Transformative service research is particularly relevant in health care where the firm and customer can contribute to individual as well as societal well-being. This article explores customer value cocreation in health care, identifying a hierarchy of activities representing varying levels of customer effort from complying with basic requirements (less effort, easier tasks) to extensive decision making (more effort, more difficult tasks). We define customer Effort in Value Cocreation Activities (EVCA) as the degree of effort that customers exert to integrate resources, through a range of activities of varying levels of perceived difficulty. Our findings underscore the importance of viewing health care service as taking place within the customer's service network which extends well beyond the customer-firm dyad to include other market-facing as well as public and private resources. Moreover, we demonstrate the transformative potential of customer EVCA linking customer EVCA to quality of life, satisfaction with service and behavioral intentions. We do so across three prevalent chronic diseases-cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Our findings highlight how an integrated care model has benefits for both customers and providers and can enhance customer EVCA.

The use of coupons delivered by mobile phone, so called "m-coupons," is growing rapidly. In this study we analyze consumer response to m-coupons for a two-year trial at a large shopping mall. About 8,500 people were recruited to a panel and then received 3 text message m-coupons whenever they "swiped" their mobile phone at the mall entrances, with downstream redemption recorded. Almost 144,000 m-coupons were delivered during the trial, comprising 38 stores that supplied 134 different coupons. We find that an important feature of m-coupons is where and when they are delivered, with location and time of delivery significantly influencing redemption. Also important is how long they are valid (expiry length), because redemption times for m-coupons are much shorter than for traditional coupons. This suggests that their expiration length should be shortened to help signal time urgency. Nevertheless, traditional coupon features, like face value, still dominate m-coupon effectiveness, as does the product type, with snack food coupons being particularly effective.

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oHealth care customers (patients) experience heightened emotions due to high stakes from risks to life, health, and well-being. Understanding and managing emotions during service experiences is an important area of inquiry because emotions influence customer perceptions, future intentions and behaviors. Yet despite its significance, research focusing on the impact of emotions on customer experiences remains fragmented, lacking a theoretically based conceptual framework. The authors attempt to fill this gap by addressing two important research questions contextualized in health care: (1) How can health care organizations better understand patient and family emotions during health care experiences? and (2) How should health care organizations use this understanding to design and better manage patient experiences to enhance patient well-being? The authors propose a new theoretically based framework on emotional responses following triggering events to enhance outcomes. Recommendations designed to enhance health care customer well-being are provided, as are directions to guide future work.

The service sector has been rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. This stems in large part from the inseparable, high-contact nature of many services. During a pandemic, multiple forms of contact – customer-to-customer, customer-to-employee, employee-to-employee, and customer/employee-to-air/surfaces – can lead to serious illness or death. The urgent need for increased separability and decreased contact have led to a wave of service adaptations (firms’ efforts to improve safety) and service transformations (innovations that bolster safety while offering additional benefits that are superior to what existed previously). COVID-19 has made service safety paramount, with most attention being paid to minimizing disease transmission. However, safety needs in a pandemic extend beyond physical to include interrelated domains of emotional, financial, and information safety. Physical safety is the absence of harm or injury. Emotional safety is relief from mental distress arising from pandemic-related personal traumas. Financial safety concerns minimizing economic insecurity related to the pandemic. Information safety refers to people’s sense of confidence that they have the information they need to make good decisions, information that is trustworthy. We describe the unique service transformations addressing these safety concerns of Hong Kong International Airport, Henry Ford Health System (Detroit), Innocent Bystander (Australia), and Service Now that are likely to continue after the pandemic has passed. Important questions for service researchers to guide managers in reinventing how they create, deliver, and market services are highlighted.

Patients are often reluctant to assert their interests in the presence of clinicians, whom they see as experts. The higher the stakes of a health decision, the more entrenched the socially sanctioned roles of patient and clinician can become. As a result, many patients are susceptible to "hostage bargaining syndrome" (HBS), whereby they behave as if negotiating for their health from a position of fear and confusion. It may manifest as understating a concern, asking for less than what is desired or needed, or even remaining silent against one's better judgment. When HBS persists and escalates, a patient may succumb to learned helplessness, making his or her authentic involvement in shared decision making almost impossible. To subvert HBS and prevent learned helplessness, clinicians must aim to be sensitive to the power imbalance inherent in the clinician-patient relationship. They should then actively and mindfully pursue shared decision making by helping patients trust that it is safe to communicate their concerns and priorities, ask questions about the available clinical options, and contribute knowledge of self to clinical decisions about their care. Hostage bargaining syndrome is an insidious psychosocial dynamic that can compromise quality of care, but clinicians often have the power to arrest it and reverse it by appreciating, paradoxically, how patients' perceptions of their power as experts play a central role in the care they provide.