Stephanie Dellande

Gaining Compliance and Losing Weight: The Role of the Service Provider in Health Care Services

This research provides and empirically tests a conceptualization of health care services in which customer compliance outside of the service organization is necessary for successful health outcomes. Using data from service providers and customers in a weight-loss clinic, the authors examine the providers role in gaining customer compliance. They find that provider expertise and attitudinal homophily play a role in bringing about customer role clarity, ability, and motivation. This study demonstrates that compliance leads to goal attainment, which results in satisfaction. More important, compliance also leads to satisfaction directly; consumers who comply with program requirements have greater satisfaction with the program.

Factors in gaining compliance toward an acceptable level of personal unsecured debt

This paper proposes a conceptualization of factors that influence the ability of individuals to reduce their personal unsecured debt levels, especially credit card debt. As such the papers conceptualization offers relationship lessons for bank marketers in the USA and the UK, where bank credit cards are a key element of many bank marketing programs. A key contribution is the papers focus on customer compliance behavior in a personal unsecured debt management program. Factors discussed within our conceptualization are behavioral variables and psychological variables. Also examined is the role of geographic and demographic explanatory variables in personal debt management program success.

Self‐regulatory focus: the impact on long‐term consumer compliance behavior

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to shed greater light on the factors that influence consumer compliance behavior, e.g. SRF, in compliance dependent services (CDS). CDS, e.g. weight loss, retirement savings, education, credit repair, are long term in nature, often requiring lifestyle changes. In addition, and importantly, the customers role in CDS extends beyond the face-to-face interaction and requires the consumer to comply with prescribed behaviors when away from the service provider. Design/methodology/approach - The subjects were 243 female clients (aged 20 to 45) at a weight loss/fitness center located in south India. Subjects were selected from among the new clients who signed up for an eight-week long weight loss and fitness program which seeks to help clients lose modest amounts of excess weight (averaging approximately ten pounds). On signing up, respondents completed a survey that included several scales of regulatory focus, and a question eliciting reasons for wanting to lose weight. Findings - This study exams the role of self-regulatory focus (SRF) in long-term customer compliance behavior in weight loss. A specific measure of SRF led to better outcomes than the generalized measures of SRF. Originality/value - Though this research project examines consumer behavior in the context of weight loss activities, it has far-ranging implications for various services requiring consumers to engage in prescribed behaviors over the long run. For example, the success of debt counseling services and retirement savings programs require clients to engage in certain behaviors over the long run. Marketers of CDS programs will be able to use the findings of this research project to find new ways to increase long-term customer compliance behavior.

More Money, More Problems: The Role of Budget Flexibility in Debt Repayment Default

This research examines how budget flexibility—in the form of disposable income and malleable budget categories—affects debt repayment behavior. Researchers have traditionally assumed that possessing greater financial resources increases consumers’ debt repayments. Through a series of three field studies with members of a debt management program (DMP), we find evidence for a counterintuitive proposition: while borrowers with larger financial resources have a greater repayment capacity, in practice they are actually less likely to repay their obligations. In study 1, we find qualitative evidence that DMP members were more likely to give in to financial temptation when they had disposable income or when they could misappropriate funds from their grocery budgets or emergency savings accounts. In study 2, we show quantitatively that DMP members with greater disposable incomes were more likely to report missing financial goals. In study 3, we model the long-term outcomes for DMP members and find that members with larger grocery budgets, larger emergency savings budgets, and larger disposable incomes were more likely to default on their debt obligations. This research extends the literature on mental accounting and self-regulation and offers insights into consumer decision making and debt repayment behaviors for financial counselors and public policymakers.

The Role of Public Commitment as a Motivator for Weight-Loss

Many long-term services, e.g., weight-loss programs, require that customers comply with instructions, provide the inputs and thus co-create a major portion of the service. This paper investigated the role of public commitment in influencing motivation and compliance behavior in a weight-loss setting. The study used a 3 x 2 full factorial design manipulating three levels of public commitment (no public commitment, short-term public commitment, and long-term public commitment), and a median split to generate two levels of Susceptibility to Normative Influence (SNI; low and high). The subjects in this study were 211 women between the ages of 20 and 45 enrolled in a women’s weight-loss program at a center in southern India. The subjects were selected from among the new clients who signed up for a 16 week weight-loss program designed to help clients lose modest amounts of excess weight (typically 15 to 20 pounds), help maintain this weight-loss, and also help them transform their lifestyles so that they could live healthier lives.