BGSU marketing professors author two of the world's best service research articles

BGSU was a leader in publishing the best service research articles in the world last year. Two BGSU marketing professors’ articles were selected among the four finalists for the 2016 Best Service Article Award presented by the Service Special Interest Group (SERVSIG) of the American Marketing Association.  Each year at the Frontiers in Service Conference, SERVSIG presents the Best Service Article Award from among all service research articles published globally from the previous year.

BGSU Marketing Professor Dwayne Gremler co-authored the article entitled, “Employee Emotional Competence: Construct Conceptualization and Validation of a Customer-Based Measure,” with a former BGSU visiting professor from the University of Liege in Belgium, Cecile Delcourt, and two professors from Radboud University, The Netherlands. The article was published in the Journal of Service Research.

Since customers often experience intense emotions during service encounters, Dr. Gremler’s study contends that service firms should be concerned with the display of emotionally competent behaviors by employees (employee emotional competence [EEC]), and subsequently proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of EEC in a service encounter context.

In their study, the authors develop a scale to capture customer-perceived EEC, defined as an employee’s competence in perceiving, understanding, and regulating customer emotions during a discrete service encounter. Researchers can use the scale to explore the role of EEC in service contexts, and managers can employ it to diagnose EEC and improve customers’ service encounter experiences.

BGSU Associate Professor of Marketing Jeff Meyer co-authored the article, “Pricing Strategies for Hybrid Bundles: Analytical Model and Insights,” with Dr. Venkatesh Shankar from Texas A&M. Their article was published in the Journal of Retailing.

The authors develop an analytic model of optimal pricing for hybrid bundles by a monopolist retailer. Retailers are increasingly offering hybrid bundles — products that combine both good(s) and service(s). For example, home improvement stores offer a bundle that combines flooring material (good) and installation (service). While pricing strategies for goods- or services-only bundles have been well-studied, hybrid bundles fundamentally differ these, primarily with regard to quality variability and scalability.

Dr. Meyer’s results show that an increase in quality variability of the service is associated with a higher optimal hybrid bundle price and a lower optimal price of the good, but a lower overall bundle profit. The findings also reveal that the optimal price of the service (good) in a hybrid bundle is higher (lower) when the good is more scalable than the service. Finally, the results show that higher unit costs incurred to achieve lower service quality variability can result in higher (lower) profits when the cost increase is low (high).

This is not the first time one of Dr. Gremler’s articles was among the best in the world. In 2012, SERVSIG chose Dr. Gremler’s article “Extreme Makeover: The Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Remodeled Servicescape,” which appeared in the Journal of Marketing, as the best service research article for the previous year.

Dr. Gremler joined the BGSU faculty in 2000, was promoted to full professor in 2007, and was designated as a Distinguished Teaching Professor by the University in 2015. Dr. Meyer joined BGSU in 2010 and was promoted to associate professor and granted tenure by the board of trustees in 2016.