Tomas Falk

Principles and principals: Do customer stewardship and agency control compete or complement when shaping frontline employee behavior?

This article introduces customer stewardship control (CSC) to the marketing field. This concept represents a frontline employees felt ownership of and moral responsibility for customers’ overall welfare. In two studies, the authors show that CSC is a more encompassing construct than customer orientation, which reflects a frontline employees focus on meeting customers’ needs. They provide evidence that the former is more potent in shaping in- and extra-role employee behaviors. Moreover, they highlight how CSC operates in conjunction with an organizations agency control system: Stewardships positive influence on in- and extra-role behavior is weaker in the presence of high agency control. They offer actionable advice about how to solve the resulting managerial control dilemma. Finally, the authors show that CSC depends on drivers that reside at the individual level (employee relatedness), the team level (team competence), or both levels of aggregation (employee and team autonomy). These findings show how to effectively design a frontline employees work environment to ensure optimal frontline performance.

Measuring and Improving the Performance of Health Service Networks

Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) have intensified their efforts to establish network-like structures with service partners who are responsible for different functions along the health value chain. To calculate the potential value and cost benefits of service production within health care networks and to improve performance in such networks, the authors propose a two-step benchmarking approach. While the first step is concerned with measuring and comparing service provider performance, the second step relates to a contact program that disseminates the lessons learned during the benchmarking process. Across two empirical studies with general practitioners and specialty physicians, the authors identify in a first step tremendous overspendings and provide suggestions on cost reductions that could be achieved without threatening output levels. With regard to the second step, the authors find that detailing efforts based on the results of performance measurement helped physicians to improve their performance. Through detailing, the hub was able to inform network partners about the benchmarking results and to reveal performance gaps in their current resource utilization patterns. In addition, the authors show that managers of HMOs should seek out physicians with smaller practices and high-referral (i.e., risk-averse) physicians as targets for detailing, who are especially responsive to these initiatives.

Channels in the Mirror: An Alignable Model for Assessing Customer Satisfaction in Concurrent Channel Systems

Firms operating multiple channels as parallel routes to market face intense pressure to ensure superior customer satisfaction in their entire channel system. Relying on the structural alignment framework, the authors argue that to address this challenge, providers of concurrent channels should give priority to alignable channel attributes—attributes that have corresponding or “mirror” attributes in the other channels. These features are more salient to customers than nonalignable features and likely represent the origin of satisfaction evaluations in concurrent channel environments. Applying multigroup nested models using data from off-line and online shoppers, the authors empirically validate choice (assortment breadth and depth), charge (availability of fair prices), convenience (efficiency of the purchase process), confidence (security of transactions), and care (assurance of promised quality) as alignable channel facets. The resulting 5C model is superior to existing models in that it enables the unified capture of both off-line and online satisfaction, allowing a meaningful comparison across formats. Using alignable satisfaction facets enables managers to trace true differences in the satisfaction levels between channels. In particular, a channel’s share of investment should match its share of unexploited satisfaction potential. The 5C model also supports within-channel decisions by revealing the impact of the five facets on overall satisfaction with each format.

Relational Price Discounts: Consumers’ Metacognitions and Nonlinear Effects of Initial Discounts on Customer Retention

Practitioners increasingly employ relational price discounts by granting initial discounts to new customers with the goal of building sustainable relationships. However, extant research has provided mixed findings on the long-term effects of initial discounts on customer retention. The current research aims to reconcile this mixed evidence by exploring nonlinear effects of initial discounts on customer retention. Drawing on marketplace metacognition theory, the authors hypothesize that moderate initial discounts (5%–35%) have positive effects on customer retention, whereas low (<5%) and high (>35%) discounts have negative effects. Two large-scale field studies in an insurance companys car insurance branch and property insurance branch provide empirical support for the hypothesized patterns. An additional laboratory experiment tests the psychological mechanism underlying the nonlinear effects. When compared with low and high discounts, moderate initial discounts lead customers to form higher expectations of future relational benefits provided by the firm, as well as to lower their expectations of future discounts. Finally, this research offers customer lifetime value implications based on the depicted findings.

Serviceeffizienz aus Kundensicht als Erfolgsfaktor von elektronischen Dienstleistungen

Die rapide Verbreitung von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien wie Internet oder Mobilfunk fuhrt im Dienstleistungssektor zu grundlegenden Umwalzungen. So ist die Art der Dienstleistungserstellung und -inanspruchnahme zunehmend durch Technologieunterstutzung gepragt. Der Einsatz neuer Technologien fuhrt dazu, dass Dienstleistungen immer mehr als so genannte Self Services angeboten werden, was die umfassende und aktive Integration eines Kunden in die Dienstleistungsproduktion zur Folge hat (Meuter et al. 2000). Der hierdurch verstarkte Wandel eines Kunden vom reinen Empfanger hin zum Co-Produzenten der Dienstleistung bedingt, dass die zusatzlich zum anfallenden Preis entstehenden Aufwendungen eines Kunden, die er im Rahmen der Dienstleistungserstellung zu erbringen hat, steigen. Beispiele fur solche zusatzlichen Aufwendungen sind das Erlernen neuer Serviceroutinen und die Aufwendungen fur Technologienutzung.