Maria Raciti

Transformative services have the power to shape lives, often with the goal of enhancing wellbeing. However, their potential to unintentionally generate illbeing remains underexplored. This study investigates life regrets as a negative unintended consequence of transformative service engagement. Life regrets are enduring harms such as psychological, social, or material harms that emerge during or after such experiences. Drawing on 30 semi-structured, convergent interviews, participants reflected on a transformative service that resulted in regret. Thematic analysis revealed a spectrum of illbeing, with contributing factors including organisational practices such as time pressure, siloed decision-making, partial information disclosure, and gaslighting consumers by overpromising outcomes. These findings challenge the prevailing assumption that transformative services are inherently beneficial. Given that consumers typically engage these services during periods of vulnerability and life transition, greater attention is needed to their potential to inflict harm. This research calls for a more balanced understanding of transformative services, being one that accounts for both positive and negative outcomes. Doing so will better equip providers to anticipate and address risks, ensuring that services intended to support do not inadvertently harm. Recognising and mitigating life regret can enhance the ethical and practical integrity of transformative service design.

Regret is part of the human experience (Zeelenberg and Pieters, 2007). Indeed, most social marketing scholars, practitioners and participants having lived experience of regret, yet it remains largely ignored or underreported in the academic and grey literature. Regret is typically consigned to the decision-making literature, which talks of this notion as one that people largely ‘think through’ (cognitive), and to a lesser extent ‘feel through’ (affective), that may affect future decisions as regrets are known to linger (Sarwar et al., 2019). Despite the powerful nature of regret to shape decisions about future behaviour, much of the regret literature is limited to contexts such as online shopping (Barta et al., 2023).

Research into first-year students’ attitudes towards their studies has revealed there is often a gap between their pre-commencement expectations and their perceived experience. The Australian Universities Accord has affirmed the importance of inclusion, with a focus on increasing attainment of historically under-represented cohorts in tertiary education. This requires new research to better understand how pre-commencement expectations among regional and remote university students are formed, and how students respond to this expectation-experience mismatch. This research examines the relationships between unmet expectations and the response of first-year, first-time regional and remote (FYFT-RR) university students as it relates to their overall satisfaction. Insights drawn from 20 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews revealed how action-based responses to mismatches result in increased satisfaction whereas inaction-based responses result in decreased satisfaction. This research provides insights for practitioners looking to create well-timed interventions and communications to better shape pre-commencement expectations. This research also highlights the opportunity to help FYFT-RR self-manage mismatches in the initial stages of their transition to university.

This paper explores tourists' motivation and behaviours regarding the purchase of local canarium nut food products while visiting Vanuatu. Specifically, the influence that tourists' prosocial food motivation (buying local food to assist local people) and in situ promotional activities (being promotions that occur in Vanuatu during tourists' stay) have on tourists' self-reported purchase behaviour is investigated. In this field study, trained Ni-Vanuatu enumerators collected quantitative survey responses. Data from this exploratory study (n=61) were analysed using partial least square equation modelling. It was found that that tourists' prosocial food motivation increases their interest in local food (passive purchase behaviour) while in situ promotional activities lead to tourists actively seeking out local food (active purchasing behaviour). Practical implications are that agri-businesses in Vanuatu will benefit from enhanced branding and labelling of local food products as well as promoting local foods to tourists' in situ via personal selling and word-of-mouth communication.

This research investigates the environmental and camping behaviours and attitudes among campers at The Planting festival. The annual Planting festival is held over a long weekend in Autumn in Woodfordia, Queensland, Australia. The Planting festival draws attention to the ill effects of industrial practices on our planet, encouraging environmental healing endeavours that promote a symbiotic human-nature relationship. Many festivalgoers camp at this event and our research objective was to identify different groups of campers based on variations in their environmental and camping behaviours and attitudes. A cluster analysis of 215 festival campers revealed four groups-true believers, camper conservers, camper consumers and the unenthused. These four "shades of green" camper segments contribute to the sparse knowledge in tourism about camping in general and specifically at environmental festivals. Practically, these "shades of green" camper segments can inform event and program development.

Sponsor branding has become omnipresent at public events as it is considered a very effective way for companies to connect and engage with specific targeted audiences. Yet the communities of audiences and fans that form and bond around sponsored activities are not always accepting of the intrusion of commercialised marketing efforts. Hence, the aim of this study is to augment existing sponsorship research models with the construct of sponsor bonding which measures the influence of fans' acceptance of a sponsor's efforts to engage with them. Using the real-life context of a commercial sponsorship of the Brisbane Heat cricket team competing in Australia's Big Bash League (BBL) the research model is tested through two national, online surveys of BBL television broadcast viewers. Our findings show sponsor bonding to be a strong mediating influence on a sponsor's consumer-based brand equity and a stronger influence than brand associations on brand loyalty.

Increasing the participation of vulnerable consumers from low socio-economic (LSES) communities has been a policy focus of the Australian government since the Bradley Review in 2008. In education, LSES consumers are often viewed from a deficit-based perspective rather than from a strengths-based perspective-focusing on what they do not have (deficits) rather than leveraging what they have (strengths) to improve outcomes. We challenge this deficit perspective through the use of service design to co-create ideas for digital services that will assist parents to support their children in participating in the tertiary education sector. The data was collected through two qualitative studies involving 35 parents from LSES communities using a service design approach. The data (transcripts and visual images drawn by participants) was analysed using thematic and content analysis. The results show that vulnerable consumer can co-create services given the opportunity however the preferences for services vary across different persona groups.

Services can enhance consumers' well-being. Known as Transformative Service Research (TSR), researchers and practitioners are increasingly focusing upon co-creating service experiences that lead to improved consumers' well-being. This article examines the development of transformative service research from January 2010 to March 2017. Drawing upon journal database searches and application of exclusion criteria, 48 articles were retrieved and then analysed. Two research questions frame this study; What is the dimensionality and scope of TSR and what are the current empirical findings? This study revealed four key findings. Finding one; a consensus exists for dimensionality and scope of TSR. Finding two; inconsistent domain specific measures of well-being. Finding three; broad use of service marketing tools. Finding four; disproportionate focus on service providers. Future research must explore why, despite shared experiences, some consumers identify improved well-being and others a null effect.

While access to university for Indigenous Australians has been the focus of much research, there is only a small body of research about the factors that support persistence throughout their university experience. The role of the university environment (or 'place') is underresearched yet a recurrent factor in the literature. 'Third places' possess special significance leading to enhanced engagement. Third place attachment results from the accumulation of positive service experiences. A case study approach comprising two universities collected exploratory, qualitative data via focus groups with 17 Indigenous undergraduate students finding that third place attachment was characterised by a) transformation of self, b) sense of community, c) being or becoming authentic self and professional self; and d) engagement with teaching staff. In addition to addressing a gap in the literature, these findings offer meaningful insights for universities that can be used to cultivate a 'place' that enhances the engagement of Indigenous Australians.

Participation in tertiary education is an important factor in achieving social parity and access to opportunity for Australians. The current government agenda is to increase participation amongst low socio-economic, culturally and linguistic diverse, Indigenous and remote peoples to be representative of their proportion in the population. This paper draws on the field of service design to bring an innovative approach to developing social marketing strategy. This research reports the findings of two qualitative studies involving 211 participants across Australia to elicit a psychologically based approach to segmentation and generate innovative digital solutions that will increase applications to participate in tertiary education. This work is the result of a multidisciplinary team that brought together practioners from the widening participation and equity fields along with social marketers and service marketers.