The Emotional Burden and Uplift of Service Experiences: Designing Tomorrow's Human-Centred Services
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CALL FOR PAPERS
The Emotional Burden and Uplift of Service Experiences: Designing Tomorrow's Human-Centred Services
Journal: Journal of Services Marketing
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Submission Opens: 9 February 2026
Submission Deadline: 31 July 2026
Introduction
Services have always aimed to meet human needs, with decades of valuable research advancing our understanding of service quality, customer satisfaction, and consumer adoption. As we design the human-centred services of tomorrow, however, we encounter new complexities that challenge us to broaden our perspective beyond predominantly cognitive approaches to service outcomes.
Today's increasingly sophisticated service landscapes — from AI-powered interactions to hyper-personalized digital experiences — can overwhelm consumers with too many options, excessive automation, or a lack of genuine human connection. In striving for seamless service delivery, we risk overlooking our customers as complex emotional beings who experience stress, anxiety, joy, and meaning through service encounters — experiences that directly influence their overall well-being.
The pressing question for the future becomes: how can we design and market services that centre human emotions and well-being?
This evolving landscape — where services may be physical, digital, or a blend of both — presents both challenges and opportunities for service researchers and practitioners. Rather than treating emotions as secondary outcomes or broadly categorizing them as positive or negative, the field must advance by examining discrete emotions — such as joy, excitement, pride, anger, sadness, and disgust — and how these shape not only traditional service metrics but also a broad range of well-being outcomes.
Scope & Significance
This Special Issue encourages service marketing scholarship — including research from a Transformative Service Research (TSR) perspective — to expand its focus to include the roles of emotions and well-being. It calls for research that examines how services across physical, digital, and hybrid contexts influence consumer emotional responses and well-being — whether positively or negatively, and in both the immediate and longer term.
This shift calls for the adoption of new theoretical frameworks, innovative methodologies, and interdisciplinary collaborations that integrate marketing, psychology, design, and technology research.
The editors particularly encourage studies that explore a spectrum of emotional experiences — from stress, anxiety, and frustration to joy, pride, and awe.
List of Topic Areas
Manuscripts are invited on themes including, but not limited to:
Stress, anxiety, and coping mechanisms when services fail or frustrate
Discrete emotions as explanatory mechanisms for service use or abandonment
Emotional outcomes from transformative services
Design and employment of AI services that reduce customer anxiety
How frontline employees shape customers' discrete emotions
The impact of frontline employees' discrete emotions on customers
The role of discrete emotions in transformative service experiences — such as awe in travel or pride in self-improvement services
Designing physical and digital servicescapes that evoke emotional responses
Emotional labour and psychological work required from consumers and service employees in physical and AI service interactions
Anticipatory emotions and their impact on service usage
Psychological burden and manipulations inherent in gamified service elements — points, badges, and pressure to engage
How consumers experiencing vulnerability navigate digital-first service environments
Mental health impacts of digital service engagement and surveillance
Methodological innovations for studying emotional service experiences
Guest Editors
Dr. Rory Mulcahy 📧 (contact via journal submission platform)
Dr. Kate Letheren 📧 (contact via journal submission platform)
Key Deadlines
📅 Manuscript Submission Opens: 9 February 2026
⏰ Manuscript Submission Deadline: 31 July 2026
Methodological Approaches Welcome
The editors welcome a wide range of methodological approaches including:
✅ Qualitative research
✅ Quantitative research
✅ Mixed methods
✅ Conceptual contributions
✅ Literature reviews
✅ Methodological papers
Submission Guidelines
Submissions are made through ScholarOne Manuscripts, the official submission platform of Emerald Publishing. Authors must strictly follow the journal's author guidelines.
When submitting, select "The Emotional Burden and Uplift of Service Experiences: Designing Tomorrow's Human-Centred Services" from the special issue drop-down menu at the appropriate step in the submission process.
⚠️ Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication elsewhere while under review for this journal.
🌐 Submission Portal: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jsmktg
🌐 Author Guidelines: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jsm
About the Journal
The Journal of Services Marketing (JSM), published by Emerald Publishing, is a leading peer-reviewed journal dedicated to advancing research and practice in services marketing. It provides an international platform for scholars and practitioners exploring service design, customer experience, service innovation, and value creation — bridging academic theory with real-world marketing practice across diverse service industries and global contexts.
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