From third party to significant other for the service encounter: a systematic literature review

Service encounter research is moving beyond a dyadic perspective, thereby recognizing that other actors, also labeled as third parties, can affect how customers and service providers interact and evaluate their encounter. Consequently, researchers have extensively empirically investigated the ways in which a variety of third parties can have implications – and thereby become significant – for the service encounter. To the best of our knowledge, however, few researchers engaged in synthesizing and explaining the contradicting results for different types of third parties. Notable exceptions relate to technological third parties, as recent studies have shown that technological third parties, such as service robots and virtual assistants, either augment, substitute or facilitate networking among customers and/or employees (De Keyser et al., 2019; Larivière et al., 2017). Still, it remains unclear , how non-technological third parties, such as other customers and co-workers, can affect the service encounter. Therefore, this study aims to (1) unravel the roles that these third parties can fulfill in relation to customers and service providers engaged in interactions with one another and (2) investigate the implications of adopting a specific third party role for customers and/or service providers. This research relies on a systematic literature review in the Web of Science, thereby using search strings pertaining to the research objectives. In terms of literature selection, only articles in business and management disciplines were considered, and 2726 articles were screened based on title and abstract using clear inclusions and exclusion criteria. This resulted in a set of 189 articles assessed for full-text eligibility, and a final total sample of 139 articles for literature analysis and coding. The analyses reveal that different types of non-technological third parties, such as other customers, other employees of the focal service provider, other service providers, and pets, can adopt five roles: bystander, connector, endorser, balancer, and partner. Each role is associated with a different constellation of relationships between the customer, the service provider and the third party. Interestingly, these roles and constellations are dynamic and are not mutually exclusive. Meanwhile, the way in which third parties affect service encounters depends upon the type and role of the third party. Drawing from these findings, the authors formulate avenues for future research. In sum, this research contributes to the service encounter literature by providing a better understanding of the various third party roles and their implications for the service encounter. Thus, this research provides meaningful implications to service providers by shedding light on the conditions under which third parties become ‘significant others’ for the service encounter. Managers are well advised to either facilitate third party roles if they are beneficial for the service encounter or install mechanisms to prevent them if they may harm the relation with customers.