Stefanie Paluch

Service Separation and Customer Satisfaction Assessing the Service Separation/Customer Integration Paradox

Remote services are often provided without customer-provider contact for remote diagnostics, repair, and maintenance purposes in business-to-business industries such as information technology, medical health care, and mechanical engineering. Two empirical studies (Studies 1 and 2) suggest that numerous characteristics of remote services are critical to customer satisfaction: (1) security, (2) reliability, (3) level of process integration, (4) economic benefit, (5) post-provision documentation, (6) exchange options, (7) individualization, and (8) support services. Study 3 revealed a paradox that complicates service provision—a situation in which customers experience ambivalent feelings toward service separation as associated with remote services. They express (i) a strong desire to be part of the remote service provision in order to maintain control over the process, while at the same time, (ii) for personal and contractual reasons they do not want to be integrated into the process. Satisfaction levels were found to vary depending on how customers assess physical and mental service separation. We identified service initiation as a situational factor influencing the shift from a positive to a negative assessment of service separation. To prevent customer dissatisfaction, service providers should integrate customers into service provision for provider-initiated services, whereas for customer-initiated services they should not bring the customer in.

Customer expectations of remote maintenance services in the medical equipment industry

Purpose – Original equipment manufacturers offer maintenance services such as remote diagnostics to extend their portfolio. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate requirements and expectations regarding remote services (RSs) for maintaining complex high-tech equipment from a users’ point of view. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative interview study based on 30 interviews and observations at 11 organizations in the healthcare industry was conducted in order to get a holistic understanding of requirements and expectations of the new service technology. Findings – This study shows that the focus on providing high-technology services is not sufficient to increase customers usage, soft factors such as personal interaction, integration, and individualization are main expectations for customers in the medical equipment industry. The expectations are concentrated in seven propositions. Research limitations/implications – The interviews were conducted only in the healthcare industry. Even ...

Conversational Commerce – A New Era for Service Business Development?

Digitization, the rise of the Internet and mobile devices have changed the way people interact with each other and with companies. In recent years, the voice interface has become a growing feature in mobile devices. Industry reports indicate that in mid-2016, 20 percent of Android searches were voice-based and Siri received two bn. requests per week. ComScore predicts that by 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches. Furthermore, it is anticipated that voice will become the default method to control a variety of interfaces including mobile devices, Internet of Things (IoT) appliances, and automobiles.

The Quantified Self: The Role of Consumers’ Smart Wearables Perception Offered by Insurance Companies: An Abstract

The Quantified Self movement initially started in the Silicon Valley and rapidly became a mainstream phenomenon of self-tracking practices. In particular, the wide adoption of commercial activity trackers such as Fitbit HR, Xiaomi Mi, and Garmin Vivo made it possible for consumers to collect their biometrics and also track their physical activity throughout the day. The huge amount of data generated by consumers became highly interesting not only for online-based companies like Google or Amazon but also for the more traditional industries such as car manufacturers and insurance companies, which also started to pay attention to the Quantified Self data.

Connected Car Technologies Hit the Road?! An Empirical Study on Future Developments and Selected Concepts: An Abstract

The increasing interconnection of automobiles among each other as well as with the environment promises the implementation of various new ideas and concepts (Narla 2013). Thereby the connected car seems to be “one of the most fascinating innovations in the long history of the automotive industry” (Telefonica Digital 2013). Enabled by permanent communication between vehicles and environment, experts expect a significant improvement in transport safety, efficiency, and daily travel comfort (Sichitiu und Kihl 2008). This research aims to contribute knowledge to the discussion on how connected car technologies will evolve and which concepts and business models will be enabled thereby. With the help of this study, we try to answer the following research questions: (1) How will the connected car technology develop in the future (5–15 years)? (2) Which technology concepts will be dominant and established in the future? (3) What are individual and economic consequences?

Smart Services – Analyse von strategischen und operativen Auswirkungen

Der vorliegende Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit strategischen und operativen Auswirkungen bei der Erstellung von Smart Service Angeboten. Dazu wird das Smart Service Okosystem als Bezugsrahmen vorgestellt und die Komponenten dieses Systems sowie ihre Interdependenz erlautert. Unterschiedliche Anwendungsbeispiele zeigen die vielseitigen Einsatzbereiche im individuellen und industriellen Kontext auf.

Like It or Not - Social Media Marketing in B2B Companies

Social-media marketing is growing rapidly. Social media tools such as blogs, wikis and networks like Facebook and Twitter are quite common in the business-to-consumer context. However the adoption of social media in business-to-business companies is still in an early stage due to privacy, security and content ownership concerns. The aim of our paper is to investigate the current use of social media tools in B2B companies and to analyze potentials and challenges of social media activities in the capital goods industry. We aim to develop managerial implications for B2B companies of how to implement social media activities and how to use social networks effectively for communication and customer retention.

The Recommendation Bias: The Effects of Social Influence on Individual Rating Behavior

In recent years the internet has rapidly evolved from being a platform for companies to simply market their products or services into a platform where users can discuss the products or services among themselves. This increase in user-generated content has led to the creation of review websites, providing consumers with an opportunity to share their opinions on products or services and engage in electronic word-of-mouth (Henning-Thurau et al., 2004). Our modern society relies more and more on digital opinions (Muchnik et al., 2013) and consumers consult such online review websites frequently before making purchase decisions (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006). Thus, from a marketer’s perspective, online rating websites have become increasingly important based on their influence on product sales. However, reliability and accuracy of these reviews are often questioned, such that consumers are frequently unsure whether the overall rating of a product or service has not been influenced by fake reviews, written by employees of a company (Malbon, 2013). As a consequence, online rating websites may not always exactly reflect the product performance (Moe & Trusov, 2011). Hence, as online reviews play an important role in consumer decision making processes, it is also interesting to shed light on the accuracy of the reviews written by customers themselves. Before formulating their own experience and opinion of a product or service, customers are exposed to the opinions of other customers who have already written a review. Since it is not uncommon for humans to allow themselves to be influenced by others, former reviews may cause the writer of a new review to alter his opinion, possibly to adapt to or to stand out from previous opinions. This research offers an initial examination of the effects of social influence on individual rating behavior.

Decomposing Risk Perceptions in Inter-organizational Settings

Despite the rapid growth and potential for technology-based services from a technology and productivity perspective, the biggest challenges that managers often face are gaining customer acceptance and increasing usage of these new innovative services. In the B2C field, studies of self‐service technology show that the perceived risk is an important factor influencing the usage of service technology. Whereas research has explored different risk types that emerge in consumer settings such as functional and psychological risk, research on risk perception in B2B setting still lacks a detailed examination of the different facets risk can take on in technology-based service adoption. Some studies indicate that there might be different views and perceptions of the risk involved in technology-based services between customers and providers. Our study addresses this gap and aims to develop a holistic understanding of the types of risk customers perceive when using a technology-based service. We investigate what types of risk are emergent in technology-based service encounters and whether customers and providers perceive these risks differently. We conducted 49 qualitative interviews with providers and customers in two industries in four countries. Our study emphasizes the importance of functional and financial risks as expected in a B2B context, but also sheds light on the fact that business customers have personal and psychological fears that hinder them from using technology-based services. Most importantly, we show that gaps in the perception and evaluation of risk exist between customers and providers: customers doubt the functionality of technology-based services; they emphasize privacy risk as a main hindrance and worry about their own role in a service, whereas only few providers are aware of the customers’ fears.

Disagreement in Online Ratings: The Effects of Standard Deviation and Skewness of Customer Rating Distributions on Product Quality Perceptions

The way people buy things has fundamentally changed. For instance, due to the internet’s growing popularity users can easily interact with each other and share their opinions and experiences about products and services on review websites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp. As a consequence, when making purchase decisions people increasingly rely on online product ratings provided by consumers who previously purchased products as information sources to infer the quality of the available purchase options (e.g., Hu et al. 2008; Li and Hitt 2008; Simonson and Rosen 2014). In addition, consumers’ confidence in these reviews is stunningly growing. In 2012, 70 % of participants in a Nielsen (2012) study indicated that they trusted online reviews, which represents an increase of 15 % within a 4 years period. Accordingly, consumers’ reliance in these reviews posted by unknown consumers seems to outperform their trust in traditional media (Cheung and Thadani 2012).