Retailer service acceptance: simply adding a service to the offer portfolio or committing to marketing it

Abstract

By virtue of their significant influence on customers' decisions, retailers' acceptance of a service plays a significant role in the success of that service. Therefore, retailers' acceptance of the service and commitment to selling the service must be ensured. However, this issue has attracted limited attention in acceptance research, which tends to focus on goods, technologies and consumers. Based on a survey of consumer durables retailers in three countries, this study focuses on retailer acceptance of a complimentary use-guarantee service, which is meant to maintain customer's ability to use a semi-durable consumer product. The results of this study link retailers' perceived usefulness, and commitment & effort to their service acceptance. Manufacturer support was found to moderate the relationship between ease of use and acceptance. Further, nationality, retailer's own use of the service as a consumer and the importance of the manufacturer's business for retailers were important for retailer acceptance. Thus, manufacturers need to focus as strongly on retailer acceptance as on the end customer acceptance to ensure service success.

Moving to subscriptions: service growth through business model innovation in consumer and business markets

“…Renault et al. , 2010; Vaittinen et al. , 2019), there is a scarcity of longitudinal studies examining the evolution of business models and intermediary relationships over time.…”

“…While our review is not exhaustive, given the multitude of studies exploring these relationships (e.g. Renault et al, 2010;Vaittinen et al, 2019), there is a scarcity of longitudinal studies examining the evolution of business models and intermediary relationships over time. Notable exceptions include the work of Kowalkowski et al (2016), which underscores the importance of triadic value propositions in industrial contexts for achieving growth driven by services.…”

Service quality dimensions in the manufacturer–distributor dyadic relationship: manufacturer-to-distributor context

“…, 2020). Manufacturers need to focus on the acceptance of services across the value chain in order to ensure consumers’ acceptability of the product or services offered (Vaittinen et al. , 2019).…”

“…Service quality holds a direct and positive relationship with channel cooperation, engagement, channel satisfaction, commitment and revenue, and it can reduce channel conflict and friction (Gur au, 2003;Mitropoulou and Tsoulfas, 2021;Parmata et al, 2016;Sett et al, 2020). Manufacturers need to focus on the acceptance of services across the value chain in order to ensure consumers' acceptability of the product or services offered (Vaittinen et al, 2019).…”