Service offshoring fit from consumers’ perspective

Abstract

Past research focuses on the location effects in explaining consumers’ responses to service offshoring while the role of service offshoring partners (OSPs)’ characteristics has not yet been addressed. Adapting from information integration and inference theories, this paper develops “service offshoring fit” which is influenced by OSPs’ characteristics and explains the differential responses to service offshoring. Both qualitative and quantitative studies explore the concept of fit and the characteristics of OSPs. The results confirm that corporate reputation of the OSPs and advanced technology owned by the OSPs are the important characteristics that influence service offshoring fit, which in turn affects consumers’ responses to service offshoring. Results also indicate not all the OSPs’ characteristics equally contribute to service offshoring fit but rather be contingent on service types. This study contributes to the current literature as it looks beyond the location effect and explains the differential responses by introducing the concept of fit.