Guest editorial: A theatrical perspective of customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions and helping behaviours in the banking environment

The banking environment is characterised by service encounters, service experiences and customer journeys (Van Tonder and Saunders, 2025). Guided by Grove and Fisk's (2001) work on service theatre, these events may collectively be viewed as a theatrical show, where different actors perform to entertain and satisfy the needs of the audience. Moreover, the show's cast may comprise many different actors, interacting with each other to convey the plot and ensuring the play is well performed. For example, bank personnel may interact with customers and assist with completing banking transactions. At some stage, non-human actors (i.e. self-service technologies, artificial intelligence-enabled self-service kiosks) may additionally enter the stage and interact with customers to address their banking needs (Van Tonder and Saunders, 2025). Subsequently, several investigations have been conducted in bank marketing research to better understand the behaviour of the actors both human and technological and to improve interactions between them (Kumar et al., 2022; Ashrafuzzaman et al., 2025; Minhaj and Khan, 2025).However, a more neglected area of bank marketing research is in better understanding the helping interactions that may transpire between customers when banking transactions are performed. Aside from being assisted by banking employees, customers may also obtain help from fellow customers during the “bank's show”. These behaviours may especially occur when more skilled customers guide vulnerable customers in completing banking transactions or assist other customers with a new bank offering (Van Tonder and Saunders, 2025). While some research has been conducted in this regard (see, for example, Fatma et al., 2022; Hameed et al., 2019), more work is needed to strengthen the theory in managing these customers and their helping interactions. Theoretical advances and practical implications can heighten the success of the show. Helping behaviours among customers may contribute to product adoption and customer loyalty (Van Tonder and Saunders, 2025).Accordingly, the contributions in this special issue provide more insight into customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions and helping behaviours in the banking environment that may strengthen theory development. Cui and van Esch (2026) examined how integrating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into product offerings affects the monetary valuations of consumers throughout the service journey (pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase phases). Their findings provide direction for improving C2C interactions in banking, especially in the NFT market. Mpinganjira (2026), in her study, conducted a bibliometric and content analysis of C2C helping behaviour in financial services and digital platforms. Her research outlines the intellectual structure of the domain, identifies literature gaps and guides further research on this topic. Maduku and Dlamini (2026) examined C2C peer advice via social media in relation to professional financial-advisor advice and assessed the extent to which both may affect customer trust, perceived usefulness and behavioural intentions to adopt financial savings advice. Accordingly, their research advances knowledge of advice adoption and concludes with practical guidance for banking institutions having to manage digital and offline environments and ensuring services of high standards are delivered. Ettalibi et al. (2026) examined C2C interactions on social media that address banking-related topics. Accordingly, the findings provide valuable guidance for addressing service standards and to understand conversations among banking customers in online environments. Moharrak and Mogaji (2026) present a novel conceptual framework of C2C interactions in Islamic banking. Their research addresses key aspects, such as institutional logics, trust and constructive and disruptive outcomes. van Tonder (2026) offers a viewpoint and call to action pertaining to ongoing value co-creation, despite service encounter challenges in the banking environment. A key finding of her paper is that customer experiences could in fact be influenced by the inputs of a variety of actors, within more than one service ecosystem. Guidelines are provided for further research on this topic.Collectively, this special edition underscores the emerging theory that customers do not merely perform the role of silent audience members in the bank's show. Instead, in the contemporary service environment, they have now joined the play as lead actors, whose roles affect service encounters, service experiences and service journeys. Bank providers that influence the lines of these customers will influence the stories being told. Therefore, strategies must be deployed to ensure customers are well prepared to fulfil their roles and understand their contributions to the bigger show. The articles in this special issue provide the opening scene for further debate and deliberation on this very important topic. Service researchers and bank providers are encouraged to take part and to continue writing the narrative of these C2C interactions and helping behaviour theory.