Tracey S. Danaher

Customer Effort in Value Cocreation Activities: Improving Quality of Life and Behavioral Intentions of Health Care Customers

Transformative service research is particularly relevant in health care where the firm and customer can contribute to individual as well as societal well-being. This article explores customer value cocreation in health care, identifying a hierarchy of activities representing varying levels of customer effort from complying with basic requirements (less effort and easier tasks) to extensive decision making (more effort and more difficult tasks). We define customer Effort in Value Cocreation Activities (EVCA) as the degree of effort that customers exert to integrate resources, through a range of activities of varying levels of perceived difficulty. Our findings underscore the importance of viewing health care service as taking place within the customer’s service network that extends well beyond the customer-firm dyad to include other market-facing as well as public and private resources. Moreover, we demonstrate the transformative potential of customer EVCA linking customer EVCA to quality of life, satisfaction with service and behavioral intentions. We do so across three prevalent chronic diseases—cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Our findings highlight how an integrated care model has benefits for both customers and providers and can enhance customer EVCA.

Where, When, and How Long: Factors That Influence the Redemption of Mobile Phone Coupons

The use of coupons delivered by mobile phone, so-called “m-coupons,” is growing rapidly. In this study, the authors analyze consumer response to m-coupons for a two-year trial at a large shopping mall. Approximately 8,500 people were recruited to a panel and received three text-message m-coupons whenever they “swiped” their mobile phone at the mall entrances, with downstream redemption recorded. Almost 144,000 m-coupons were delivered during the trial, representing 38 stores that supplied 134 different coupons. The authors find that an important feature of m-coupons is where and when they are delivered, with location and time of delivery significantly influencing redemption. How long the m-coupons are valid (expiry length) is also important because redemption times for m-coupons are much shorter than for traditional coupons. This finding suggests that their expiration length should be shortened to help signal time urgency. Nevertheless, traditional coupon features, such as face value, still dominate m-coupon effectiveness, as does the product type, with snack food coupons being particularly effective.

Service Research in Health Care: Positively Impacting Lives

Health care is an industry that touches virtually everyone at some point in their life. It is in many regards the backbone of society and human interaction. The health care industry employs a significant number of people and contributes substantially to the gross domestic product (GDP) of developed economies. In 2013, global spending on health care was US

Achieving growth-quality of work life ambidexterity in small firms

7.2 trillion, which represents 10.6% of global GDP; and over the next few years, health spending is expected to accelerate, increasing to a total of US

Journal of Service Research Special Section on Health Service Research A Multidisciplinary Perspective

9.3 trillion by 2018 (Deloitte 2015). This rise will be largely driven by the health needs of aging and expanding populations, the rising prevalence of chronic disease, market expansion, improvements in infrastructure, and advances in technology and treatment (Deloitte 2015). The health care industry is undergoing tremendous change. Health services are increasingly seen as people-centered where the perspective of individuals, families, and communities are adopted and where these actors are seen as active participants or cocreators, as well as beneficiaries, of the health system (World Health Organization 2016). Health care customers are no longer passive recipients of service; they are taking a more active role in their care, engaging in a range of activities and interactions with many different stakeholders (McColl-Kennedy et al. 2012; Ostrom et al. 2015). Moreover, health service integration is increasingly being adopted where people are able to receive a continuum of health services, according to their needs, across the different levels of the health system over their lifetimes (World Health Organization 2016). A key challenge is that individuals and organizations from health, service delivery, and other sectors need to come together to make people-centered and integrated health services a reality (Black and Gallan 2015). Health service research can contribute greatly to this agenda. Many research communities focus on health care: population health, health economics, health care management, epidemiology, and health services research, to name just a few. While these fields each have their own perspective, and each contributes to better understanding health care systems and outcomes, none has as much potential to develop theory as the service research community. Health care across the globe is in dire need of improvements in efficiency, productivity, compassionate and patient-centered care, access, and inclusion. Service scholars have been called to meet these challenges by conducting, publishing, and disseminating impactful research. Service researchers thus have a tremendous opportunity to apply, expand, and develop new theoretical lenses to assess and improve service in health care. Health care is a service people do not necessarily want; further, it involves individuals who are highly vulnerable (Berry and Bendapudi 2007). The service rendered is personal with actions directed at the individual’s body or psyche. It is also fraught with emotion (Berry and Bendapudi 2007; Gallan et al. 2013) and can elicit fear and anxiety as well as relief and jubilation. Health needs can be acute or chronic, reflecting a specific episode or unfolding over multiple encounters across the lifetime of an individual. Patients often describe their experiences as a journey. The firm and customer may coproduce service during this journey, but the customer’s experience of health extends well beyond the firm-customer dyad to involve their own cognitive and emotional resources as well as resources from friends, family, and other customers and from other firms and the community (McCollKennedy et al. 2012; Sweeney, Danaher, and McColl-Kennedy 2015). An individual’s health is influenced by a myriad of physical, social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors that involve multiple stakeholders (World Health Organization 2007). As such, a much broader and deeper understanding of the health care customer is needed than in any other service context to deliver the best possible service experience (L. L. Berry, personal communication, August 4, 2016). The firm’s perspective, and that of its employees, in providing quality health care is equally important as that of the customer (Lee et al. 2013). Every health care system is complex, and organizations must balance limited resources, the need for infrastructure improvement, the development and implementation of treatment and technology advances, and a vast array of human resources. Health care organizations and departments often operate as ‘‘silos,’’ where each unit functions independently of the others. This means that many firms are struggling

The complementarity of frontline service employee creativity and attention to detail in service delivery

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the individual mechanisms that mediate the relationship between marketing practices and growth-quality of work life ambidexterity. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from small service firms via an online survey questionnaire electronically distributed to 7,271 owners of small firms in Australia. Partial least squares was used to test our mediation hypotheses on the data obtained. Findings – The authors demonstrate the mediation effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and passion for work in enhancing the relationship between marketing practices and growth-quality of work life ambidexterity. Practical implications – The findings indicate that being good at marketing does not always lead directly to achieving growth-quality of work life ambidexterity. The results suggest that achievement in both domains requires owners of small service firms to have a strong self-belief that they can perform their job successfully (entrepreneurial self-ef...

Improving Nonclinical and Clinical-Support Services: Lessons From Oncology

The Journal of Service Research calls for submissions for a special section: Health Service Research: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. As global expenditure on health care reaches

How a Child With Cancer Moved From Vulnerability to Resilience

6.5 trillion (Deloitte 2012), research examining issues critical to health care service from a societal, community, organizational, employee, customer, and network perspective is critical. Indeed, Ostrom et al. (2010) identified health care as an important context for a variety of services research priorities, and Berry and Bendapudi (2007) described health care as a ‘‘fertile field for service research.’’ We invite scholars from both within and outside of business disciplines including marketing, management, information technology, economics, anthropology, design, education policy, health and public administration, psychology, public policy, social work, sociology and other related disciplines to submit papers that examine the relationship between service and health care. Health care contexts are broad and diverse, presenting opportunities for truly multidisciplinary research that explicitly ties health care to service provision. All approaches (empirical, analytical, or conceptual) that create or extend theory in health service are welcome. The JSR is a scholarly journal that publishes the highest level of research relating to service. To be published in JSR, a manuscript must significantly advance theory, provide managerially-meaningful, and generalizable empirical research, or provide new models or methods that can be used to improve service. Examples of topics include, but are not limited to: Service Innovation, Design, and Quality in Health Care Delivery The Impact of Servicescapes in Health Services New Service Models of Delivering Health Care Front Line Employees and Service Provision in Health Care A Network View of Health Care Services Innovative Measurement and Metrics in Health Care Services The Role of New Technologies in Providing Health Care Services (Electronic Medical Records, Health Information Technology, etc.) Understanding the Patient Experience Consumer Behavior in Health Services Value Cocreation, Participation, and Engagement in Health Care Services Methodological Breakthroughs in Health Service Research

How do you feel today? Managing patient emotions during health care experiences to enhance well-being

To deliver superior customer service, frontline service employees (FSEs) need to be creative while also being attentive to detail. However, achieving the right balance between these behaviors is difficult; too much focus on one to the detriment of the other can diminish service performance. Using data from two independent studies of microservice and small service firms, we examine the interplay of employee creativity and attention to detail in driving service performance. The results reveal that at high levels of attention to detail, greater creativity will increase service performance and vice versa. In contrast, at low levels of attention to detail, increasing employee creativity enhances service performance up to a point, after which it declines, and vice versa. Thus, increasing creativity when attention to detail is low or enhancing attention to detail when creativity is low is likely to be harmful to firms. Our findings suggest that managers should empower FSEs to be ambidextrous—they need to engage in high levels of both creativity and attention-to-detail behaviors–to enhance service performance. Firms should invest in training to increase FSEs’ ability to engage in these behaviors simultaneously and create an environment that enhances their self-confidence to do so.

Does the reward match the effort for loyalty program members

Nonclinical and clinical-support personnel serve patients on the front lines of care. Their service interactions have a powerful influence on how patients perceive their entire care experience, including the all-important interactions with clinical staff. Ignoring this reality means squandering opportunities to start patients out on the right foot at each care visit. Medical practices can improve the overall care they provide by focusing on nonclinical and clinical-support services in 5 crucial ways: (1) creating strong first impressions at every care visit by prioritizing superb front-desk service; (2) thoroughly vetting prospective hires to ensure that their values and demeanor align with the organizations; (3) preparing hired staff to deliver excellent service with a commitment to ongoing training and education at all staff levels; (4) minimizing needless delays in service delivery that can overburden patients and their families in profound ways; and (5) prioritizing the services that patients consider to be most important. We show how cancer care illustrates these principles, which are relevant across medical contexts. Without nonclinical and clinical-support staff who set the right tone for care at every service touchpoint, even the best clinical services cannot be truly optimal.