The global economy has experienced profound transformations in the last decade. One of the worst economic and financial crisis has left lasting effects on the way how markets work. The old receipts struggle to foster a much desired recovery. However, at the heart of the market we still find the final customers as key actors. An important part of the economic activity depends on their needs, their preferences and the way that companies design to satisfy them. If clients buy, companies grow and, as a consequence, the economy should grow. It is fair to say that customer experience and its management in the 21st century are profoundly different. So we need to develop new ways to understand the customer and serve it. What is the best way to deliver high value added services to the final clients? How can we prevent customer misbehavior in the sharing economy? How can we organize data on customers in order to understand them better? Why are we growing so little after the big recession?

These are some of the questions that our invited experts will try to answer in these series of conferences.

Many suppliers invest heavily in channel partner programs that incentivize selling and learning. The authors conduct a multi-wave field study to investigate the roles of indebtedness and gratitude in transforming these investments into returns. The results show that indebtedness has negative effects on commitment to the supplier, as well as the reseller's sales effort. Gratitude however attenuates the effects of indebtedness on sales effort and commitment, and thus offers a buffer against indebtedness' negative effects. Indebtedness and gratitude thus play key roles in channel partner programs.

In addition, the results highlight the importance of perceived motives as they differentially predict these two states. Benevolent motives are found to increase gratitude, though ulterior motives do not detract from it. Ulterior motives do however increase indebtedness. Finally, the results also reveal how entitlement negatively impacts channel partner programs: It decreases the positive effect of perceived program value on partner gratitude while increasing the effect of ulterior motives on indebtedness. This study thus assesses the simultaneous yet contrasting role of gratitude and indebtedness, as well as the complexity associated with realizing the full benefits of channel partner programs. The findings have implications for suppliers, marketers, and further research.