Customer readiness–customer participation link in e-services

Abstract

ABSTRACT E-services such as online tourism, e-commerce, ride hailing, mobile banking, and payment are increasingly adopted in emerging markets. The paper, on the basis of service-dominant logic, aims to develop and validate an integrative theoretical model that centers on the customer readiness-customer participation link in e-services. From the perspective of customer, as both technology user and service consumer, this study proposes technology readiness, a technology-related factor, and customer empowerment, a firm-developed factor, as determinants of customer readiness and perceived value and satisfaction as outcomes of customer participation. A cross-sectional survey with PLS-SEM analysis of 257 customers in e-services in Hochiminh City, Vietnam, reports that all of eight hypotheses are empirically supported. This paper is among the first, with empirically affirming the roles of technology readiness and customer empowerment, two formative second-order constructs, to evidently investigate the two important formation mechanisms of customer readiness and the interconnection of these customer operant resources.