psychology, contributing to the slowly growing body of empirical studies on customers’ value co-creating behaviour and roles. This research outlines the project and reports the findings of this multi-stage study.

Despite the importance and popularity of the satisfaction construct in service research, the influence of individuals on a customer group remains poorly understood. Only recently, the influence of an individual group member on other customers’ service perception has found its way into service management literature. A growing body of research now deals with customer – to – customer interaction (CCI) and focuses on the impact individual customers have on services that are delivered to other individual customers. Very little is known about the different roles within these groups in a service experience. In recent management literature, leadership has been examined in classical employee – manager relationships. In services marketing publications there appears to be a lack of research on the influence of different customer roles on a service encounter. In this paper we set out to examine the role an informal leader takes in customer groups. Specifically, our purpose is to explore how lea...

1. Purpose This research aims at showing how customers of a service provider initiate and coordinate a service to co-create value with the wider community of a city and region. A multitude of service co-creators - a thousand and more on the "supply side" - are coordinated to meet the needs of several thousands of citizens on the "demand side". This work discusses the University of Canterbury Student Volunteer Army (SVA) which was founded after the September 4th 2010 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. 2. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a case study approach. It combines qualitative research methodologies using interviews, ethnography and publically available information to enable triangulation of the data. 3. Findings The case shows that to create value in this many-to-many service context a coordinated approach to mass service creation is necessary which allows for room to improvise. 4. Research limitations/implications Avenues for future resear...

Human beings are all individuals, yet in some societies recent academic and public debate has focused on whether there is a trend towards more self-centred individualistic behaviour of certain “social clusters” or generations. For example, terms such as Generation YOLO (“you only live once”) have recently been coined. Notwithstanding this discussion, humans are usually embedded in social networks and social systems created by people. Recent developments in technology appear to polarise the interplay between individualistic behaviour and the need for belonging to a social group. This interaction between the self and society has been discussed previously. For example, already Ichheiser in 1949 debates this issue. It has been commonly agreed that individual orientations based on one’s personality, as well as other factors such as the environment, i.e. the (social) system itself, drive a person’s behaviour. Whilst scholars have been focusing on the usage situation and value creation dur...

Confronted by long-term industry financial losses, and struggling to re-establish profitability, numerous airlines in the United States and elsewhere have introduced a variety of ancillary fees. While airlines continue to "unbundle" services and charge ancillary fees, consumer frustration has grown. This paper investigates consumer perceptions of ancillary airline fees and the relationship on negative emotions such as anger and behavioural outcomes. Drawing on a survey of 464 customers of a large travel agency, the results show that airline fees lead to customer anger and, subsequently, to various forms of retaliatory behaviour. In addition, airline fees lead to "avoidance" behaviour.

Over the last few years, ancillary fees have become a significant source of revenue for businesses in various service industries. The popular press in the U.S. has used the term "nickel and dimed" as companies charge consumers numerous (optional and otherwise) fees for new and/or those earlier considered as "free." Despite media-focused controversy, cross-industry research on consumers' perceptions of ancillary fees has been sparse. Based on attribution and fairness theory, the objective of this paper is to investigate consumer appraisals of being "nickel and dimed" in three consumer service industries (banking, hotels, and airlines). Implications for managers and researchers are discussed.

ABSTRACT Businesses in various consumer service industries have begun to unbundle their service offerings by introducing numerous fees for products and services that were previously provided as “free.” Anecdotal evidence in the media indicates that these fees cause widespread public displeasure, frustration, and outrage. This paper develops a framework of fee acceptability, negative emotions, and dysfunctional customer behavior, which is tested using data from the airline industry. Findings identify the strongest effects on betrayal in the case of baggage fees, followed by charges for comfort. Also, betrayal has a direct effect on complaining, whereas anger mediates the relationship between betrayal and negative word of mouth.

Confronted by long-term industry financial losses and struggling to re-establish profitability, numerous airlines in the United States and elsewhere have introduced a variety of ancillary fees. However, as widely reported in the media, consumer frustration and anger have grown continuously over the last few years as airlines have begun to engage in price partitioning and “unbundle” services, charging now a variety of fees for service elements such as checked luggage, priority seating, food and drinks, pillows, or entertainment. This paper seeks to understand if all types of airline fees lead to the experience of anger and negative behaviour among leisure customers or if certain fees are perceived less favourably compared to others. Results and management implications will be discussed.

Purpose: The paper challenges earlier recommendations and explanations regarding companies’ behaviour after an economic shock and analyses worldwide retail companies’ internationalization processes before and after the 2008 crisis.
Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on information published between 2003 and 2012, we focus on the 2008 crisis and analyse 1,500 different internationalization moves by 109 companies from 26 countries.
Findings: Our analyses confirm that the pace of retail internationalization increased after the 2008 crisis, that these companies had mainly moved into countries with newly developing economies, and that the entry modes ranged from high-cost entry modes and low-cost strategies.
Originality/value:  This paper provides an initial indication of retailers’ actual internationalization behaviour in the period considered. Such material has not been available previously as international retailing research has primarily focused on theoretical assumptions. By focusing on the current financial crisis, we highlight the problem that researchers investigating various company behaviours face when comparing these to the theoretical expectations. By using a worldwide, multisectorial, and longitudinal retailing sample to illustrate the internationalization process, we not only generalize companies’ internationalization behaviour, but also challenge earlier recommendations and explanations regarding their behaviour after an economic shock.

This paper takes a closer look at the emerging topic of transformative service research (TSR) and compares its facets with the more established concept of the service-dominant logic (SDL). The paper thus contributes to both theory development and practical application. This work highlights the conceptual parallels in the two approaches, for example, their holistic approach, their systems thinking, addressing entities or actors within such system(s), inclusion of the wider environment, and their focus on the co-creative and interactive nature of well-being generation and value co-creation. The paper also reveals some differences, for example TSR’s focus on eudaimonic and hedonic well-being outcomes vs. SDL’s value co-creation. The paper concludes that both perspectives have merits, but could benefit from being used integratively. By comparing the areas of theory focus, practical application, value co-creation and co-destruction, intentionality, well-being and value concepts, and TSR and SDL’s “logic”, the paper provides suggestions for future research.

Research has increasingly focused on investigating the interactions between companies and its customers in business-to-consumer (B2C) settings. In recent years, scholars have begun to analyse the impact of accidental or occasional customer-to-customer (C2C) contacts on the service experience (Baron et al. 1996; Huang 2008; Moore et al. 2005). It appears, however, that researchers have widely neglected to study the effects of planned joint co-creation efforts of customers in service encounters where multiple customers simultaneously engage in producing and consuming a service experience. During group service encounters the customer’s individual contribution is pivotal to a successful group experience. An uneven balance of customer contributions to the group experience may not be in line with a “constant quality assumption” (Grönroos and Ojasalo 2004, p. 414) of a manufacturing-based productivity concept, neither on the required input level (customer’s contribution) nor the desired output level, i.e. the individually expected service outcome and the satisfaction with the service.

Manufacturing-based productivity models presume that an altered configuration of input factors in the production process does not result in quality changes in outputs (Grönroos and Ojasalo 2004). This seems not to apply to a services context when focusing on the customer and his/her integration into the “production process”. In a dyadic interaction (e.g. Solomon et al. 1985; Webster 1968; Weitz 1981) the service provider may only be able to control the customer’s input to a certain extent or at least may be able to balance a lack of the customer’s willingness and capability to contribute properly through an increased own input level. The complexity of such a dyadic service encounter is amplified when multiple customers participate in a group service experience. A range of input factors of several customers, i.e. the individuals themselves and the tangibles and intangibles they contribute to the co-creation process, have to be considered and managed. Different levels of simultaneous customer behaviours can occur due to varying expectations, skill levels, degrees of past experience with the service, diverging emotional closeness to the service provider, willingness to contribute, perceptions of other customers’ behaviour and interactions with one another. “The co-creation (..) depends highly on individuals. Each person’s uniqueness affects the co-creation process as well as the co-creation experience” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004, p. 14).

In this paper we discuss the impact of (different) productivity levels of individual customers in a group service experience. By drawing on literature on personality and group dynamics as well as services marketing scholarly publications, we explore the two layers of contributions of group members, i.e. task and social contributions, in terms of a customer’s own and other group members’ efforts in co-creating the service experience and the related output levels which also determine the customer’s satisfaction with the service. Focusing on these productivity levels in a customer group, we also elaborate on management implications for the service firm.

One can assume that there is most likely not a single person in the western world who has not been to a cinema, nor seen a trailer for a film to be released. This paper discusses consumer expectation influencers of film content and quality based on exploratory qualitative research using the screening of film trailers in New Zealand. The results show that the actors are the greatest influencers on film quality expectations, whilst genre has the greatest influence on film content expectations. This research underlines that whilst film marketers unlike film makers usually have no input in choosing actors, director or genre, they have the power to mediate how these are exposed to consumers in film trailers.

Purpose – This paper demonstrates how psychological safety influences individual contributions in customer groups where multiple customers co-create a service experience. It also shows the influence of other customers’ contributions on an individual customer’s own contribution to the service experience as well as the individual customer’s perception of his/her own and of other customers’ contributions toward service satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach – This empirical research paper is based on structural equation modelling to examine customer group experiences of two different service providers, a white water rafting company and an indoor soccer company. Data from a survey of a combined total of 273 consumers were utilised to test the research model.
Findings – The results demonstrate that, on an aggregate level, psychological safety affects an individual customer’s perception of his/her own and others’ contributions to a service experience. The findings show that the contributions of others have a significant influence on one’s own contribution. No influence or relationship could be found regarding one’s own contribution and service satisfaction; however, other customers’ contributions have a negative effect on an individual’s service satisfaction. The results vary on a subsample level.
Research implications/limitations – The generalisability of the findings is limited to two customer group services, one group sport experience and one group leisure experience.
Practical implications – This research provides insights for service firms with respect to managing the provider-to-multi-customer co-creation interface.
Originality/value – This article contributes to the analysis of co-creation efforts of individuals in groups with respect to a specific environment (psychological safety). It adds value to the discussion of factors that influence the partial creation of a service by individuals while interacting with one another and the impact on the perceived outcome. The paper provides a platform for further research on aspects of co-creation in customer groups.
Keywords – customer groups, service experience, psychological safety, contribution, satisfaction
Classification – Research paper

We comment on a recent article by Chong (2013) on the roles of demographic and motivation variables in mobile commerce usage. Drawing on recent research on the service-dominant logic, socioemotional selectivity theory, and data from a first empirical study, we argue that a broader discussion on the value relevance of mobile commerce activities and the consideration of consumers’ future time perspectives would provide a richer, potentially more appropriate picture of the drivers of mobile commerce usage. Furthermore, using data from a second empirical study, we highlight several validity issues of the used scales. We hope to motivate a replication and extension of Chong’s model and also provide recommendations for future research on this area.

Purpose: We present partial least squares (PLS) as an evolving approach to structural equation modeling (SEM), highlight its advantages and limitations and provide an overview of recent research on the method across various fields.
Design/methodology/approach: In this review article we merge literatures from the marketing, management, and management information systems fields to present the state-of-the art of PLS-SEM research. Furthermore, we meta-analyze recent review studies to shed light on popular reasons for PLS-SEM usage.
Findings: PLS-SEM has experienced increasing dissemination in a variety of fields in recent years with non-normal data, small sample sizes and the use of formative indicators being the most prominent reasons for its application. Recent methodological research has extended PLS-SEM’s methodological toolbox to accommodate more complex model structures or handle data inadequacies such as heterogeneity.
Research limitations/implications: While research on the PLS-SEM method has gained momentum during the last decade, there are ample research opportunities on subjects such as mediation or multigroup analysis, which warrant further attention.
Originality/value: This article provides an introduction to PLS-SEM for researchers that have not yet been exposed to the method. The article is the first to meta-analyze reasons for PLS-SEM usage across the marketing, management, and management information systems fields. Our cross-disciplinary review of recent research on the PLS-SEM method also makes this article useful for researchers interested in advanced concepts.

Businesses in various consumer service industries have begun to unbundle their service offerings by introducing numerous fees for products and services that were previously provided as “free.” Anecdotal evidence in the media indicates that these fees cause widespread public displeasure, frustration, and outrage. This paper develops a framework of fee acceptability, negative emotions, and dysfunctional customer behavior, which is tested using data from the airline industry. Findings identify the strongest effects on betrayal in the case of baggage fees, followed by charges for comfort. Also, betrayal has a direct effect on complaining, whereas anger mediates the relationship between betrayal and negative word of mouth.