The past decade has seen the rapid development of access-based services (ABS), in which consumers temporarily access products (Belk 2010; Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012), however many ABS providers still suffer from low consumer demand (Fritze et al. 2020). Whilst ABS involve a shift away from legal ownership by consumers, psychological ownership (PO) - the feelings of ownership that consumers experience towards an entity perceived as ‘mine’ (e.g. Pierce et al. 2003) - can still occur (e.g. Fritze et al., 2020; Morewedge et al. 2021). Scholars have recognised the importance of exploring PO in ABS (Peck and Luangrath 2018). Fritze et al. (2020) demonstrated that “by leveraging the psychological power of ownership feelings” (p. 379), ABS usage can be increased. Pierce et al. (2003) proposed that ‘possession rituals’ – ritualistic practices of using, displaying and personalising via which consumers attempt to appropriate objects as their own (McCracken 1986) – can stimulate feelings of PO. However, such possession rituals have not been examined in an ABS context. We therefore respond to calls to further investigate PO in ABS (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; 2017; Peck and Luangrath 2018; Fritze et al. 2020) asking to what extent service design can support possession rituals in ABS.

13 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with ‘Rent the Runway’ users – a US-based fashion rental platform. Interview data was complemented with 4 digital user-diaries, whereby participants captured their rental experiences in real-time via text, photographs and videos. Interview and digital diary data were subjected to an iterative process of hermeneutic analysis (Thompson 1997). We identified specific possession rituals carried out by ABS users at all stages of service usage. The findings revealed that service design – in our case a ‘virtual closet’ - supported users performing various possession rituals leading to temporary feelings of ownership. Pre-access, users added items they considered renting to their virtual closet, curated their closet by categorising items (e.g., by occasion, ‘favourites’) and sharing it with friends. Respondents regularly mentioned that the virtual closet extended their physical wardrobes, and it gave them a feeling of PO toward these items before rental. During access a number of rituals were performed by users strengthening the feeling of ownership including unpacking, trying on, taking and sharing pictures, and storing items. The virtual closet was also key in the post-access stage as it allowed users to keep meaningful possessions for potential re-renting after returning these. This helped users to avoid truly divesting by rotating access-based items between their physical and virtual closet.

Our findings extend existing work on PO in ABS making a unique contribution by identifying users’ rituals in establishing temporary PO supported by service design. ABS providers should offer users the opportunity to create, curate and share digital lists of rentable items. This digital service alongside the physical rental services fosters engagement and co-creation with the service provider in addition to building loyalty and a sense of community among users. This digital experience could be further enhanced by the use of augmented reality in the future.

Service design (SD), defined as “The activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication, and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers”, is at the heart of the new service development process, and improves the customisation of user’s service experiences (Andreassen et al., 2016, p.22). Despite its importance as a creative path to service innovation, SD is considered as one of the least developed topics in service innovation research, especially in the marketing literature (Antons and Breidbach, 2018; Papastathopoulou and Hultink, 2012). In addition, firms are facing several organisational challenges during SD processes, such as the lack of structuredness, difficulty establishing collaboration, and managing the different interests of stakeholders (Vezzoli et al., 2015).

Gamification refers to the use of game elements (e.g. rewards, points, levels) in non-game contexts (Deterding et al., 2011), and is proposed as a promising tool to help solve the SD process challenges. It has proved to be a useful tool in motivating business actors to co-create, engage in discussions, and catalyse creative thinking (Andrews et al., 2018). In particular, it is expected to help improve SD team dynamics, such as team collaboration, team creativity and team engagement, which is another area of literature that would benefit from further study. According to Mathieu et al.’s (2008) meta-analysis on team effectiveness, improving team dynamics have been found to positively affect team outcomes (i.e. team effectiveness and team efficiency). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to better understand the SD process and how the application of gamification might improve the SD team dynamics and outcomes.

The research builds on the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) theory (Hoskisson et al., 1999), and the conceptual framework (see figure 1) follows the Input-Process-Outcome (IPO) paths model (Mathieu et al., 2008). We compare SD processes that make use of gamification versus those that do not use such game elements in the design process. In doing so we look to answer two research questions:

1. What is the effect of SD team dynamics on team performance?
2. Does the application of gamification catalyse the relationship between the SD team dynamics and team performance?

The study is quantitative, using an online questionnaire as the main data collection method. All the measurement scales used are adapted from pre-established scales, with some wording changes to adapt items to the SD context. Two pre-tests were conducted (with academic and practitioner experts) to check the questionnaire validity. Finally, the study targets UK service designers.

The study’s theoretical contribution includes contributing to underdeveloped service literature areas (e.g. NSD and the SD stage, and the team-level analysis of innovation). Also, this is one of the first studies to explore the effect of gamification on team dynamics and outcomes in a SD context. The practical implications of the study can offer useful insights for managers regarding the SD process, the development of more effective and efficient new services, and managing the co-design of innovation in complex service systems.

Service innovation is considered essential for shaping the customer experience (Ostrom et al., 2021) and as a positive force for firm’s survival and competitiveness (Feng et al., 2021). However, some research studies only show a weak relationship between service innovations and firm performance ( e.g., Henard and Szymanski, 2001). One possible reason for this discrepancy is the potential differences between the view of the firm developing service innovations and the consumers using them (Kleijnen et al., 2005; Pandya and Dholakia, 2005). Most research on service innovation (e.g., Dotzel et al., 2013; Oke, 2007) considers a firm-centric view of service innovations. However, consumers’ perceptions of service innovativeness greatly influence their assessment of value and further use of service innovations, and thus ultimately determines innovation success and impact on firm performance (Lin, 2019; Zolfagharian and Paswan, 2009). Simultaneously, research studies on consumers’ perception of service innovations often focus only on the current state of the service without considering the actual change introduced by the service innovation (Lin, 2016; Zolfagharian and Paswan, 2008). Considering different types or dimensions of service innovation (Witell et al., 2016), the question arises if there are specific dimensions of service innovations that consumers perceive as innovative and that drive their future use of the new services. In summary, there is a lack of research on how actual changes to service affect consumers’ perceptions of service innovativeness.

To address this gap in the literature, this study seeks to answer two research questions 1) Do actual service innovations have an impact on perceived service innovativeness? and 2) How do various dimensions of service innovations affect perceived service innovativeness? To address these research questions, we build on prior research on service innovation and consumer behavior, in particular consumer psychology. Based on this research, we design several experiments to explore the impact of changes to service on the extent to which these changes are perceived, and how they affect consumers’ perception of service innovativeness. We test multiple scenarios examining changes to different dimensions of service and their effect on consumer perceptions.

We contribute to research on service innovation by testing how service innovations influence consumers’ evaluations of service innovativeness. Through an experimental design we seek to provide evidence on what kind of changes to services are most apparent to consumers, and how different dimensions of service innovation affect perceived service innovativeness. The findings will further our understanding of how consumers perceive service innovations, thus helping firms to direct their efforts towards the dimensions of service innovation that are likely to be most impactful for consumers.

Access-based services which rent everyday durable consumer goods such as fashion clothes (e.g. Rent the Runway, Hurr), baby and maternity clothes (e.g. Bundlee), furniture (e.g. IKEA subscription furniture), tools (e.g. tool libraries), toys (e.g. toy libraries, Toybox), electronic goods (e.g. Hughes Rental), outdoor/sport equipment (e.g. Library of Things) are gaining momentum with well-known high-street retailers, such as Selfridges and John Lewis offering rental by partnering with platform providers. Access-based services (ABS) or use-oriented Product-Service-Systems (PSS) (Tukker, 2004) where ownership of the product is not transferred have the potential to extend the life cycle of products by keeping products in use for longer (Patwa et al. 2021). They are seen as a practical way to implement the circular economy concept as they decouple revenue streams from production and resource use (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2021). However, most ABS providing access to every-day consumer goods are still niche and suffer from low user acceptance (Fritze et al. 2000). Understanding user experiences and service design is crucial for the transition to a circular economy and requires behavioural change not only of users but also manufacturers and retailers which would consequently become service providers.

Whilst a number of studies have explored user motivations and barriers, there is relatively little knowledge on how successful ABS entrepreneurs design user experiences and co-create value with users. Drawing on the theory of service design which includes the six principles: human-centred, collaborative, iterative, sequential, real and holistic (Lawrence et al 2018), we examine how these principles contributed to the success of small ABS providing every-day consumer goods. Adopting a qualitative research approach, semi-structured interviews with 10 platform owners offering rental services and subscription services for toys, baby clothes, baby equipment, baby carrier sling, and libraries for toys and tools were conducted. Thematic analysis focused on examining whether the service design principles manifest within the narratives of the platform owners.

Our findings revealed that most of the ABS platforms have embedded different service design principles. Human-centred, collaborative and iterative principles are evident in their close communication and co-creation of value with users by personalising and customising offers. For example, for baby and maternity rentals, being mothers themselves, they can relate to their subscribers, understand their needs from being pregnant, first-time young mothers to mothers with toddlers. ABS providers also offer additional benefits beyond product access, such as educating users (e.g., safe use of product, styling) via one-to-one services or workshops sharing skills and knowledge which have the added benefit of building a sense of community, reflecting holistic service design principles. Platform owners’ strong motivation and commitment to sustainability, embedded in their business operations (e.g., packaging and delivery) are valued by consumers as these are aligned with their desire to be sustainable. For the libraries, their offer extends beyond use of products providing opportunities to community members to help each other.

Our findings offer managerial implications for retailers to transition to an ABS provider offering every-day consumer goods which can contribute to making this business model more mainstream.