Editorial: Service marketing for good

This Journal of Service Theory and Practice (JSTP) special issue contains papers from the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) Conference's track on Services, Retailing and Customer Experience, hosted by the University of Otago in Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand, from 4 to 6 December 2023. In this regard, it maintains an established practice of cooperation (e.g. Finsterwalder and Garry, 2011; Sajtos, 2015; Leo and Sweeney, 2017; Mathies and Patterson, 2017; Finsterwalder and Tombs, 2018; Tuzovic and Finsterwalder, 2020; Finsterwalder and Plewa, 2022) between the journal and the Antipodean marketing scholars' institutional body and its members.However, this special issue was also open to the community of international service marketing scholars for submission of manuscripts and hence equally contains the views, thoughts and research insights from scholars around the globe.The special issue carries the title “Service Marketing for Good”, a title that aligns with ANZMAC (2023)'s theme of “Marketing for Good” with the aim of a “betterment of society and our planet.” With this in mind, the present special issue was conceived as the sub-discipline of service marketing and research should play its part and “critical role in shaping consumer behaviour and influencing societal norms” to have the “potential to create significant social and environmental impact” (ANZMAC, 2023).Since the call for papers for this special issue was publicised, the time to achieve the 17 Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon by all United Nations Member States in the year 2015 and effective from 2016 onwards (UN, 2025) has shrunk to five years remaining until the year 2030 is reached. The 17 SDGs are an important pathway forward to achieve better health and well-being for people and the planet (UN, 2025). However, being so close to the target date of 2030, it appears that humankind struggles to meet the defined goals, only being on track to achieve approximately 17% of the targets set in 2015 by 2030 (UN, 2024).To contribute to the advancement of the well-being of people and the planet service, marketers have engaged in the subject matter with the aim to capitalise on services' ability to improve the lives of society and the environment. Earlier calls to action, such as in the domain of Transformative Service Research (TSR; Anderson et al., 2013), have been reinforced by later appeals which have shifted the focus more towards undertaking service research and implementing projects relating to the environmental context rather than improving human actors' lives (Finsterwalder et al., 2025). Service scholars' contributions to resolving these wicked problems have been deemed a necessary step in recent research (Donthu et al., 2021).However, such contributions might not come easy as societal and environmental challenges increase in magnitude and frequency. Service mega-disruptions (Kabadayi et al., 2020), for example, caused by COVID-19 or similar events, not only upset the social and material fabrics of society, necessitating more (service) recovery and regeneration efforts to permit civilisation and environment to rebalance and find a “new normal”. These events may also pose additional challenges to service researchers when it comes to data collection (Dodds et al., 2022) and better engaging with the community (Chen et al., 2021) to generate more impact, due to unstable or hostile environments and changing servicescapes (Finsterwalder and Kuppelwieser, 2020; Kuppelwieser et al., 2023). However, the articles in the special issue summarised below present another step towards supporting society to better itself and the environment with novel service research insights from scholars around the globe.The first paper, titled “Boosting Customers' Hedonic Well-Being through Fair Services: The Role of Participation and Price Saving” by Teichmann et al. (2026), examines how customer participation and price savings influence hedonic well-being in the context of fair versus unfair service encounters. While prior research in TSR has discussed fairness in service encounters, the current article emphasises hedonic well-being as a key consumer outcome. The authors conduct two experimental studies to understand how customer participation and price savings can boost the positive effects of fairness or compensate for the negative influence of unfairness. The empirical results show that high levels of customer participation can increase customers' hedonic well-being following a fair service encounter, but monetary compensation (i.e. price savings) cannot offset unfair treatment during the service encounter. The study challenges some existing predictions of the importance of economic rewards for restoring social exchange relationships after unfavourable service outcomes (Han et al., 2024, Schaarschmidt et al., 2023). Overall, the study highlights the importance of fair treatment, resonating with the theme of this special issue, “service marketing for good”, and the importance of justice and respect.The second paper, titled “Transformative Service in Healthcare: Understanding Secondary Vulnerability and Coping Mechanisms in End-of-Life Care” by Carlini et al. (2026), introduces and explores the concept of “secondary vulnerability” among frontline healthcare professionals in the context of end-of-life care. The authors conduct semi-structured interviews with eleven healthcare professionals (HCPs) from two medical wards in a public hospital in Australia that see high numbers of in-hospital deaths. The results demonstrate how external stressors (such as family emotional unpreparedness, organisational constraints and delays) and internal stressors (including personal challenges in delivering end-of-life care) led HCPs to perceive a level of secondary vulnerability in their provision of care for end-of-life patients. The authors further identify coping strategies to manage service interactions. These include promoting person-centred care and communication, enhancing staff competence and confidence, and accepting limited accountability. The paper contributes to the theme of this special issue by introducing secondary vulnerability as a critical extension to the vulnerability literature (Fineman, 2008; Mayrhofer, 2025) within service contexts and examining actor-to-actor engagement and well-being for both patients and HCPs.The third paper in this special issue by Subramanian et al. (2026) is titled “The transformative potential of refugee-with-refugee value co-creation during resettlement”. This research aims to understand the service needs of newly arrived refugees and explore the role of fellow, established refugees in refugee-with-refugee (RwR) value co-creation interactions. So far, prosocial actions and helping behaviours among refugees have received minimal attention. The authors conduct semi-structured interviews with 34 participants in Aotearoa, New Zealand (11 newly arrived refugees, 12 established refugees and 11 staff from resettlement agencies). The study aligns closely with the theme of this special issue by examining refugee-driven C2C co-creation processes and addressing how to improve the lives and well-being of a group in society that can experience high levels of vulnerability.The fourth paper by the team of Zimbatu et al. (2026) is titled “Looking forward to it! Exploring the role of temporal landmarks and anticipation for well-being in constrained extended service encounters”. This research explores how temporal landmarks and anticipation can be used simultaneously to generate well-being for consumers in constrained, extended service encounters, such as aged care. The study employs an exploratory qualitative research approach. Data includes 35 semi-structured interviews with members of the aged care ecosystem in Australia, including residents, family, and staff from both retirement villages and residential aged care facilities. The authors identify two distinct but equally important types of temporal landmarks (micro- and macro-level). They further propose a novel conceptual model of a cyclical “anticipation package” that sequences both micro- and macro-level events to manage psychological well-being over time. The paper contributes to the theme of this special issue by addressing how services can improve the lives of older adults in the aged care industry, a sector that has received much scrutiny in recent years (see Australian Royal Commission, 2018).The final paper in this special issue is titled “How negatively valenced actor engagement with transformative service exchanges affects well-being outcomes” by Nakintu et al. (2026). The paper aims to explore how actor disengagement leads to reduced well-being (via decreased value co-creation) and negative engagement leads to ill-being (via value co-destruction). By examining the pathways to reduced well-being and ill-being, the authors provide critical insights for services aiming to achieve the “betterment of society”. The research is closely aligned with the theme of the special issue, as it adopts a systems approach to well-being.This special issue highlights the interdependence of the well-being of human actors in service ecosystems and explores strategies to maintain or enhance the well-being of different stakeholders. It aims to inspire further research and dialogue on how to improve lives via responsible business practices and active participation of human actors. The five articles in this special issue each address different aspects related to service marketing for good and highlight challenges of maintaining or improving well-being of consumers and frontline employees (FLEs) upon their continuous engagement in behaviours aimed at improving the lives of themselves or others.Together, these contributions open up new paths to further explore strategies toward betterment of society. We invite the readers of this special issue to engage with these insights, reflect on their implications and contribute to the ongoing discussions about strategies that can create a better future for all.Future research can further explore vulnerable consumer-led co-creation potentials in different service delivery contexts. It is interesting to know how consumers who have been established in the service ecosystem for a considerable amount of time and are experiencing vulnerability repeatedly can support vulnerable consumers who newly join the system to receive extended services. For example, scholars can study how such consumer-to-consumer co-creation can be facilitated and managed for services that are reluctantly initiated (e.g. aged care), voluntary chosen (e.g. higher education), or are avoided altogether (e.g. prison and corrective services) to create better outcomes, such as improving well-being of established and new consumers, both experiencing contextual vulnerability.With respect to the secondary vulnerability phenomenon, future research can further investigate the possible impact of such a challenge and explore possible coping strategies that can be effective in different service delivery contexts and for different stakeholders. How can secondary vulnerability of FLEs or carers affect the quality of their functional or emotional support? What strategies can enhance FLEs' or carers' resilience against secondary vulnerability? In situations where secondary vulnerability is inevitable, what strategies can help FLEs or carers to cope with such a challenge?In the same vein, with regard to the possible interplay of customer participation and perceived fairness affecting psychological well-being, future research might further investigate the moderating effects of other strategies and the role of different contextual factors or situations. Keeping all consumers satisfied and meeting everyone's expectations has been a challenge for service providers. This can be, particularly, true when the target audience constitutes consumers with diverse expectations and values. Such a problem might inevitably lead to perceived unfairness by some of the consumers and subsequently negatively affect their psychological well-being (e.g. forcefully rehousing immigrants in a host country with the aim of facilitating their assimilation or integration and enhancing their likelihood of access to better jobs and education).Future research can further explore other possible coping strategies that can be effective to alleviate negative consequences of consumer perceived unfairness in service delivery in terms of its impacts on psychological well-being. Additionally, it is interesting to further explore how results may vary in situations where consumer participation is mandatory vs. voluntary, in situations where consumers have high vs. low autonomy when participating, or in situations where consumers have low vs. high initial trust or loyalty towards the service provider.Moreover, future research can explore other effective strategies to mitigate negative consequences of perceived unfairness as perceived by FLEs particularly in situations where the likelihood of perceived unfairness is high (e.g. FLEs working in a hospital's emergency department are likely to receive unfair negative satisfaction ratings by unreasonable patients regardless of their hard work and their commitment to provide excellent customer service).Finally, with respect to the role of temporal landmarks and anticipation for well-being, future research can further investigate other extended service contexts or explore the effectiveness of temporal landmarks in terms of their impact on the psychological well-being or productivity of other actors, including FLEs providing services in extreme environments or FLEs providing extended services.The guest editors of this special section would like to thank the editors of the Journal of Service Theory and Practice (JSTP), Professor Chatura Ranaweera and Professor Marianna Sigala, for once again encouraging and supporting a special issue.