ABSTRACT
Decision-making about which products and brands to consume is a recurring event in people’s lives as consumers. In many instances, the decision about where or from whom to purchase is only a secondary concern, relating to matters of convenience, product/brand availability, or promotional activity, often involving an opportunity to purchase a product (a good or a service, inter alia service-product) on advantageous terms. Arguably this lack of relative importance given to supplier selection remains the norm today, notwithstanding the fact that the emergence of services marketing thought in the 1970s and 1980s highlighted the importance of the unique characteristics of services (Brown, Fisk and Bitner, 1994) and the importance of effectively managed service encounters for the decision-making process (Hoffman and Turley, 2002; Bitner, 1990).
