Customer Contributions and Roles in Service Delivery

Customer contributions and roles in service delivery
Mary Jo Bitner
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

Customer contributions and roles 193
Received June 1996 Revised January 1997

William T. Faranda
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Amy R. Hubbert
University of Nebraska-Omaha, Omaha, USA

Valarie A. Zeithaml
University of North Carolina, North Carolina, USA
Introduction Service experiences are the outcomes of interactions between organizations, related systems/processes, service employees and customers. Considerable research in marketing and management has examined customer satisfaction with service experiences (e.g. Arnold and Price, 1993; Bitner, Booms and Mohr, 1994; Bitner, Booms and Tetreault, 1990; Keaveney, 1995; Ostrom and Iacobucci, 1995; Surprenant and Solomon, 1987; Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry, 1990). Predominantly, the research has focused on the roles of service processes, employees and tangibles in creating quality service experiences for customers. However, in many services customers themselves have vital roles to play in creating service outcomes and ultimately enhancing or detracting from their own satisfaction and the value received. This is true whether the customer is an end consumer (for example, consumers of health care, education, personal care, or legal services) or a business (for example, organizations purchasing maintenance, insurance, computer consulting or training services). In all of these examples, customers themselves participate at some level in creating the service and ensuring their own satisfaction. This manuscript focuses specifically on the roles of customers in creating quality and productivity in service experiences. Drawing on previous (primarily conceptual) research, two frameworks are first presented to aid managerial decision making and guide potential research related to customer participation in service[1]. The first framework examines different levels of

References: Arnold, E.J. and Price, L.L. (1993), “River Magic: extraordinary experience and the extended service encounter”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 20, June, pp. 24-45. Bateson, J.E.G. (1983), “The self-service customer – empirical findings”, in Berry, L.L., Shostack, B.L. and Upah, G.D. (Eds), Emerging Perspectives on Services Marketing, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 50-3. Bateson, J.E.G. (1985), “The self-service customer: an exploratory study”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 61 No. 3, pp. 49-76. Bitner, M.J. (1990), “Evaluating service encounters: the effects of physical surroundings and employee responses”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, April, pp. 69-82. Bitner, M.J., Booms, B.H. and Mohr, L.A. (1994), “Critical service encounters: the employee’s viewpoint”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 58, October, pp. 95-106. Bitner, M.J., Booms B.H. and Tetreault, M.S. (1990), “The service encounter: diagnosing favorable and unfavorable incidents”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, January, pp. 71-84. Bowen, D.E. (1986), “Managing customers as human resources in service organizations”, Human Resource Management, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 371-83. Bowen, D.E., and Schneider, B. (1985), “Boundary-spanning-role employees and the service encounter: some guidelines for management and research”, in Czepiel, J.A., Solomon, M.R. and Surprenant, C.F. (Eds), The Service Encounter, Lexington Press, Lexington, MA, pp. 127-47. Chase, R.B. (1978), “Where does the customer fit in a service operation?”, Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp. 137-42. Dabholkar, P.A. (1996), “Consumer evaluations of new technology-based self-service options: an investigation of alternative models of service quality”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 29-51. Faranda, W.T. (1994), “Customer participation in service production: an empirical assessment of the influence of realistic service previews”, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. Folkes, V.S. (1988), “Recent attribution research in consumer behaviour: a review and new directions”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 14, March, pp. 548-65. Goodwin, C. and Radford, R. (1993), “Models of service delivery: an integrative perspective”, in Swartz, T.A., Bowen, D.E. and Brown S.W. (Eds), Advances in Services Marketing and Management, Vol. 2, JAI Press,Greenwich, CT, pp. 231-52. Hubbert, A.R. (1995), “Customer co-creation of service outcomes: effects of locus of causality attributions”, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. Hubbert, A.R., Bitner, M.J. and Kleine, S. (1996), “Satisfaction with performance and satisfaction with the service provider: do customers make distinctions?”, in Droge C. and Calantone, R. (Eds), Proceedings of the American Marketing Association Summer Educators Conference, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 231-9. Keaveney, S.M. (1995), “Customer switching behaviour in service industries: an exploratory study”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 59, April, pp. 71-82. 204 Kelley, S.W., Donnelly, J.H. Jr and Skinner, S.J. (1990), “Customer participation in service production and delivery”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 66, Fall, pp. 315-35. Kelley, S.W., Skinner, S.J. and Donnelly, J.H. Jr (1992), “Organizational socialization of service customers”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 25, pp. 197-214. Langeard, E., Bateson, J.E.G., Lovelock, C.H. and Eigler, P. (1981), Services Marketing: New Insights from Consumers and Managers, Report No. 81-104, Marketing Science Institute, Cambridge, MA. Larsson, R. and Bowen, D.E. (1989), “Organization and customer: managing design and coordination of services”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 213-33. Lovelock, C. H. and Young, R. F. (1979), “Look to consumers to increase productivity”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 57, Summer, pp. 9-20. Lusch, R.F., Brown, S.W. and Brunswick, G.J. (1992), “A general framework for explaining internal vs. external exchange”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 10, Spring, pp. 119-34. Mills, P.K. and Morris, J.H. (1986), “Clients as ‘partial’ employees: role development in client participation”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 726-35. Mills, P.K., Chase, R.B. and Margulies, N. (1983), “Motivating the client/employee system as a service production strategy”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 301-10. Ostrom, A. and Iacobucci, D. (1995), “Consumer trade-offs and the evaluation of services”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 59, January, pp. 17-28. Schneider, B. and. Bowen, D.E (1995), Winning the Service Game, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Silpakit, P. and Fisk, R.P. (1985), “‘Participatizing’ the service encounter: a theoretical framework”, in Block, T.M., Upah, G.D. and Zeithaml, V.A. (Eds), Service Marketing in a Changing Environment, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 117-21. Surprenant, C.F. and Solomon, M.R. (1987), “Predictability and personalization in the service encounter”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 51, April, pp. 73-80. Zeithaml, V.A. and Bitner, M.J. (1996), Services Marketing, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Zeithaml, V.A., Parasuraman, A. and Berry, L.L. (1990), Delivering Quality Service: Perceptions and Expectations, Free Press, New York, NY. Customer contributions and roles 205