Customer Integration


Customer Activities in Service Co-creation

Self-Service-Value

Customers use services to create value for them. This value is measured with the construct of service value. New service concepts lead to activities that were previously carried out by service companies being "outsourced" to the customer. These service concepts are defined as self-service services. The project will systematically analyze how these self-service services generate value for customers and how this value and the value creation differs from services where the tasks are performed by the service provider. The new construct of self-service value will be introduced to address the differences and similarities.

Publications

Eggert, Martin; Fließ, Sabine (2015): Service Value aus Kundensicht – Kundenaktivitäten als Ausgangspunkt, in: Bruhn, M. / Hadwich, K. (Hrsg.): Interaktive Wertschöpfung durch Dienstleistungen - Forum Dienstleistungsmanagement, Wiesbaden 2015, pp. 113-131. [DOWNLOAD]

Customer contributions to service co-creation

An essential part in co-creating service is the contribution of customers throughout the service process. Understanding of customer contributions mainly adopt a provider perspective. Little attention has been given to the customers' perspective of their contribution to service co-creation. Hence, we adopt a customer dominant-logic perspective to understand customer contributions as to develop an approach capturing customers' phyiscal and mental contributions - understood as customer activities - as perceived by the customer.

Publications

Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan (2017): Kundenintegration – das Management von Kundenintegrationsprozessen, in: Corsten, H. / Roth, S. (Hrsg.) Handbuch Dienstleistungsmanagement, München, S. 607-629. [HARDCOPY]

Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Schmelter, Mailin / Volkers, Maarten J. D. (2015): Kundenaktivitäten in Dienstleistungsprozessen - die Sicht des Konsumenten, in: Fließ, S. / Haase, M. / Jacob, F. / Ehret, M. (Hrsg.) Kundenintegration und Leistungslehre. Integrative Wertschöpfung in Dienstleistungen, Solutions und Entrepreneurship, Wiesbaden, S. 181-204. [DOWNLOAD]

Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Schmelter, Mailin (2014): Being at grips – customer's contribution and perceived control in service, in: Proceedings of the AMA SERVSIG-Conference, June 13-16, Thessaloniki, Greece. [DOWNLOAD]

Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Schmelter, Mailin (2014): Mirror, mirror on the wall – How service customers perceive their contribution to service provision, in: Journal of Service Management, Jg. 25, Nr. 4, S. 433-469.

Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Schmelter, Mailin (2013): Mirror, mirror on the wall – How service customers perceive their contribution to service provision, in: Proceedings of the QUIS - 13th International Research Symposium on Service Excellence in Management, June 10-13, Karlstad, Sweden. [DOWNLOAD]


Service Experiences

The Customer’s Perspective on Customer Experience Formation in Services

Serving as a means to differentiate from competitors and generate greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, customer experiences are particularly interesting to marketing and to service researchers. Since service co-creation requires contributions from both customers and providers, the customer’s pivotal role in service co-creation greatly impacts customer experience formation.While service research has dedicated much attention on how to design and manage the provider sphere (i.e. physical service environment, service employees, service delivery processes), little work has been done on the customer sphere. Therefore, this research project focusses on how customers contribute to co-creating to the formation of their customer experience and what service firms can do to design and facilitate service co-creation to create positive customer experiences.

Publications

Dyck, Stefan (2018): Every man to his taste: Profiling customers and services based on customer experience perceptions, in: 6. Rostocker Dienstleistungstagung, September 13-14, Rostock, Germany.

Dyck, Stefan / Fließ, Sabine (2016): Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say: Using Text Mining to Uncover the Dynamics of Customer Experiences, in: Proceedings of the ANZMAC Conference, December 5-7, Christchurch, New Zealand. [DOWNLOAD]

Dyck, Stefan / Fließ, Sabine (2016): We are what we repeatedly do: How customers’ routine activities contribute to their service experiences, in: Proceedings of the AMA SERVSIG-Conference, June 17-19, Maastricht, The Netherlands. [DOWNLOAD]

Dyck, Stefan / Fließ, Sabine (2015): Off the Beaten Path: A Set-Configuration Analysis of Customer Experiences, in: Proceedings of the Fronties in Service Conference 2015, July 9-12, San José, Califonria//USA. [DOWNLOAD]

Dyck, Stefan / Fließ, Sabine (2015): The Journey Is Its Own Reward: A Set-Configuration Analysis of Customer Experiences, in: Proceedings of the Naples Forum on Service 2015, June 9-12, Naples, Italy. [DOWNLOAD]

Mapping the Customer Experience Research Field

Customer experience has been a research front in service research and marketing in the past decades with a growing number of publications in the last years. Still this research field is largely dispersed across different domains within the marketing, service, and tourism research. To understand the evolution of the field, map its origins and trajectories, this research projects explores research output on customer experience drawing on bibliometric and text mining methods.

Publications

Dyck, Stefan (2018): Great oaks from little acorns grow: Tracing the scientific evolution of customer experience research using a science mapping approach, in: Proceedings of the AMA SERVSIG-Conference, June 14-16, Paris, France. [DOWNLOAD]


Customer Perceptions of the Service Process

Customer Lock-in Perceptions during Service Encounters

Inevitably, not all service encounters are experienced positively by customers. Indeed, customers often endure service failure, long waits or other customers who misbehave, to name only a few negative events. In such situations, customers likely want to stop and exit the service encounter. However, they may realize that this is impossible or unacceptable. They feel they must endure the negative event until the service process reaches a certain stage – they feel locked-in. We find that being locked-in constitutes a specific state of mind that impacts customers’ experience and behavior. Customer lock-in has both advantages and disadvantages for service providers. On the one hand, customers stay in the service environment; on the other hand, they may accumulate negative emotions and stress, which may lead them to participate less effectively or even misbehave. In this research project we aim to explore the scope of factors that cause lock-in as well as the consequences for the customers’ experience. Implications for service providers are twofold: First, the findings provide insights regarding the tools service providers have to increase or reduce customer lock-in perceptions. Second, the findings help service providers anticipate lock-in situations and understand how customers experience them, which helps to respond in a manner that improves the customer experience.

Publications

Fliess, Sabine and Volkers, Maarten (2020), "Trapped in a service encounter: Exploring customer lock-in and its effect on well-being and coping responses during service encounters", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 79-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-01-2019-0013

Fließ, Sabine / Volkers, Maarten (2018): Trapped in a service encounter - Exploring customer lock-in perceptions during negative service experiences, in: Proceedings of the 10th AMA SERVSIG Conference, June 14-16, Paris, France.

Volkers, Maarten / Fließ, Sabine (2017): ‘When exiting feels awkward’ – The social setting as a determinant of social lock-in perceptions during service transactions, in: Proceedings of the QUIS15 Symposium 2017, June 12-15, Porto, Portugal.

Volkers, Maarten / Fließ, Sabine (2017): ‘I’m stressed but I’m staying’ – The effect of social lock-in on the decision to stay or leave in different service settings, in: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Service Conference 2017, June 22-25, New York, USA.

Volkers, Maarten / Fliess, Sabine (2017): If you begin a service you must go the whole hog: a theoretical approach to social lock-in situations in service settings, in: Büttgen, M. (Hrsg.), Aktuelle Beiträge zur Dienstleistungsforschung, Wiesbaden, S. 1-22. [DOWNLOAD]

Fließ, Sabine; Volkers, Maarten (2016): ‘Should I stay or can I go now?’ – Antecedents of social lock-in during service encounters and its effect on emotions, in: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Service Conference 2016, June 23-26 2016, Bergen, Norway.

Fließ, Sabine; Volkers, Maarten (2015): Trapped in a service encounter: How do service customers cope with lock-in situations?, in: Proceedings of the Marketing Dynamics Conference 2015, June 11-13, Beijing, China. [DOWNLOAD]

Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Schmelter, Mailin / Volkers, Maarten J. D. (2015): Kundenaktivitäten in Dienstleistungsprozessen - die Sicht des Konsumenten, in: Fließ, S. / Haase, M. / Jacob, F. / Ehret, M. (Hrsg.) Kundenintegration und Leistungslehre. Integrative Wertschöpfung in Dienstleistungen, Solutions und Entrepreneurship, Wiesbaden, S. 181-204. [DOWNLOAD]

Time Pressure in Services

In Progress

Publications

  • Fliess, Sabine / Nenninger, Sarina (2019): The clock is ticking?! – A Conceptual Approach to Time Pressure in Services, in: Proceedings of the 10th International Research Symposium in Service Management (IRSSM), October 6-9, Dubai, UAE.
  • Fliess, Sabine / Nenninger, Sarina (2019): When Time is Running Out – A Conceptual Approach to Time Pressure in Services, in: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Service Conference 2019, July 18-21, Singapore, Singapore.
  • Fliess, Sabine / Nenninger, Sarina (2019): The clock is ticking?! – Systematic review on time pressure and directions for service research, in: Proceedings of the QUIS - 16th International Research Symposium on Advancing Service Research and Practice, June 10-13, Karlstad, Sweden.
  • Fliess, Sabine / Nenninger, Sarina (2018): Customer-Perceived Time Pressure in Services: Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda, in: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Service Conference 2018, September 6-9, Austin, USA.

The structure of service processes from the customer perspective

Service blueprints, customer journey and service scripts are prominent concepts that have been used in the service literature to reflect the structure of service co-creation processes. While they reflect structuring elements, they treat the service co-creation as a provider-given structure. The dynamics of co-creation and perception are not covered in these concepts. It is therefore, necessary to understand how customers perceive and evalute the structure. To this end, this research projects takes a customer-centric and process-dynamic perspective to enhance the understanding of how customers structure service co-creation processes.

Publications

  • Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Volkers, Maarten (2020): Understanding the Structure of Service Processes from a Customer Perspective – an Event Segmentation Approach, in: Proceedings of the AMA SERVSIG-Conference 2020, July 9-12, Brisbane, Australia.
  • Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Volkers, Maarten (2020): Understanding the Structure of Service Experiences – an Event Segmentation Approach, in: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Service-Conference, June 25--28, Babson Park, Massachusetts / USA.

Multisensory perception of service co-creation

Designing and orchestrating sensory cues is critical to service co-creation, since sensory stimulation has been acknowledged to be central to the customers’ evaluation of service quality and their service experience. Moreover, sensory perception is an essential element of customers’ contribution to service co-creation. The predominant angle from which sensory perception in the literature has been addressed is stimulus centric. That is, research has been focusing on the effects of individual and combined cues on customers’ purchase decisions as well as mental and emotional reactions to specific cues. As a result, existing studies focus only on one sense or on a selection of senses. Thus, a true multisensory perspective is not reflected in research. Shedding light on service co-creation from an actor-centric perspective, the purpose of this research project is to understand how multisensory design, i.e., simultaneously considering all five senses, impacts service co-creation.

Publications

  • Fließ, Sabine / Dyck, Stefan / Volkers, Maarten (2020): Calling for a Multisensory Perspective on Customer Service Co-creation, in: Roth, S. / Horbel, C. / Popp, B. (Ed.), Perspektiven des Dienstleistungsmanagements, Wiesbaden, pp. 77-104. [DOWNLOAD]

Service Transition & Servitization

Service Transition Strategies in Manufacturing

Service Transition, or Servitization, is a global trend that describes “the increased offering of fuller market packages or bundles of customer focused combinations of goods, services, support, self-service and knowledge in order to add value to core product offerings” (Vandermewe/Rada, 1988). Even though servitization seems to be an attractive strategy for manufacturers, it does not always yield the expected positive effects on revenues and firm value and sometimes the effects might even be negative, a phenomenon which is referred to as Service Paradox (Brax 2005, Gebauer et al. 2005). The lack of a clear definition or conceptualization of service transition strategies further hinders our understanding of the different factors that lead to a successful service transition. Therefore, the aim of this research project is first to examine the different conceptualizations of service transition strategies, in order to analyze in a next step why some companies are more successful with their service transition strategies than others. Since these are causally complex phenomena, a configurational approach and the set-theoretic method fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) are adopted.

Publications

Lexutt, Eva (2020). Different roads to servitization success – A configurational analysis of financial and non-financial service performance. Industrial Marketing Management, 84, 105-125.

Lexutt, E. (2019). The role of customer related factors for servitization success – A two-step QCA. Proceedings of the Spring Servitization Conference, May 13-15, Linköping, Sweden.

Lexutt, Eva / Fliess, Sabine (2018): Disentangling the complex causalities of servitization success with qualitative comparative analysis. Proceedings of the Spring Servitization Conference, May 14-16, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Fliess, Sabine & Lexutt, Eva (2017). How to be successful with servitization – Guidelines for research and management. Industrial Marketing Management, 78, 58-75.

Lexutt, Eva / Fliess, Sabine (2017): What Servitization Leaders Do Differently – A Configurational Analysis of the Success Factors of the Service Transition, in: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Service Conference 2017, June 22-25, New York, USA.

Lexutt, Eva / Fliess, Sabine (2017): Many Roads Lead to Rome – A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of the Success Factors of Servitization, in: Proceedings of the QUIS15 Symposium 2017, June 12-15, Porto, Portugal.

Fließ, Sabine; Lexutt, Eva (2016): Erfolgsfaktoren der Service Transition – eine systematische Literaturanalyse, in: Bruhn, M./ Hadwich, K.: Servicetransformation. Entwicklung vom Produktanbieter zum Dienstleistungsunternehmen. Springer. [DOWNLOAD]

Fließ, Sabine; Lexutt, Eva (2014): Service Transition from the Customer Perspective in: Proceedings of the ISBM Biennial Academic Conference 2014, San Francisco, California.

Servitization & Gender

Organizations and their management, as part of society, are influenced by gender. The same is true for strategic change and change management. As the transformational process from a product-oriented to a service-oriented business logic (Kowalkowski et al., 2017), servitization can be assumed to also intersect with gender. However, servitization research has not considered the diverse ways in which gender influences values, behaviours and practices related to servitization. This project explores the potential of gender-in-management research to expand our knowledge and understanding of servitization. Specifically, I examine how the concepts of gender, diversity, masculinity and femininity relate to decision making, leadership, change and culture in servitization.


Customer Engagement

In Progress

BWLDLM | 19.07.2023