Going to Extremes: Managing Service Encounters and Assessing Provider Performance

The authors advance a framework for analysis and comparison of service encounters using three neglected dimensions—duration, affective content, and spatial proximity. They focus on service encounters that fall at the extreme of these three dimensions, termed extended, affectively charged, intimate (EAI) encounters. Employing qualitative and quantitative data, they develop measures of service provider performance and test a structural model of the relationships among service provider performance, affective response and service satisfaction for EAI encounters.