| Degree of customisation or standardisation/service package structure |
Level of adaptation of the service to each customer’s needs and/or desires. |
Yes |
Salegna and Fazel (2013); Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Silvestro et al. (1992); Bowen (1990); Lovelock (1980); Lovelock (1983); Liu et al. (2008); Shafti et al. (2007); Cunningham et al. (2005); Van der Valk and Axelsson (2015); Ostrom and Iacobucci (1995); Karmarkar (2004); Lovelock (1984); Dotchin and Oakland (1994); Verma (2000); Trinh and Kachitvichyanukul (2013) |
| Degree of customer contact |
Level of customer’s presence in the service process. |
Yes |
Salegna and Fazel (2013); Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Silvestro et al. (1992); Bowen (1990); Shafti et al. (2007); Cunningham et al. (2005); Chase (2010); Van der Valk and Axelsson (2015); Lovelock (1984); Dotchin and Oakland (1994); Verma (2000) |
| Tangibility/Intangibility |
Level of physical features in the service. |
N/A |
Salegna and Fazel (2013); Cunningham et al. (2004); Cunningham et al. (2006); Bowen (1990); Lovelock (1980); Lovelock (1983); Shafti et al. (2007); Cunningham et al. (2005); Parasuraman et al. (1985); Lovelock and Gummesson (2004); Parasuraman (1998); Judd (1964); Lovelock (1984); Grönroos (1983); Venkateswaran and Maleyeff (2011); Kotler and Armstrong (2010); Dotchin and Oakland (1994); Dey et al. (2015) |
| Relationship or interpersonal interaction |
Type of relation between the customers and the service provider (formal or no formal). |
Yes |
Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Lovelock (1983); Liu et al. (2008); Shafti et al. (2007); Cunningham et al. (2005); Solomon, et al. (1985); Lovelock and Wirtz (2011); Dotchin and Oakland (1994) |
| Nature of service delivery (continuous or discrete transactions) |
Level of service continuity between the customers and the service provider. |
N/A |
Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Silvestro et al. (1992); Bowen (1990); Lovelock (1980); Lovelock (1983); Cunningham et al. (2005); Lovelock (1984); Vandermerwe and Chadwick (1989); Lovelock and Wirtz (2011) |
| Riskiness |
Level of risk that customers perceive across different types of services. |
Yes |
Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Cunningham et al. (2005); Murphy and Enis (1986); Zeithaml (1981) |
| Judgement/Decision |
Level of judgement exercised by the contact personnel about customers and the nature of necessary information for accomplishment of a task by the employee. |
Yes |
Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Lovelock (1983); Shafti et al. (2007); Cunningham et al. (2005); Mills and Margulies (1980) |
| Switching |
Level of easiness of customers to change the service provider. |
Yes |
Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Bowen (1990); Cunningham et al. (2005); Lovelock (1984) |
| Effort |
Level of energy and value that customers spend in achieving the service. |
No |
Murphy and Enis (1986) |
| Consumer involvement or customer participation |
Level of customers’ contribution to the service process. |
Yes |
Bowen (1990); Van der Valk and Axelsson (2015); Larsson and Bowen (1989); Karmarkar and Pitbladdo (1995); Trinh and Kachitvichyanukul (2013); Dey et al.(2015) |
| Place orientation or value added back office/front office |
The places that the service process use. |
N/A |
Silvestro et al. (1992); Liu et al. (2008); Shafti et al. (2007) |
| Degree of labour intensity |
Level of resources offered by the provider to accomplish the service process. |
Yes |
Liu et al. (2008); Shafti et al. (2007); Dotchin and Oakland (1994); Verma (2000) |
| Extent of demand/supply imbalances or variety of customer demands |
Level of demand fluctuations over time. |
No |
Lovelock (1980); Lovelock (1983); Lovelock (1984) |
| Diversity of demand |
Level of uniqueness of customers’ demands. |
Yes |
Larsson and Bowen (1989) |
| Physical environment or physical goods and facilities |
General, functional, and environment characteristics of the service provider. |
Yes |
Lin et al. (2013); Lovelock (1980) |
| Product/process focus |
The type of emphasis of the service provider can be on the product or on the service process. |
N/A |
Silvestro et al. (1992); Shafti et al. (2007); Grönroos (1983) |
| Personal quality of an employee: behaviour/contact person/friendliness |
The behaviour characteristics of the contact personnel |
Yes |
Lin et al. (2013); Crosby and Stephens (1987); Ostrom and Iacobucci (1995); Jankalová (2016) |
| Value (pricing and timing) |
The price paid for the service and the time spent for acquiring or consuming the service. |
No |
Lin et al. (2013) |
| Service delivery (collective and individual) |
Customers can share time, space, or equipment when consuming the service. |
N/A |
Ng et al. (2007); Lovelock (1980); Hill (1977); Lovelock (1984) |
| Customer’s service encounter activity sequence |
The steps that form the service encounter. |
Yes |
Collier and Meyer (1998) |
| Number of pathways built into the service system design by management |
The steps that form the service encounter defined by the service provider. |
Yes |
Collier and Meyer (1998) |
| Communication/Communication time |
All the forms of communication made between the service provider and the customers. |
Yes |
Kellogg and Chase (1995); Parasuraman et al. (1985); Mills and Margulies (1980); Venkateswaran and Maleyeff (2011) |
| Intimacy/Attachment |
The level of confidence and trust between the service provider and the customers, and employee’s identification with customers |
Yes |
Kellogg and Chase (1995); Mills and Margulies (1980) |
| Information (richness or asymmetry) |
The level of information exchange between the service provider and the customers. |
Yes |
Kellogg and Chase (1995); Mills and Margulies (1980); Krishnan and Hartline (2001); Zeithaml (1981) |
| Differentiation or divergence |
The definition of the service mix in order to distinguish it from competitors. |
Yes |
Bowen (1990); Shostack (1987) |
| Importance of people/employees |
The level of significance that service provider employees have in the service process. |
Yes |
Bowen (1990); Lovelock (1984) |
| Multi-site vs. single-site delivery |
The location of the service delivery. |
N/A |
Lovelock (1980); Lovelock (1984) |
| Breadth of service package |
The number of services that compose the whole service. |
Yes |
Lovelock (1980) |
| Timing and duration of benefits; permanent effect vs. temporary effect |
The duration of the benefits received when acquiring the service. |
N/A |
Lovelock (1980); Hill (1977) |
| Allocation of capacity to customers |
The management of service capacity by the service provider according to demand fluctuations. |
Yes |
Lovelock (1980) |
| Time-defined vs. task-defined transactions |
The definition of the service according to the duration or to the accomplishment of a task. |
N/A |
Lovelock (1980) |
| Nature of customer/service system interaction |
The level of customer interaction in the service system. |
Yes |
Wemmerlöv (1990) |
| Nature of service (customer–provider interaction) |
The effort of acquiring the service can be from customers or from the service provider. |
N/A |
Lovelock (1980); Vandermerwe and Chadwick (1989) |
| Method of service delivery (nature of interaction and availability) |
The way that the service is delivered according to its availability. |
Yes |
Lovelock (1983) |
| Purpose of delivery/consumption |
The core benefit that customers search from acquiring a service. |
No |
Ng et al. (2007); Parasuraman (1998) |
| Reliability |
The ability of the service provider to perform the service as promised, right at the first time. |
Yes |
Parasuraman et al. (1985); Jankalová (2016) |
| Security/Riskiness |
The level of physical safety, financial security and confidentiality that customers perceive across different types of services. |
Yes |
Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Cunningham et al. (2005); Murphy and Enis (1986); Zeithaml (1981); Parasuraman et al. (1985); Venkateswaran and Maleyeff (2011) |
| Credibility |
The level of trust, believability and honesty of the service provider perceived by customers. |
Yes |
Parasuraman et al. (1985) |
| Speed or responsiveness |
The level of employees’ determination to offer a service. |
Yes |
Parasuraman et al. (1985); Venkateswaran and Maleyeff (2011) |
| Understanding/knowing the customer |
The level of knowledge that the service provider has about customers. |
Yes |
Parasuraman et al. (1985) |
| Courtesy or empathy |
The personnel of contact professionalism, respect, education, consideration, friendliness and polite appearance. |
Yes |
Parasuraman et al. (1985); Venkateswaran and Maleyeff, (2011) |
| Access/Convenience |
The easiness of contact and level of availability that customers require to the service provider. |
Yes |
Cunningham et al. (2006); Cunningham et al. (2004); Cunningham et al. (2005); Venkateswaran and Maleyeff (2011); Jankalová (2016); Parasuraman et al. (1985) |
| Competence |
The service provider skills, competences and knowledge to provide the service. |
Yes |
Parasuraman et al. (1985) |
| Complexity/Degree of specifying |
The number and difficulty of service performance steps definition. |
Yes |
Shostack (1987); Karmarkar (2004) |
| Role similarity |
The roles of each service provider. |
N/A |
Solomon et al. (1985) |
| Tie strength with a client |
The power of the interaction between the service provider and the customers. |
Yes |
Smedlund (2008) |
| Service scope (degree of bundling) |
Combinations of individual services into one integrated service. |
Yes |
Kowalkowski et al. (2009) |
| Service focus (level of customer integration) |
The type of focus of the service regarding the level of customers’ integration. |
Yes |
Kowalkowski et al. (2009); Fitzsimmons et al. (1998) |
| Service process |
The structure of the service offers regarding service scope and focus. |
Yes |
Kowalkowski et al. (2009); Lovelock and Yip (1996) |
| Service core |
The essential aspects of the service. |
Yes |
Crosby and Stephens (1987); Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) |
| Overall satisfaction |
The customer’s evaluation of satisfaction with the service. |
No |
Crosby and Stephens (1987) |
| Heterogeneity |
The service is not uniform, it is always performed differently. |
Yes |
Lovelock and Gummesson (2004); Kotler and Armstrong (2010) |
| Perishability |
Service’s inability to be saved, stored or reused. |
N/A |
Lovelock and Gummesson (2004); Kotler and Armstrong (2010) |
| Price |
Customers can be price sensitive, depending on the purchase situation. |
Yes |
Ostrom and Iacobucci (1995) |
| Degree of routinisation of the service process |
The level of technology used on service process to make it more predictable. |
Yes |
Wemmerlöv (1990) |
| Serviced objects in service process |
The service can be processed on goods, people or information/images. |
N/A |
Wemmerlöv (1990); Dotchin and Oakland (1994) |
| Degree of consumer internal research or Problem awareness |
The customers’ knowledge about a service. |
No |
Davis et al. (1979); Mills and Margulies (1980) |
| Transferability |
The easiness of replacing employees in the service workflow. |
N/A |
Mills and Margulies (1980) |
| Power |
The control of critical information by the service provider. |
Yes |
Mills and Margulies (1980) |
| Physical effect vs. mental effect |
Services can make changes on either the physical or mental conditions of the customers. |
N/A |
Hill (1977) |
| Inventories absent |
The lack of inventory in services as a result of intangibility. |
N/A |
Karmarkar and Pitbladdo (1995) |
| Extent to which customer needs to be physically present |
Services that involve the customers in its processing. |
Yes |
Lovelock and Yip (1996) |
| Usefulness |
Customer’s evaluation of the utility of the service. |
No |
Venkateswaran and Maleyeff (2011) |
| Knowledge of service providers |
The level of information that service providers have about customer’s needs. |
Yes |
Venkateswaran and Maleyeff (2011) |
| Ease of service generation |
The number of skills required to generate the service. |
N/A |
Chakraborty and Kaynak (2014) |
| Value of service |
What the customers spend in a service encounter. |
No |
Chakraborty and Kaynak (2014) |
| Type of user |
The type of customer can be individual or organisational. |
N/A |
Dey et al. (2015) |
| Environmental orientation |
The green attributes and practices that care for environment protection. |
Yes |
Chen et al. (2015) |
| Ecologic |
Eco-friendly practices, activities, and education. |
Yes |
Ban and Ramsaran (2017) |
| Environmentally friendly and healthy equipment |
The use of natural and ecofriendly materials in the service process. |
Yes |
Bastič and Gojčič (2012) |
| Eco-behaviour of hotel staff |
Employee’s environmentally conscious attitude. |
Yes |
Bastič and Gojčič (2012) |
| Efficient use of energy and water |
The implementation of actions to reduce water and energy consumption. |
Yes |
Bastič and Gojčič (2012) |
y 