Online talk of Prof. Xuemei Bian – Could Unearned Preferential Treatment Make Customers More Tolerant and Amiable?
Date: 23 June 2026, 14:30-15:30
Location: MS Teams
- ID: 343 718 861 618 495
- Password: bo6Ur3hy
Language of the event: English
Offering unearned preferential treatment has increasingly become a commonly adopted relationship marketing strategy, which has attracted research attention. Surprisingly, few studies bridge the unearned preferential treatment literature, customer tolerance and amiability, the key indicators of effective marketing strategies, accounting for distinct characteristics of unearned preferential treatment. This research aims to advance the relationship marketing and preferential treatment literature through unveiling new insights, which bear substantial practical implications in relation to unearned preferential treatments. Our central interest is to explore whether, when and why distinct unearned preferential treatments conferred at the initial stage of service process influence the standards employed for evaluation of subsequent services and relational outcomes. Specifically, through defining distinct unearned preferential treatment according to the key characteristic metrics, namely status (status- vs. non-status-oriented) and value (high vs. low), we uncover the influential and distinguishable impacts of distinct unearned preferential treatments at the initial stage of service process on customer and their relational reactions, including tolerance and amiability. We also analyze the competing mechanisms underpinning the observed influences. That is, unearned preferential treatments evoke customer affections and cognitions, in the form of delight, social power, feeling of unease (not social discomfort) and inequity, the interplay of which, in turn, casts variations of customer response.
The presentation will be around 40 minutes followed by a 20 minutes Q&A session.
Dr Xuemei Bian is professor in Marketing at University of Northumbria. She is the Head of Marketing Subject Group and Convener of Behaviour, Branding, and Digital Insights Research Group.