The Future of Service Post-COVID-19 Pandemic, Volume 2

With the global health crisis—COVID—19, while many organizations claim to be purpose-driven however the purpose needs to be defined in view of the impact on the employees and given the urgency and complexity of the challenges being faced in the organizations, the need of the hour is to create an environment that offers transparency, trust and hope in the system and the leadership. It has become pertinent for organizations to have open and honest discussions with their employees regarding the business realities, share upcoming plans and encourage collaborative partnership. To embrace this “new normal” reality, it is also imperative for organizations and leaders to adapt and change their leadership styles to address the current crisis. This chapter focuses on how design thinking, strategy, and systematic steps can transform any ambitious goals to fit the organizational culture and appeal to people while addressing key current and uncertain challenges thereby integrating change management into engagement in the area of Human Resources. A case study on Project Propel Initiative from Movenpick Resort Kuredhivaru Maldives provides a structured and systematic approach with accountability in harmony with HR processes and people to make the HR function more robust and better organized with improved control and risk management, a tighter focus on priorities and strategic strengths, and closer alignment with what employees and senior leaders want in routine operations and also during a crisis situation of COVID-19.

The COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic has upended consumers’ day-to-day lives and abruptly halted the operations of many businesses of all sizes. In the face of these challenges, how should marketers respond? Although pundits have suggested a uniform marketing approach in addressing and appealing to consumers during the pandemic, such a universal approach contradicts market segmentation wisdom. To better utilize sound marketing practices, marketers require a clear means of segmenting consumers during global crises. In response to this unfulfilled need, this study builds on the theoretical framework of the Extended Parallel Process Model, or EPPM (Witte 1991, 1992a, b, 1994), and identifies two distinct segments of consumers—labeled as Rejectionists and Survivalists—who have responded to the pandemic in differing maladaptive ways. In this work, each segment is described in detail and validated with cluster analysis, and suggestions are given to marketers for engaging with and promoting to each segment. These market segments are the first to be developed to assist marketers in identifying appropriate engagement and promotional strategies in a national crisis.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has created new social behaviors that has affected daily life including the shopping of groceries. The aim of this chapter is to examine how grocery retailing has changed during the pandemic using the Singapore experience as a case study. Singapore reported its first case of COVID-19 infection in January 2020. The number of infections grew rapidly and the Singapore government implemented several policies including social distancing to control the spread of the virus. For grocery retailers in Singapore, this resulted in disruptions in the supply chain, additional workload on retail employees and finally increased use of retail technologies particularly in online shopping. The chapter ends with a discussion on how the changes in the grocery retail industry provides new perspectives in understanding supply chain management, retail employee work and opportunities for adoption of technology in retailing.

Green brand equity becomes increasingly important in green marketing, especially in the context of COVID-19 post-pandemic. Increased green brand equity may promote customer’s purchasing behavior. This is especially true for eco-conscious consumers. This chapter explores the concept of green brand equity, and showcase the world’s first biodegradable coffee face mask named AirX in the context of COVID-19 post-pandemic. Given the large number of single-use health products filling up landfills and waterways due to COVID-19 pandemic, eco-friendly coffee masks are expected to help people to cope with coronavirus, while helping to reduce the waste crisis exacerbated by the use of disposable face masks. It further provides a major insight into our understanding of how the first coffee mask maker in Vietnam build brand equity while coping with the “New Normal” as well as looking into the future.

Although COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, it has and will continue to have serious repercussions on business activities and the global economy, as well as a strong societal impact. This chapter focuses on comparing and contrasting the banking services sector and the food service industry in Turkey in relation to how these industries were impacted by and responded to the crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Banking services are information-processing services and the food service business for the most part is people-processing. The distinction is that information-processing services can be provided both face-to-face in a high-contact fashion, and online/through the phone in an untact fashion. People-processing services, however, are mostly high-contact services where the person receiving the service must be present when the service is provided (Lovelock in Journal of Marketing 47: 9–20, 1983). Naturally, this distinction creates a difference in the response of these two different types of services to the COVID-19 crisis. This chapter analyzes the economic and social developments during the COVID-19 outbreak in Turkey along with current and expected future action steps by the government and NGOs. Findings suggest that innovative products, market-linking capabilities and investment in digitalization and trust building activities are effective in dealing with the new normal.

The current COVID-19 pandemic and containment regulations bring unseen challenges to service organizations. The physical and social servicescape are heavily impacted by government regulations on social distancing and people’s fear of contamination. Retailing has traditionally predominantly been a ‘game of people’, yet faced with the consequences of this pandemic, our innate preference for a ‘human touch’ seems to decline. This not only boosts e-commerce but also paves the way for the accelerated adoption of technological advancements in brick-and-mortar retailing, as their perceived usefulness has increased. Retailing is steadily being infused with digital technology and these technologies could prove especially valuable in the post-pandemic ‘new normal’, preventing the erosion of the customer- and employee experience. Particular problems to be solved are, among others, managing waiting lines, disinfection, diminished interpersonal contact between customers and frontline employees, in-store crowding, less testing and touching of products, payment, and delivery. This chapter discusses what challenges COVID-19 poses to conventional (e-)servicescapes, and how technologies, ranging from augmented- and virtual reality, over robots and wireless payment, to sensory-enabling technologies for webshops, can offer solutions. Successful business applications are presented, while also considering hurdles. This chapter demonstrates how the current pandemic crisis could catalyze the digital augmentation of retailing and services.

Due to the uncertainty during the pandemic and beyond, service organizations’ skills and competencies related to adapting their service operations to the restricted customer conditions have become critically important. While many service companies are shutting down or facing demand reductions, some companies maintain their operations by transforming their service provision abilities. Accordingly, it is imperative to understand which capabilities are critical for the survival of service organizations, specifically service SMEs which are under intense pressure of the social isolation and physical distancing concerns of customers and restrictions of governments. In this paper, by focusing on the cases of service SMEs in an emerging market (Turkey), we discuss how the agility framework and agility-related capabilities of service SMEs provide service-related insights into value creation for their existing and potential customers during the pandemic. We conducted interviews with the managers of service SMEs in Turkey. Our findings suggest that each of the agility related meta-capabilities (strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, resource fluidity, and resourcefulness) of service SMEs are critical but insufficient. We observe that service SMEs should also utilize their relationship building and process enhancing co-creation capabilities to adapt their service provision processes to the new normal. Particularly, in our cases, individuated and relational interaction capabilities have emerged as crucial for service SMEs to retain customers and transform their services.

The unprecedented global COVID-19 crisis has jolted service businesses whose raison d’être is delivering satisfaction through human interaction. Faced with this existential threat, services must suddenly become resilient and pivot towards futuristic strategies. This paper draws upon institutional theory to develop a conceptual model that explains how service firms can transition to effective crisis management, grapple with pandemic disruption, and engender resilient strategies. In particular, institutional theory advocates tinkering and theorizing approaches for recovery and future growth. While tinkering provides a baseline layer of social acceptance and stimulates innovation via marginal changes such as adherence to norms (e.g., social distancing), theorizing creates legitimacy through new institutional logics (e.g., frames of references) and radical innovations as customers learn new meanings about service firms. Using examples from past pandemics such as the Spanish Flu of 1918 that killed more than 20 million people worldwide, and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, this paper articulates how firms have historically created theorizing by framing the cause of pandemics and disasters as unique attributions that engender social connectedness and resilience. For example, during past pandemics, institutional theory research shows that service firms which created social connections gained rapid legitimacy and success in the post pandemic era. In fact, social bonds forged through local charities magnified embeddedness and provided firms with long lasting loyalty and reputation outcomes. The paper concludes by providing several managerial applications of tinkering and theorizing strategies in the COVID-19 era. In particular, it highlights how service firms can tackle the new normal of social distancing, sheltering at home, and demand decrement through tinkering and theorizing. Finally, the study discusses how the COVID-19 situation can spur theorizing and innovation via machine learning (ML) and artificial (AI) applications in the areas of customer service and new product development.

Countries lockdown and social distancing across the globe is an evident threat for the service sector which is very dependent on providers, retailers and market.

COVID-19 has fundamentally altered our dining experiences as consumers, given the increased uncertainty and risks associated with dining out and, in the process, exposing ourselves to others and potentially to COVID-19. These changes have sharply limited the extent to which consumers are able and willing to continue to have social dining experiences. In this chapter, we explore how the food truck business model can help overcome these uncertainties and enable consumers to have positive, meaningful, and social dining experiences despite these changes. Drawing on a case study approach, we look at the activities of three food trucks and the associated consumer responses over the initial course of the pandemic, thereby illuminating different practices that these businesses enacted in response to the rapidly changing circumstances. Specifically, we highlight practices that appear to help these food trucks build authenticity and rapport in service encounters with their customers, enable customers to structure some stable routines while also allowing for improvisation in terms of the servicescape, and foster a sense of solidarity among various members of the larger business and non-business communities that comprise this service ecosystem. The insights provided in this chapter, thus, can inform how businesses, when trying to weather crises, can establish more robust interactions with their customers, structure the social elements of the environments which frame these interactions, and maximize the mutual support linked to various stakeholders that comprise the overall system in which these businesses operate.