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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of including customers with special needs in the design of cultural and heritage services before the actual experience takes place.

Inclusive research through co-creation took place in the city of Barcelona, Spain, in 2017, comparing the effect of including (Route 2) or not including (Route 1) customers with visual and learning difficulties in the service design process of heritage walking routes.

The results show that the most important encounter in the heritage site context is communication, although the usage and service touchpoints were also significant. In addition, results showed that the ideal encounter or touchpoint should take place before the stay.

This paper contributes to learning about the designing of cultural and heritage experiences and including people with special needs in the service design process before the actual experience takes place.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a suitable tool for understanding the expectations of hotel guests from services provided to them and designing the new one. It is also a well-known technique for improving service and product quality in general. First applied by Yoji Akao in 1960, the idea behind QFD is to understand the customer needs and determine the problem which might be associated with product or service provided by an enterprise. The purpose of this paper is to present how check-in operations in hospitality business can be improved with the help of QFD.

In this study, deep interview was employed as main data gathering instrument. Once customer expectations were assessed, a House of Quality scheme was established. Consequently, the QFD matrix was being analyzed as a whole.

The results of the study demonstrate that customers do not want to wait in queue or for any process on the front desk.

The research contributes to the literature a new technical term on hospitality industry, “Voice of Hotel.”

Service and product support are increasingly critical elements in the achievement of customer satisfaction and winning new markets. The success of a product support strategy depends on how effectively these services are delivered. The focus of this paper is on performance enhancement through the use of service delivery strategies; critical factors in the marketing of product support and service‐related contracts that, in turn, foster customer satisfaction, based on industrial systems in a multinational environment. Considered in the framework are product design characteristics such as reliability, maintainability, customer's organizational culture and geographical location, for functional as well as conventional products. The paper advocates an increased focus on support to customers within the framework, introduces a modified service gap model and suggests an approach that reduces any gap between expected and required services. An evaluation of service delivery performance is emphasized.

The experience of safety as perceived by customers is a central issue in retailing, and its importance has increased because of the pandemic. Substantial literature exists addressing different factors related to safety/security experience in different types of retail channels. However, what is missing is a unified framework to guide safe customer experience initiatives across all channels. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the safety elements in omnichannel retailing as perceived by customers and how these safety elements affect customer experience (CX) judgments and consumer behavior in a post-pandemic context.

A systematic literature review on safety/security studies in a retail context is conducted, followed by a qualitative study driven by a means-end-chain laddering technique collecting data from 62 retail customers in Australia, the USA and UK.

Fourteen distinct safety elements in omnichannel retailing are identified. Four elements are relevant to the CX at the pre-purchase stage of the customer journey: social inclusiveness, role readiness, employment policy and safety policy enforcement. Six elements are relevant to the during-purchase stage: physical safety, personal hygiene, spatial distancing, fraud prevention, security surveillance and safety signal. The remaining four elements are relevant to the post-purchase stage: delivery safety, safety recall, mental health and data usage.

This study presents a new unified framework addressing safety and security in post-pandemic retail service settings. The SafeCX framework offers researchers and managers a holistic understanding of the distinct safety elements that shape customers’ perceptions across each customer journey stage of the retail CX.

One‐to‐one marketing has received increased attention by academics and practitioners. In essence, one‐to‐one marketing reconfigures the familiar four Ps into one element: the relationship. It represents the ultimate expression of target marketing ‐ a market of one ‐ or at least one at a time. It is safe to say that the concept has been refined and its potential has been highlighted. Still unresolved is the means by which organizations can implement one‐to‐one marketing. A promising solution is the application of the information technology data mining technique. Data mining allows organizations to find patterns within their internal customer data. As a result, data mining is often called Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD). Whatever patterns are uncovered can lead to identification of likely target segments. Armed with such information, organizations can refine their targets and develop their technology to achieve true one‐to‐one marketing. While a promising technique, data mining must be developed and applied intelligently by managers. In addition, managers must realize that marketing 1:1 requires the combined skills of a multi‐disciplinary team.

The aim of this paper is to examine marketing practices within the bicycle industry.

The paper utilizes both primary and secondary sources to provide a retrospective analysis of marketing strategy at the largest Italian bicycle company.

The paper explains how marketing works at the Bianchi company and provides a detailed analysis of how it built its brand identity over time.

Very few primary sources were available. There was neither a company archive nor other archives. For the most part, the paper is based on secondary sources.

The paper tries to fill the gap in current marketing literature that usually neglects the bicycle as a relevant topic, despite bicycle companies being a predecessor to the automobile industry. Moreover, the paper demonstrates that bicycle companies developed a rather sophisticated approach to marketing that is still in use.

Following restructuring at Oxford Brookes University Library, several functional groups – including a marketing group – were established. The marketing group’s successes include a highly effective outreach programme at Freshers’ Fair. Learning from its first stall in 2000, the group’s 2001 campaign focused on promoting the newly re‐launched Library Web site. The Inspiration Campaign used striking images of Newton’s apple, Rodin’s The Thinker, a penny dropping and a light bulb plus the message “inspiration … available now from the library” to promote the library’s Web address. This message was reinforced by library staff giving out apples and stickers at Freshers’ Fair. The campaign proved highly successful with the number of hits on the site tripling in a year. The Inspiration Campaign was entered in the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)/Emerald Public Relations and Publicity Awards for a “promotional campaign with a budget under £500”. The Inspiration Campaign won.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how organisational experimenting with total quality management (TQM) and the balanced scorecard affects the bundling of design characteristics associated with these innovations in a Swedish central government agency.

The paper adopts an exploratory, longitudinal case study approach which builds on and extends the management fad and fashion literature.

While both innovations encountered considerable implementation problems, they continued to exercise a lingering influence on the “new” performance management system emerging in the focal organisation. The original adoption of the two innovations can be explained from a traditional management fashion perspective. However, the subsequent development of performance management features a more complex mix of explanatory factors and highlights how the bundling phenomenon is entangled with managerial learning processes. This resulted in a less linear trajectory of change than that predicted by prior research on the notion of bundling.

The paper contributes to the literature on management fads and fashions by refining its conception of the role of managers of adopting organisations and organisational adoption, implementation and rejection of innovations.

The paper constitutes a first attempt to examine in greater detail how organisational experimenting with contemporary management control innovations affects the process of bundling in an individual organisation.

Customer journeys have become an increasingly important topic in service management and design. The purpose of this paper is to review customer journey terminology and approaches within the research literature prior to 2013, mainly from the fields of design, management, and marketing.

The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. Searches in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, ACM Digital Library, and ScienceDirect identified 45 papers for the analysis. The papers were analyzed with respect to customer journey terminology and approaches, the relation to customer experience, the referenced background, and the use of visualizations.

Across the reviewed literature, customer journeys are described not only as a means to take the viewpoint of the customer, but also to reach insight into their experiences. A rich and at times incoherent customer journey terminology is analyzed and discussed, as are two emerging customer journey approaches: customer journey mapping (analysis of a service process “as is”) and customer journey proposition (generative activities leading toward a possible service “to be”).

The review is limited to analyzing and making claims on research papers that explicitly apply the term customer journey. In most of the reviewed papers, customer journeys are not the main object of interest but are discussed as one of several topics.

A nuanced discussion of customer journey terminology and approaches is provided, supporting the practical application of a customer journey perspective.

The review contributes a needed common basis for future customer journey research and practice.