Pub Date : 2023-06-08DOI: 10.1177/10946705231180368
N. Heirati, Alexander Leischnig, S. Henneberg
Despite the growing importance of servitization as a source of competitiveness for manufacturers, limited knowledge exists about organizational issues of servitization. Drawing on transaction cost economics theory and a configuration theoretical perspective, our study illuminates different organization architectures for servitization and how firms align such architectures with servitization approaches to achieve high financial performance. We analyze qualitative data based on interviews with 22 managers and quantitative data from a survey of 161 equipment manufacturers. The results indicate that manufacturers mostly opt for one of three organization architectures for servitization: internal product business unit, internal specialized service business unit, or external service provider. In addition, they reveal equifinal configurations of servitization characteristics to achieve high financial performance for each organization architecture. The internal specialized service business unit turns out as a flexible organization architecture to successfully provide smoothing, adapting, and substituting services. The use of an external service provider is less suited for the provision of adapting and substituting services, which require more knowledge specialization and coordination. All three organization architectures can be used to provide smoothing services. In summary, the results may serve as decision-making templates for aligning organization architecture, offering characteristics, and service provider integration to pursue servitization successfully.
{"title":"Organization Architecture Configurations for Successful Servitization","authors":"N. Heirati, Alexander Leischnig, S. Henneberg","doi":"10.1177/10946705231180368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231180368","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the growing importance of servitization as a source of competitiveness for manufacturers, limited knowledge exists about organizational issues of servitization. Drawing on transaction cost economics theory and a configuration theoretical perspective, our study illuminates different organization architectures for servitization and how firms align such architectures with servitization approaches to achieve high financial performance. We analyze qualitative data based on interviews with 22 managers and quantitative data from a survey of 161 equipment manufacturers. The results indicate that manufacturers mostly opt for one of three organization architectures for servitization: internal product business unit, internal specialized service business unit, or external service provider. In addition, they reveal equifinal configurations of servitization characteristics to achieve high financial performance for each organization architecture. The internal specialized service business unit turns out as a flexible organization architecture to successfully provide smoothing, adapting, and substituting services. The use of an external service provider is less suited for the provision of adapting and substituting services, which require more knowledge specialization and coordination. All three organization architectures can be used to provide smoothing services. In summary, the results may serve as decision-making templates for aligning organization architecture, offering characteristics, and service provider integration to pursue servitization successfully.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"117 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87093488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While service providers strive to maintain customer relationships, a nontrivial number of customers downgrade their services, something that has been particularly true during the post-pandemic period or economic recession. Studying downgrade behavior is vital because it damages the bottom-line performance of service providers and reflects a reduced customer commitment. Unlike previous studies, we further divide downgrade behavior based on whether there is a change in the product category, that is, a downgrade to a lower-priced service option within the same product category (“pure downgrade”) versus a downgrade to a lower-priced service option in a different product category (“hybrid downgrade”). An analysis of customer data collected from a major telecommunications company shows fundamental differences in the determinants and consequences of these two downgrades. Transaction-related variables, such as service usage, have a significantly stronger positive effect on the likelihood of hybrid downgrade than on that of pure downgrade. Conversely, relationship-related variables like relationship length have an inverted U-shaped effect on pure downgrade but barely affect the likelihood of hybrid downgrade. Interestingly, customers who engage in pure downgrade are more likely to churn than those who engage in hybrid downgrade. The empirical findings offer valuable insights on customer relationships and churn management.
{"title":"Reductions in Customer Commitment: An Empirical Study on Pure Downgrade versus Hybrid Downgrade","authors":"Chenxi Zhou, Liming Lin, Zhaoyang Guo, Juncai Jiang","doi":"10.1177/10946705231180048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231180048","url":null,"abstract":"While service providers strive to maintain customer relationships, a nontrivial number of customers downgrade their services, something that has been particularly true during the post-pandemic period or economic recession. Studying downgrade behavior is vital because it damages the bottom-line performance of service providers and reflects a reduced customer commitment. Unlike previous studies, we further divide downgrade behavior based on whether there is a change in the product category, that is, a downgrade to a lower-priced service option within the same product category (“pure downgrade”) versus a downgrade to a lower-priced service option in a different product category (“hybrid downgrade”). An analysis of customer data collected from a major telecommunications company shows fundamental differences in the determinants and consequences of these two downgrades. Transaction-related variables, such as service usage, have a significantly stronger positive effect on the likelihood of hybrid downgrade than on that of pure downgrade. Conversely, relationship-related variables like relationship length have an inverted U-shaped effect on pure downgrade but barely affect the likelihood of hybrid downgrade. Interestingly, customers who engage in pure downgrade are more likely to churn than those who engage in hybrid downgrade. The empirical findings offer valuable insights on customer relationships and churn management.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135643010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-26DOI: 10.1177/10946705231177504
Juuli Lumivalo, T. Tuunanen, Markus Salo
The service-dominant (S-D) logic lens for understanding value co-creation and customers’ interactive roles in the service exchange has emerged as a focal theme of interest among service academics and practitioners. While recent investigations have also focused on the process of value co-destruction—that is, how potential negative outcomes occur—the concept and its distinction from value co-creation remain unclear. This conceptual review synthesizes the concept of value co-destruction and proposes a framework consisting of two interrelated dimensions—actor–actor interaction and individual actor —and their components at three temporal points of the service encounter. We distinguish value co-destruction from other closely related concepts and take steps to integrate the value co-destruction concept into the S-D logic framework and the concept of value co-creation. The proposed integrative framework can help researchers and service practitioners alike to identify, analyze, and rectify the value co-destruction components in the service exchange and, thereby, avoid potential negative outcomes of service interactions. A threefold research agenda is proposed to obtain a more balanced understanding of the two dynamically interrelated concepts of value co-creation and value co-destruction and their application in practice.
{"title":"Value Co-Destruction: A Conceptual Review and Future Research Agenda","authors":"Juuli Lumivalo, T. Tuunanen, Markus Salo","doi":"10.1177/10946705231177504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231177504","url":null,"abstract":"The service-dominant (S-D) logic lens for understanding value co-creation and customers’ interactive roles in the service exchange has emerged as a focal theme of interest among service academics and practitioners. While recent investigations have also focused on the process of value co-destruction—that is, how potential negative outcomes occur—the concept and its distinction from value co-creation remain unclear. This conceptual review synthesizes the concept of value co-destruction and proposes a framework consisting of two interrelated dimensions—actor–actor interaction and individual actor —and their components at three temporal points of the service encounter. We distinguish value co-destruction from other closely related concepts and take steps to integrate the value co-destruction concept into the S-D logic framework and the concept of value co-creation. The proposed integrative framework can help researchers and service practitioners alike to identify, analyze, and rectify the value co-destruction components in the service exchange and, thereby, avoid potential negative outcomes of service interactions. A threefold research agenda is proposed to obtain a more balanced understanding of the two dynamically interrelated concepts of value co-creation and value co-destruction and their application in practice.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80948352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-25DOI: 10.1177/10946705231176070
Helena Nguyen, Markus Groth, Anya Johnson
Team display rules are expressive norms shared by team members about how to positively impact a customer's perception of service quality and satisfaction. For frontline employees' working in teams, however, the costs and benefits of team display rules are less clear as empirical links to objective, behavioral outcomes, such as turnover, are rare. In a study of 442 healthcare professionals, working within 72 teams in a large children’s hospital, we investigate the effects of positive team display rules (i.e., shared expectations among team members to express positive emotions) and negative team display rules (i.e., shared expectations among team members to suppress negative emotions) on time-lagged objective voluntary turnover. We found that positive team display rules prompted retention, while negative team display rules reduced psychological attachment (i.e., affective commitment) and increased voluntary turnover 12 months later. Team negative affective tone (i.e., negative emotions associated with different healthcare team contexts) amplified the detrimental effects of negative team display rules. Overall, this study highlights the important and nuanced effects of the socioemotional context of service teams, in particular, the consequential influence of team display rules on FLEs turnover behavior in a critical service context, that is, healthcare.
{"title":"How Display Rules Influence Turnover in Healthcare Teams and the Moderating Role of Team Negative Affective Tone","authors":"Helena Nguyen, Markus Groth, Anya Johnson","doi":"10.1177/10946705231176070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231176070","url":null,"abstract":"Team display rules are expressive norms shared by team members about how to positively impact a customer's perception of service quality and satisfaction. For frontline employees' working in teams, however, the costs and benefits of team display rules are less clear as empirical links to objective, behavioral outcomes, such as turnover, are rare. In a study of 442 healthcare professionals, working within 72 teams in a large children’s hospital, we investigate the effects of positive team display rules (i.e., shared expectations among team members to express positive emotions) and negative team display rules (i.e., shared expectations among team members to suppress negative emotions) on time-lagged objective voluntary turnover. We found that positive team display rules prompted retention, while negative team display rules reduced psychological attachment (i.e., affective commitment) and increased voluntary turnover 12 months later. Team negative affective tone (i.e., negative emotions associated with different healthcare team contexts) amplified the detrimental effects of negative team display rules. Overall, this study highlights the important and nuanced effects of the socioemotional context of service teams, in particular, the consequential influence of team display rules on FLEs turnover behavior in a critical service context, that is, healthcare.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90830679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-20DOI: 10.1177/10946705231175937
K. Verleye, Arne De Keyser, N. Raassens, A. Alblas, Fernando C. Lit, J. Huijben
Circular business models (CBMs), such as product-service systems, are rapidly gaining traction in light of a transition to a more circular and sustainable economy. The authors call for a new approach to inform and guide the development and adoption of these CBMs. The main reason is that different actors in the service ecosystems or networks linked to these business models—such as firms, customers, and governmental bodies—may be reluctant to join or even impede the transition to a circular economy. Based upon an abductive analysis of 133 CBM papers with the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) framework as organizing structure, the authors theorize about how to achieve “circular economy engagement” ( i.e., an actor’s disposition to embrace CBMs). Specifically, they highlight and illustrate the role of (1) signaling and convincing as motivation-related practices, (2) matching and legitimizing as opportunity-related practices, and (3) supporting and empowering as ability-related practices. The authors provide illustrative cases for each of these practices along with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications and the remaining challenges—all with the key aim to push the transition to a circular economy forward.
{"title":"Pushing Forward the Transition to a Circular Economy by Adopting an Actor Engagement Lens","authors":"K. Verleye, Arne De Keyser, N. Raassens, A. Alblas, Fernando C. Lit, J. Huijben","doi":"10.1177/10946705231175937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231175937","url":null,"abstract":"Circular business models (CBMs), such as product-service systems, are rapidly gaining traction in light of a transition to a more circular and sustainable economy. The authors call for a new approach to inform and guide the development and adoption of these CBMs. The main reason is that different actors in the service ecosystems or networks linked to these business models—such as firms, customers, and governmental bodies—may be reluctant to join or even impede the transition to a circular economy. Based upon an abductive analysis of 133 CBM papers with the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) framework as organizing structure, the authors theorize about how to achieve “circular economy engagement” ( i.e., an actor’s disposition to embrace CBMs). Specifically, they highlight and illustrate the role of (1) signaling and convincing as motivation-related practices, (2) matching and legitimizing as opportunity-related practices, and (3) supporting and empowering as ability-related practices. The authors provide illustrative cases for each of these practices along with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications and the remaining challenges—all with the key aim to push the transition to a circular economy forward.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84045063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-16DOI: 10.1177/10946705231176071
Kaisa Koskela-Huotari, Kristin Svärd, H. Williams, Jakob Trischler, F. Wikström
Making service provisioning significantly more sustainable is crucial if humankind wants to make a serious effort to operate within the boundaries of what the planet can support. The purpose of this paper is to develop a systemic understanding of sustainability in service provision and shed light on the mechanisms that drive unsustainability and hinder service providers in their efforts to be more sustainable. To contextualize our study, we focus on a significant sustainability problem: food waste stemming from food retail at the retailer-consumer interface. We make two theoretical contributions to the service research on sustainability. First, we offer a systemic conceptualization of sustainability in service as a dynamic ability of a focal system (e.g., a service firm) to sustain the system(s) that contains it. Second, we explicate the mechanisms—stocks and flows, feedback and mindsets—that contribute to (un)sustainable service provision as a systemic behavior, and which can thus be used as intervention points when designing sustainability initiatives. Our work also has significant practical implications for food retailers and policymakers working towards reaching UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, as we specify the feedback loops that drive food waste and hinder efforts to reduce it at the retailer-consumer interface.
{"title":"Drivers and Hinderers of (Un)Sustainable Service: A Systems View","authors":"Kaisa Koskela-Huotari, Kristin Svärd, H. Williams, Jakob Trischler, F. Wikström","doi":"10.1177/10946705231176071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231176071","url":null,"abstract":"Making service provisioning significantly more sustainable is crucial if humankind wants to make a serious effort to operate within the boundaries of what the planet can support. The purpose of this paper is to develop a systemic understanding of sustainability in service provision and shed light on the mechanisms that drive unsustainability and hinder service providers in their efforts to be more sustainable. To contextualize our study, we focus on a significant sustainability problem: food waste stemming from food retail at the retailer-consumer interface. We make two theoretical contributions to the service research on sustainability. First, we offer a systemic conceptualization of sustainability in service as a dynamic ability of a focal system (e.g., a service firm) to sustain the system(s) that contains it. Second, we explicate the mechanisms—stocks and flows, feedback and mindsets—that contribute to (un)sustainable service provision as a systemic behavior, and which can thus be used as intervention points when designing sustainability initiatives. Our work also has significant practical implications for food retailers and policymakers working towards reaching UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, as we specify the feedback loops that drive food waste and hinder efforts to reduce it at the retailer-consumer interface.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86410933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-09DOI: 10.1177/10946705231175286
Todd Arnold, Detelina Marinova
As an introduction to a Journal of Service Research special issue in 2017, Singh et al. advanced the concept of studying the organizational frontline as a noun, signaling a conceptual shift from the paradigm of using “frontline” as a qualifying adjective to modify a phenomenon of interest (i.e., frontline employee, frontline tensions, or frontline knowledge). This special issue builds upon this concept by presenting papers that examine the frontline itself. Specifically, the focus of this special issue is to highlight changes that are impacting the organizational frontline, driven by both man and nature, that have sparked disruptions in frontline routine. A functioning society is based upon personal routine and interpersonal assumptions for guiding our behaviors (Collins 1981). That is, we all rely upon social norms to help guide us. What happens, though, when such assumptions and routines are disrupted? What triggers such disruptions, and what forms might such disruptions take? The purpose of this introduction to the special issue is to examine such key elements of disruption in relation to changes developing at the organizational frontline. This examination of disruption will then be linked to each of the articles found in the special issue. In order to accomplish this, we first begin with a discussion of what is meant by disruption. We then offer a definition of disruption in relation to the organizational frontline. Following this, we discuss the sources, severity, and speed elements associated with disruption at the organizational frontline. This allows for the categorization of disruption, which then facilitates the placement of research focused on disruption and changes in the organizational frontline. We conclude by looking forward to research needed across these domains.
{"title":"Disrupting the Organizational Frontlines","authors":"Todd Arnold, Detelina Marinova","doi":"10.1177/10946705231175286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231175286","url":null,"abstract":"As an introduction to a Journal of Service Research special issue in 2017, Singh et al. advanced the concept of studying the organizational frontline as a noun, signaling a conceptual shift from the paradigm of using “frontline” as a qualifying adjective to modify a phenomenon of interest (i.e., frontline employee, frontline tensions, or frontline knowledge). This special issue builds upon this concept by presenting papers that examine the frontline itself. Specifically, the focus of this special issue is to highlight changes that are impacting the organizational frontline, driven by both man and nature, that have sparked disruptions in frontline routine. A functioning society is based upon personal routine and interpersonal assumptions for guiding our behaviors (Collins 1981). That is, we all rely upon social norms to help guide us. What happens, though, when such assumptions and routines are disrupted? What triggers such disruptions, and what forms might such disruptions take? The purpose of this introduction to the special issue is to examine such key elements of disruption in relation to changes developing at the organizational frontline. This examination of disruption will then be linked to each of the articles found in the special issue. In order to accomplish this, we first begin with a discussion of what is meant by disruption. We then offer a definition of disruption in relation to the organizational frontline. Following this, we discuss the sources, severity, and speed elements associated with disruption at the organizational frontline. This allows for the categorization of disruption, which then facilitates the placement of research focused on disruption and changes in the organizational frontline. We conclude by looking forward to research needed across these domains.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"9 1","pages":"303 - 309"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76199827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-29DOI: 10.1177/10946705231173116
T. Tuunanen, Juuli Lumivalo, Tero Vartiainen, Yixin Zhang, M. M. Myers
This study identifies micro-level value co-creation mechanisms that support the design of digital services. As services are now becoming digital—or at least digitally enabled—how to design digital services that enable value co-creation between a service provider and customers has become an increasingly important question. Our qualitative research study provides one answer to this question. Based on 113 in-depth laddering interviews analyzed using interpretive structural modeling, our study shows that value co-creation mechanisms differ between business-to-business and customer-to-customer digital service types. We identify five mechanisms to support value co-creation in the design of digital services: (1) Social use, (2) Customer orientation and decision making, (3) Service experience, (4) Service use context, and (5) Customer values and goals. We claim that firms can readily utilize these mechanisms to improve their customers’ service experiences.
{"title":"Micro-Level Mechanisms to Support Value Co-Creation for Design of Digital Services","authors":"T. Tuunanen, Juuli Lumivalo, Tero Vartiainen, Yixin Zhang, M. M. Myers","doi":"10.1177/10946705231173116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231173116","url":null,"abstract":"This study identifies micro-level value co-creation mechanisms that support the design of digital services. As services are now becoming digital—or at least digitally enabled—how to design digital services that enable value co-creation between a service provider and customers has become an increasingly important question. Our qualitative research study provides one answer to this question. Based on 113 in-depth laddering interviews analyzed using interpretive structural modeling, our study shows that value co-creation mechanisms differ between business-to-business and customer-to-customer digital service types. We identify five mechanisms to support value co-creation in the design of digital services: (1) Social use, (2) Customer orientation and decision making, (3) Service experience, (4) Service use context, and (5) Customer values and goals. We claim that firms can readily utilize these mechanisms to improve their customers’ service experiences.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86384695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-26DOI: 10.1177/10946705231171740
D. Bourdin, Christina Sichtmann, Vasileios Davvetas
The increase of immigrant employees in services has made intercultural service encounters a commonplace phenomenon. In these encounters, customers frequently use service employees’ accent to infer their ethnic background, often eliciting cultural stereotypes. However, it is still unknown how accent-based stereotyping impacts customer participation (CP), that is, the degree to which customers engage in the service process by contributing effort, knowledge, and information to improve their service experience. Addressing this question in four experimental studies ( Ntotal = 1,027), we find that (1) customers contribute less to the service encounter voluntarily when the employee has an unfavorable foreign (compared to a local) accent, (2) the negative effects of unfavorable accents on voluntary CP are stronger than the positive effects of favorable ones, (3) accent-based employee stereotypes (superiority, attractiveness, dynamism) mediate the impact of accents on CP, (4) unfavorable accents impede even participatory tasks mandatory for service completion, and (5) accent effects on CP are dampened for customers with a high need for interaction and can be managerially neutralized through self-service options that offer customers higher control over the service delivery. Our findings inform staffing and training decisions for frontline service roles commonly undertaken by immigrants and assist the design of intercultural service delivery systems.
{"title":"The Influence of Employee Accent on Customer Participation in Services","authors":"D. Bourdin, Christina Sichtmann, Vasileios Davvetas","doi":"10.1177/10946705231171740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231171740","url":null,"abstract":"The increase of immigrant employees in services has made intercultural service encounters a commonplace phenomenon. In these encounters, customers frequently use service employees’ accent to infer their ethnic background, often eliciting cultural stereotypes. However, it is still unknown how accent-based stereotyping impacts customer participation (CP), that is, the degree to which customers engage in the service process by contributing effort, knowledge, and information to improve their service experience. Addressing this question in four experimental studies ( Ntotal = 1,027), we find that (1) customers contribute less to the service encounter voluntarily when the employee has an unfavorable foreign (compared to a local) accent, (2) the negative effects of unfavorable accents on voluntary CP are stronger than the positive effects of favorable ones, (3) accent-based employee stereotypes (superiority, attractiveness, dynamism) mediate the impact of accents on CP, (4) unfavorable accents impede even participatory tasks mandatory for service completion, and (5) accent effects on CP are dampened for customers with a high need for interaction and can be managerially neutralized through self-service options that offer customers higher control over the service delivery. Our findings inform staffing and training decisions for frontline service roles commonly undertaken by immigrants and assist the design of intercultural service delivery systems.","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89517718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-23DOI: 10.1177/10946705231169674
Bing Han, Xun Deng, Hua Fan
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) service robots is on the rise. With service frontlines gradually shifting to human–robot interactions, the question of whether the anthropomorphism of robots facilitates or constrains consumers’ experiences has emerged. This article focuses on the individual factor “consumer mindset” (competition vs collaboration) and investigates how it impacts consumers’ attitudes toward anthropomorphic AI robots during service delivery. Across three studies, we confirm our main prediction that competitive mindset consumers respond less favorably to anthropomorphic (vs. non-anthropomorphic) AI robots, whereas collaborative mindset consumers respond more favorably to anthropomorphic (vs. non-anthropomorphic) AI robots. We test the mediating role of perceived psychological closeness and the moderating role of interaction distance to explain the underlying mechanism. Our findings provide theoretical insights into the mixed results of previous studies of service robot anthropomorphism and have practical implications for service agencies using frontline robots. Graphical Abstract
{"title":"Partners or Opponents? How Mindset Shapes Consumers’ Attitude Toward Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence Service Robots","authors":"Bing Han, Xun Deng, Hua Fan","doi":"10.1177/10946705231169674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705231169674","url":null,"abstract":"The use of artificial intelligence (AI) service robots is on the rise. With service frontlines gradually shifting to human–robot interactions, the question of whether the anthropomorphism of robots facilitates or constrains consumers’ experiences has emerged. This article focuses on the individual factor “consumer mindset” (competition vs collaboration) and investigates how it impacts consumers’ attitudes toward anthropomorphic AI robots during service delivery. Across three studies, we confirm our main prediction that competitive mindset consumers respond less favorably to anthropomorphic (vs. non-anthropomorphic) AI robots, whereas collaborative mindset consumers respond more favorably to anthropomorphic (vs. non-anthropomorphic) AI robots. We test the mediating role of perceived psychological closeness and the moderating role of interaction distance to explain the underlying mechanism. Our findings provide theoretical insights into the mixed results of previous studies of service robot anthropomorphism and have practical implications for service agencies using frontline robots. Graphical Abstract","PeriodicalId":48358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Service Research","volume":"11 1","pages":"441 - 458"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78928893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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