Today we identify service articles published in Marketing, Management, Operations, Productions, Information Systems & Practioner-oriented Journals in February 2017.
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Wirtz, J. and V. Zeithaml (2017): Cost-effective service excellence, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, (), pp.
This article integrates relevant literature to develop a conceptual model on the potential avenues to achieve service excellence at low unit costs, which we term cost-effective service excellence (CESE). To gain a deeper understanding of these strategies, their applicability and interrelatedness, we analyze how 10 organizations have achieved CESE. Our findings show that CESE can be achieved through three core strategies. First, a dual culture strategy provides a comprehensive set of high-quality services at low cost, largely driven by leadership ambidexterity and contextual ambidexterity. Second, an operations management approach reduces process variability and thereby allows the increased use of systems and technology to achieve CESE. Third, a focused service factory strategy can enable CESE through a highly specialized operation, typically delivering a single type of service to a highly focused customer segment. The use of the three approaches ranges from “pure” (e.g., mostly pursuing a dual culture strategy) to combinations of the latter two approaches with the dual culture strategy (e.g., a focused service factory strategy combined with dual culture). Our conceptual model provides an integrated view of the strategic options available to organizations that aim to pursue a strategy of CESE.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-017-0560-7 [Google]
Malone, S., S. McKechnie and C. Tynan (2017): Tourists’ Emotions as a Resource for Customer Value Creation, Cocreation, and Destruction: A Customer-Grounded Understanding, Journal of Travel Research, (), pp.4.72875e+13
Research on customer value creation in a tourism setting has tended to prioritize the firm?s over the customer?s perspective. However, new understandings of customer value through the lens of customer-dominant logic emphasize the need to consider value as emerging within the broader context of a customer?s lifeworld, which transcends customer?firm interactions and includes interactions with others. Tourism experiences are experiential and meaning-laden at the individual and collective levels. As a resource for value creation, emotions play an important but underexplored role during value-in-use and influence the tourist?s consumption experience. We provide a customer-grounded understanding of value creation as emerging and evolving over time by examining how emotions are experienced and contribute to the holistic consumption experience both intra- and intersubjectively. By demonstrating how emotions, as a customer operant resource, contribute to the process of value creation as well as value destruction, we extend our knowledge of experiential consumption practices.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047287517720118 [Google]
Berry, L. L., T. S. Danaher, D. Beckham, R. L. A. Awdish and K. S. Mate (2017): When Patients and Their Families Feel Like Hostages to Health Care, Mayo Clin Proc, 92(9), pp.1373-1381
Patients are often reluctant to assert their interests in the presence of clinicians, whom they see as experts. The higher the stakes of a health decision, the more entrenched the socially sanctioned roles of patient and clinician can become. As a result, many patients are susceptible to “hostage bargaining syndrome” (HBS), whereby they behave as if negotiating for their health from a position of fear and confusion. It may manifest as understating a concern, asking for less than what is desired or needed, or even remaining silent against one’s better judgment. When HBS persists and escalates, a patient may succumb to learned helplessness, making his or her authentic involvement in shared decision making almost impossible. To subvert HBS and prevent learned helplessness, clinicians must aim to be sensitive to the power imbalance inherent in the clinician-patient relationship. They should then actively and mindfully pursue shared decision making by helping patients trust that it is safe to communicate their concerns and priorities, ask questions about the available clinical options, and contribute knowledge of self to clinical decisions about their care. Hostage bargaining syndrome is an insidious psychosocial dynamic that can compromise quality of care, but clinicians often have the power to arrest it and reverse it by appreciating, paradoxically, how patients’ perceptions of their power as experts play a central role in the care they provide.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2017.05.015 [Google]
Uy, M. A., K. Jia Lin and R. Ilies (2017): Is It Better To Give Or Receive? The Role Of Help In Buffering The Depleting Effects Of Surface Acting, Academy of Management Journal, 60(4), pp.1442-1461
The resource-depleting effect of surface acting is well established. Yet we know less about the pervasiveness of this depleting effect and what employees can do at work to replenish their resources. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and the ecological congruence model, we conduct a five-day diary study among customer service representatives (CSRs) to examine the extended depleting effect of surface acting and whether social interactions with coworkers (i.e., giving and receiving help) can mitigate the negative consequences of emotional labor. Momentary reports from 102 CSRs indicate that within person daily surface acting positively predicted end-of-day emotional exhaustion, and the effect of emotional exhaustion spilled over to work engagement the following day. Analyzing the within-person moderating effects of giving and receiving help at work, we find that giving help buffered the depletion process while receiving help did not. We discuss the theoretical and practical significance of considering the temporality of the resource-depleting effects of surface acting, the role of at-work help giving in buffering the negative effect of emotional labor that could affect the sense of self, and the importance of resource congruence in influencing the efficacy of buffering effects.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2015.0611 [Google]
Gloor, P., A. Fronzetti Colladon, G. Giacomelli, T. Saran and F. Grippa (2017): The impact of virtual mirroring on customer satisfaction, Journal of Business Research, 75(), pp.67-76
We investigate the impact of a novel method called “virtual mirroring” to promote employee self-reflection and impact customer satisfaction. The method is based on measuring communication patterns, through social network and semantic analysis, and mirroring them back to the individual. Our goal is to demonstrate that self-reflection can trigger a change in communication behaviors, which lead to increased customer satisfaction. We illustrate and test our approach analyzing e-mails of a large global services company by comparing changes in customer satisfaction associated with team leaders exposed to virtual mirroring (the experimental group). We find an increase in customer satisfaction in the experimental group and a decrease in the control group (team leaders not involved in the virtual mirroring process). With regard to the individual communication indicators, we find that customer satisfaction is higher when employees are more responsive, use a simpler language, are embedded in less centralized communication networks, and show more stable leadership patterns.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.02.010 [Google]
Worm, S., S. Bharadwaj, W. Ulaga and W. Reinartz (2017): When and why do customer solutions pay off in business markets?, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(4), pp.490-512
Manufacturers invest in customer solutions to differentiate their offerings and sustain profitability despite declining margins from goods sales. Notwithstanding strong managerial and academic interest, an examination of whether and explanations for when and why solutions translate into superior performance are lacking. We test hypotheses developed from the resource-based theory and transaction cost economics, supplemented with in-depth theory-in-use interviews, on primary and secondary data collected from 175 manufacturers. From a model that corrects for endogeneity, the findings suggest that, compared with other service offerings, solutions are associated with increased return on sales. This positive profitability effect is enhanced in firms with greater sales capabilities; it is stronger in industries with greater buyer power but weaker in technology-intensive industries. These results caution against the simplistic view of solutions as a universal route to gaining competitive advantage and aid in better identifying the role of solutions in a manufacturer’s offering portfolio.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-017-0529-6 [Google]
Yang, L., L. Debo and V. Gupta (2017): Trading Time in a Congested Environment, Management Science, 63(7), pp.2377-2395
The first in, first out (FIFO) queue discipline respects the order of arrivals, but is not efficient when customers have heterogeneous waiting costs. Priority queues, in which customers with higher waiting costs are served first, are more efficient but usually involve undesirable queue-jumping behaviors that violate bumped customers’ property rights over their waiting spots. To have the best of both worlds, we propose time-trading mechanisms, in which customers who are privately informed about their waiting costs mutually agree on the ordering in the queue by trading positions. If a customer ever moves back in the queue, she will receive an appropriate monetary compensation. Customers can always decide not to participate in trading and retain their positions as if they are being served FIFO. We design the optimal mechanisms for the social planner, the service provider, and an intermediary who might mediate the trading platform. Both the social planner’s and the service provider’s optimal mechanisms involve a flat admission fee and an auction that implements strict priority. If a revenue-maximizing intermediary operates the trading platform, it should charge a trade participation fee and implement an auction with some trade restrictions. Therefore, customers are not strictly prioritized. However, relative to a FIFO system, the intermediary delivers value to the social planner by improving efficiency, and to the service provider by increasing its revenue. This paper was accepted by Noah Gans, stochastic models and simulation.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2436 [Google]
De, P., L. Hao, Y.-M. Li and Y. Tan (2017): Quality of Service Based Pricing Schemes for Content Sharing in Peer-to-Peer Networks, Production & Operations Management, 26(8), pp.1427-1443
In this paper, we study quality-of-service (QoS) based pricing schemes that serve as incentive mechanisms to induce sharing behaviors in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. We incorporate operational QoS metrics into users’ utility functions and demonstrate how they affect individual users’ content sharing decisions. Using a game-theoretic model, our study reveals how organizations respond to the changes of operational QoS metrics in their design of pricing schemes for various business objectives at different stages of network evolution. Our results show that a higher upload capacity can foster rational sharing to start when the network is small; however, it also discourages sharing behaviors when the network becomes large. In order to induce a socially optimal behavior, a pricing scheme will not charge users for requesting content while compensating them for sharing content. Such compensation is found to increase faster with the network size when the network is large. In order to maximize the profit of a monopolistic provider, however, a pricing scheme will charge content requests with a positive price while providing less compensation to sharing users compared to the socially optimal scheme. When the network size is small, such compensation can be even negative, which implies that a monopolistic provider discourages content sharing when the network is small, but encourages it when the network becomes larger. In addition, we find that more information about peer upload capacity discourages peers to share.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/poms.12701 [Google]
Arslanagic-Kalajdzic, M. and V. Zabkar (2017): Is perceived value more than value for money in professional business services?, Industrial Marketing Management, 65(), pp.47-58
It is well documented in the literature that customer perceived value plays an important role in understanding behavioral outcomes of business customers. However, most business-to-business research has focused on the functional dimension of perceived value, while consumer research has already advanced to a multidimensional value conceptualization. This study expands the concept of perceived value in the professional business services context to functional, emotional, and social perceived value. Based on signaling theory, we conceptualize and empirically support links between the three dimensions of perceived value and its antecedents (perceived corporate reputation, perceived corporate credibility, and perceived relationship quality) and outcomes (satisfaction and loyalty). The results of a survey involving 228 business clients reveal differences in links between value antecedents and the three perceived value dimensions: while perceived corporate credibility and relationship quality impact all dimensions, perceived corporate reputation impacts only perceived emotional value. Results of our study help in understanding how satisfaction and loyalty are viewed as perceived value outcomes; apart from functional value, emotional and social values play a significant role in the satisfaction and loyalty of professional business services clients.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.05.005 [Google]
Lonsdale, C., K. Hoque, I. Kirkpatrick and J. Sanderson (2017): Knowing the price of everything? Exploring the impact of increased procurement professional involvement on management consultancy purchasing, Industrial Marketing Management, 65(), pp.157-167
Much of the estimated $554 billion annual expenditure on management consultancy services is accounted for by projects with a direct link to client profitability. As such, it is critical for clients (and arguably the wider economy) that the purchase process for such services is managed effectively. For many within the management consultancy literature, this requires close, bilateral buy-side service end-user/supplier engagement. In recent years, however, this bilateral engagement has been modified by a significant increase in procurement professional involvement. This has caused concern within the management consultancy literature as it is believed it will inevitably lead to a cost-focused approach that disrupts close end-user/supplier engagement and causes sub-standard service outcomes. In this paper, we explore, via qualitative research, whether this concern is justified. In the event, the analysis suggested partial justification. However, examples of positive procurement involvement were also reported, suggesting that existing models and assumptions within the management consultancy literature regarding the impact of increased procurement involvement require modification.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.04.001 [Google]
Luotola, H., M. Hellström, M. Gustafsson and O. Perminova-Harikoski (2017): Embracing uncertainty in value-based selling by means of design thinking, Industrial Marketing Management, 65(), pp.59-75
Service delivery and solution selling both strive to achieve increased value through co-creation. However, the concept of value co-creation is a macro concept that still lacks precise empirical grounding and accurate operationalisation. To uncover the microlevel processes of co-creation, we examined 15 sales cases via the lens of uncertainty management. We used design thinking and actor-network theory to explore how certainty evolves between a seller and the buyer. We argue that the common industrial logic for addressing and tackling customer problems in solution selling, hitherto portrayed as either deductive or inductive, is incomplete. Indeed, our research shows that solution selling and value co-creation both require a different, abductive epistemology to address the uncertainty. Our study also provides an empirical extension to the value co-creation literature.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.05.004 [Google]
Zhang, W. and S. Banerji (2017): Challenges of servitization: A systematic literature review, Industrial Marketing Management, 65(), pp.217-227
The challenges of servitization have gained significant attention from both academics and practitioners, as more firms in the industrial sector are seeking marketing opportunities leading to business growth through the adoption of a service strategy. Although existing research has explored its challenges from multiple perspectives, this is largely fragmented and the studies offer little understanding of the impacts of the challenges on the realisation of servitization benefits and improvements in business performance. This study, therefore, aims to create a formal construct of the challenges and develop a set of hypotheses through a systematic review of the servitization literature to build a theoretical model explaining the underlying relationships. Five challenges are identified: organisational structure, business model, development process, customer management, and risk management. The indicators of each challenge are discussed to support the establishment of hypotheses. This study contributes to the current body of knowledge by reaching a clear conclusion from the fragmented literature and brings together five challenges to explore their impacts on the overall business.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.06.003 [Google]
