Wei Wei Cheryl Leo

Services are integral to social marketing programmes such as mental health, family and domestic violence, drug and alcohol, men’ health and breastfeeding, with scope to increase value through these services (Zainuddin & Gordon, 2020). Social marketing services contribute towards service users' health, wellbeing, and the fulfilment of social marketing goals (Russell-Bennett, Fisk, Rosenbaum, & Zainuddin, 2019). Within such service contexts, service safety comes to be expected as built-in a way that make users feel comfortable and that reduces their level of vulnerability and enable behavioural change. Despite this, the notion of service safety within service systems remain unexplored in the social marketing literature. Particularly, key drivers that influence emergence of service users’ perception of service safety is missing. This is concerning given that feelings of safety are important for service users to improve their well-being and reduce vulnerability, and service users seek resources from their service providers. In this conceptual paper, we examine the notion of service safety in social marketing services and consider its key drivers through a system perspective, to propose that achieving service safety will reduce the vulnerability experienced by service users.

Responding to calls for greater inclusion of service thinking in social marketing (Luca et al., 2015; Russell-Bennett et al., 2013), this study qualitatively examined the experiences of 25 Australian residents who were users of support services designed to improve and maintain wellbeing, but who then decided to stop service use. Guided by value theory, we examined the value destruction processes within these service experiences that led to termination of service use. We also explored the impact of this value destruction on subjective wellbeing. Our initial findings suggest that the cumulative effect of a series of denigrating incidents within the participants’ service experiences contributed towards value destruction and led to the decision to terminate. This decision is often enacted by choice and with agency in an otherwise disempowering situation. However, agency is influenced by a participant’s personal resources, which are determined by both personal characteristics, and their socioeconomic status. The findings also suggest that value destruction and subsequent service termination, did not necessarily negatively impact wellbeing in ways expected. These insights challenge a number of assumptions that operate within many social change efforts, especially in the context of health and wellbeing. These assumptions first include that there is a “best way” that we should be living our lives through the performance of specific behaviours and through the use of specific services. A second assumption is that if we do not comply with these recommendations, that our wellbeing will suffer.

New technologies are transforming the nature of service experiences and relational dynamics between service providers, frontline employees (FLEs) and customers. Such technologies are both pervasive and invasive and create opportunities and challenges for users and beneficiaries. The perception of some technologies such as robots, as having an automated social presence (ASP), is likely to have a significant impact on service experiences.

The relevance of improving individual well-being has recently gained traction within the marketing literature (e.g. Ostrom et al., 2015), for instance it is a key tenant of transformative service, consumer and social marketing research. The marketing literature on well-being investigates behaviours, attitudes, cognitive processes, interactions and social processes (e.g. Mendel and van Doorn, 2014) to understand how well-being manifests in individuals. While assessing individual well-being is crucial, understanding the larger contexts, such as the service system in which individuals are embedded, is also relevant. Adopting a holistic perspective on well-being is a neglected area of service research (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015). The socio-cultural systems where individuals and collectives immerse themselves have considerable influence on well-being; without incorporating elements of holistic well-being, we possess only partial knowledge about how to manage and improve individual and collective well-being (Anderson et al.,2013).

This paper qualitatively explores the phenomenon of Customer-Oriented Defiance (COD) and reports the implications to theory and research. The study involves in-depth interviews with 21 frontline service employees. The results show that frontline employees in service industries exhibited COD. They exist in three forms; righteous, sacrificial and sneaky behaviours. The findings provide the foundation for future research and extend existing literature on positive deviance into a services marketing context.