Introduction

Abstract

During the last decade, services industries were subject to considerable changes with regard to the way services are provided, delivered, and conceived (Bitner, Brown, and Meuter 2000; Curran and Meuter 2005; Dabholkar 1994). “These changes in markets, customers, and technologies are enabling new business models, capabilities, and products, such as the infusion of services (i.e., ‘solutions’), into goods-dominant firms, products co-created with customers or network partners, and offerings customized to customer behavior observed over time” (Marketing Science Institute 2010). The increasing employment of modern information technologies alters not only the nature of services and their delivery process (Bitner, Brown, and Meuter 2000), but also the interaction at the interface between service providers and customers (Bhappu and Schultze 2006; Colby and Parasuraman 2003; Zeithaml, Bitner, and Gremler 2006).