Customer switching behavior damages market share and profitability of service firms yet has remained virtually unexplored in the marketing literature. The author reports results of a critical incident study conducted among more than 500 service customers. The research identifies more than 800 critical behaviors of service firms that caused customers to switch services. Customers’ reasons for switching services were classified into eight general categories. The author then discusses implications for further model development and offers recommendations for managers of service firms.

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With a quarter of a billion Internet users worldwide and estimates of more than one-half billion people online by the year 2003, growth in the online services industry has been exponential. With this growth has come concern about customer “churn,” a concern that parallels issues of customer switching behavior in services industries in general. This manuscript reports results of two field studies, conducted among two randomly selected samples of online service users, that investigate the degree to which selected behavioral (information that customers used when making the online service decision, their service usage), attitudinal (risk-taking propensity), and demographic (income and education) factors are effective in discriminating between continuers and switchers. The research in Study 1 is replicated in Study 2 and extended to consider additional attitudinal factors of satisfaction and involvement. Implications for managers and researchers are discussed.

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Business schools are often accused of focusing too much on quantitative and technical skills and spending too little time on interpersonal and communication skills. Experiential learning assignments provide an effective vehicle for addressing these concerns and are particularly well suited for services marketing courses. The objective of this article is to present a portfolio of experiential learning exercises that can be used in services marketing courses to facilitate the integration of course concepts, teamwork and team building, communication and listening skills, and critical thinking and problem solving.