Purpose The purpose of this paper is to challenge service researchers to design for service inclusion, with an overall goal of achieving inclusion by 2050. The authors present service inclusion as an egalitarian system that provides customers with fair access to a service, fair treatment during a service and fair opportunity to exit a service. Design/methodology/approach Building on transformative service research, a transformative, human-centered approach to service design is proposed to foster service inclusion and to provide a platform for managerial action. This conceptual study explores the history of service exclusion and examines contemporary demographic trends that suggest the possibility of worsening service exclusion for consumers worldwide. Findings Service inclusion represents a paradigm shift to higher levels of understanding of service systems and their fundamental role in human well-being. The authors argue that focused design for service inclusion is necessary to make service systems more egalitarian. Research limitations/implications The authors propose four pillars of service inclusion: enabling opportunity, offering choice, relieving suffering and fostering happiness. Practical implications Service organizations are encouraged to design their offerings in a manner that promotes inclusion and permits customers to realize value. Originality/value This comprehensive research agenda challenges service scholars to use design to create inclusive service systems worldwide by the year 2050. The authors establish the moral imperative of design for service inclusion.

Given the increasingly grave environmental crisis, governments and organizations frequently initiate sustainability interventions to encourage sustainable behavior in individual consumers. However, prevalent behavioral approaches to sustainability interventions often have the unintended consequence of generating consumer resistance and undermining their effectiveness. With a practice-theoretical perspective, the authors investigate what generates consumer resistance and how it can be reduced, using consumer responses to a nationwide ban on plastic bags in Chile in 2019. The findings show that consumer resistance to sustainability interventions emerges not primarily because consumers are unwilling to change their individual behavior, as commonly assumed by existing literature. Instead, consumer resistance emerges because the individual behaviors being targeted are embedded in dynamic social practices. When sustainability interventions aim to change individual behaviors, rather than social practices, they place excessive responsibility on consumers, unsettle their practice-related emotionality, and destabilize the multiple practices that interconnect to shape consumers’ lives, ultimately leading to resistance. The authors propose a theory of consumer resistance in social practice change that explains why consumer resistance to sustainability interventions emerges, including how it distracts, discourages, and delays the required social practice change. They also offer recommendations for policymakers and social marketers in designing and managing sustainability initiatives that trigger less consumer resistance and therefore foster sustainable consumer behavior.

The “digital divide” refers to societal-level inequalities of digital access, capabilities, and outcomes. To explore how the digital divide affects customers experiencing vulnerability, service interactions in essential service settings (health care, education, and social services) were empirically investigated and practices service system members might adopt to address vulnerability were identified. This research upframes the pillars of service inclusion framework to define human capabilities that result from service inclusion practices. Three research topics were addressed: how the digital divide affects vulnerability (RQ1), how the digital divide can be addressed through service inclusion practices (RQ2), and how service inclusion practices enable human capabilities for digital inclusion (RQ3). The findings illuminate: (1) how service employees can engage in service inclusion practices to address the digital divide (by letting go of rules and perspectives, sharing control, providing services beyond job scope, and facilitating social connections), and (2) how these service inclusion practices build human capabilities for digital inclusion (by building basic skills and capabilities for meaningful outcomes through role modeling, coaching, customer-to-customer mentoring, and expanding networks). Contributions include conceptual models of service inclusion practices and fostering digital inclusion that specify a new meso level service organization pathway for healing the digital divide.

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Elizabeth thinks of herself as a true fan of the Kerrigan Brown book series. Usually pursuing this passion privately, she is challenged when a friend claims that authentic fans always display their devotion through public consumption. Fortunately, Elizabeth’s grandfather finds a fable of Four Fanatical Friends, who were also challenged to rethink the meaning of fandom after an encounter with a mysterious Genius Fanum. But will our protagonist realise the moral of the story in a journey of self-discovery? Through this fictional short story, the concept of private fandom is implicitly introduced to marketing theory. To date, collective and public expressions of fandom have been the focus of marketing and consumer research. These lines of inquiry have greatly advanced understandings of fans and their consumption. However, private pursuits have been largely overlooked. This short story serves as a fictive framing for future research in this area.