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- All Subjects: Longitudinal
- Creators: Bitner, Mary Jo
Description
Customers today, are active participants in service experiences. They are more informed about product choices, their preferences and tend to actively influence customer and firm related outcomes. However, differences across customers become a significant challenge for firms trying to ensure that all customers have a `delightful' consumption experience. This dissertation studies customers as active participants in service experiences and considers three dimensions of customer participation -- in-role performance; extra-role performance-citizenship and elective behavior; and information sharing -- as its focal dependent variables. This study is grounded in services marketing, customer co-production and motivation literatures. The theoretical model proposes that customer behaviors are goal-directed and different consumers will have different reactions to the service quality because they have different assessments of progress towards their goals and (consequently) different levels of participation during the service experience. Customer role clarity and participation behavior will also influence the service experience and firm outcomes. A multi-step process was adopted to test the conceptual model, beginning with qualitative and quantitative pretests; followed by 2 studies (one cross-sectional and other longitudinal in nature). Results prove that customer participation behaviors are influenced by service quality directly and through the mediated path of progress towards goals. Assessment of progress towards goals directly influences customer participation behaviors cross-sectionally. Service quality from one service interaction influences customer in-role performance and information sharing in subsequent service interactions. Information sharing influences service quality in subsequent service interactions. Role-clarity influences in-role and extra-role performance cross-sectionally and influences these behaviors longitudinally only in the early stages of the customer-firm relationship. Due to multi-collinearity, the moderating effect of customer goals on assessment of progress towards goals could not be tested. The study findings contribute to the understanding of customer participation behaviors in service interactions for both academics and managers. It contributes to the literature by examining consumption during the service interaction; considering customers as active participants; explaining differences in customer participation; integrating a forward-looking component (assessment of progress towards goals) and a retrospective component (perceptions of service quality) to explain customer participation behaviors over time; defining and building measures for customer participation behavior.
ContributorsSaxena, Shruti (Author) / Mokwa, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Bitner, Mary Jo (Committee member) / Bolton, Ruth N (Committee member) / Olsen, Grant D (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
The present study aimed to advance the current understanding of the relation between disability and subjective well-being by examining the extent to which different facets of subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect) change before and after disability onset, and the extent to which age and type of disability moderate such changes. Multiphase growth-curve models to prospective longitudinal survey data from Waves 1-16 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (N = 3,795; mean age = 50.22; age range: 16-99; 51% women). On average, life satisfaction remained relatively stable across the disability transition, whereas positive affect declined and negative affect increased the year surrounding disability onset; in the years thereafter, neither positive affect nor negative affect returned to pre-onset levels. Individuals who acquired disability in old age were more likely to report sustained declines in subjective well-being than were individuals who became disabled in midlife or young adulthood. Psychological disability was associated with the strongest declines across each indicator of subjective well-being at disability onset but also greater adaptation in the years thereafter. The findings provide further evidence against the set-point theory of hedonic adaptation and for a more moderate viewpoint that allows for processes of adaptation to vary based on the outcome examined, the type of stressor, and individual characteristics. The discussion focuses on possible mechanisms underlying the moderating roles of age and type of disability.
ContributorsFraire, Nicoletta (Author) / Infurna, Frank J. (Thesis advisor) / Luthar, Suniya S. (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019