Customer Effort Research Articles

Customer effort in mandatory and voluntary value cocreation: a study in a health care context

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impacts various types of resources had on customer effort in mandatory and voluntary value cocreation activities and the contribution of efforts in these different activity types to quality of life.Design/methodology/approachData from customers across five chronic health conditions were collected through an online survey. Rasch analysis helped identify hierarchies of activities representing varying levels of effort across four activity types (mandatory (customer), mandatory (customer or organization), voluntary in-role and voluntary extra-role activities). The conceptual model that was developed to examine the relationships of interest was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.FindingsWhile clinical resources helped mandatory activities and personal network resources facilitated voluntary activities, psychological resources had greater impacts on customer effort across the whole range of activities. Effort in each activity type contributed to the quality of life differently, with voluntary activities having the greatest impacts on quality of life.Practical implicationsThis study lends support to a holistic approach to health service that requires the mobilization of networks of resources to encourage customers’ engagement in a broad range of activities. Understanding the resources facilitating effort in distinct activity types provides insights to develop strategies to drive value cocreation efforts that subsequently contribute to improvements in quality of life.Originality/valueDrawing on an extensive and nuanced categorization of activities, this study broadened the understanding of the networks of resources that are integrated in customer value cocreation processes and the link between value cocreation efforts and quality of life.

Mindful co-creation of transformative service for better well-being

Certain transformative services require customers to undertake and sustain difficult activities for a long time. Such requirement may cause customers to under-participate or even abandon the service, resulting in the service co-destruction. To understand how customers may overcome such challenge, this research explores the role of customer mindfulness in fostering co-creation effort and customer well-being. Based on the data collected from 283 customers of yoga training service, the findings show that mindfulness has a positive impact on customer effort to sustain the co-creation activities. In turn, co-creation effort improves customer’s quality of life and well-being. Mindfulness also has positive direct effects on customer quality of life and well-being. This research contributes to the literature by elucidating the concept of co-creation effort in SDL research paradigm. It also extends our knowledge of mindfulness in consumer behavior by showing the mechanism in which mindfulness and co-creation effort contribute to improve customer life. Practical implications are then discussed accordingly.

Overcompensation as a service recovery strategy: the financial aspect of customers\u2019 extra effort

Compensation is one of the most important elements of service. Companies often pursue a strategy of overcompensation; however, there are contradictory results in the literature whether overcompensation has a positive or negative effect on postcomplaint customer behaviour. In this paper, based on three studies, we prove that examining the amount of additional effort required of the customer in order to achieve service recovery can help us better explain outcomes of the service recovery. Our results clearly show that the degree of additional customer effort has significant influence both on satisfaction and on perceived fairness and it moderates the effect of the amount of compensation.

Optimal Consumer Efforts and Operational Costs Based Analysis for a Smart Grid

This paper deals with the comparison approach of operational cost and consumer efforts for the smart grid system. There are two objectives considered for the smart power system i.e. the minimization of the operational cost and consumer efforts of demand responses. Normally, consumers do not want to make much effort for reducing or increasing their loads that is why, this research is done for reducing consumer effort, beside reducing the fuel cost of thermal generations. Consumer efforts have been considered through the real-time pricing of electricity. Mainly a multi-objective algorithm such as Non-Dominated Sort Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) has been utilized to determine the optimum Pareto solution. Also, optimal values of NSGA-II has been compared with Epsilon Multi Objective Genetic Algorithm (ε-MOGA). There are three different scenarios reflected in this paper such as case 1, case 2, and case 3 for understanding the importance of consumer efforts. The case 1 considers the minimum operational cost and maximum customer efforts. The case 2 considers the moderate operational cost and moderate customer efforts and the case 3 considers the maximum operational cost and minimum customer efforts. The computer simulation has been performed by the MATLAB® software.

Product platforms design, selection and customisation in high-variety manufacturing

Product platforms represent an effective strategy implemented by manufacturers to cope with dynamic market demands, decrease lead-time and delay products differentiation. A decision support system (DSS) for product platforms design and selection in high-variety manufacturing is presented. It applies median-joining phylogenetic networks (MJPN) for the platforms design and phylogenetic tree decomposition for platforms selection by determining the product family phylogenetic network and defines the platforms at various levels of assembly corresponding to different trade-offs between number of platforms (variety) and number of assembly/disassembly tasks (customisation effort). Product platforms are reconfigured and customised to derive final product variants. The phylogenetic tree is decomposed in multiple levels, from the native platforms to the final variants. New Platforms Reconfiguration Index (PRI) and Platforms Customisation Index (PCI) were developed as metrics to evaluate the platforms customisation effort. A case study of a large family of plastic valves is used to demonstrate the DSS application. It shows reduction of 60% in platforms variety and increases in platform customisation assembly/disassembly tasks by only 20% leading to significant production and inventory efficiencies and cost savings. This methodology supports companies in the design and selection of best product platforms for high-variety to reduce cost and delivery time.

Assessing the Safety of Custom Web-Based Clinical Decision Support Systems in Electronic Health Records: A Case Study.

With the widespread adoption of vendor-supplied electronic health record (EHR) systems, clinical decision support (CDS) customization efforts beyond those anticipated by the vendor may require the use of technologies external to the EHR such as web services. Pursuing such customizations, however, is not without risk. Validating the expected behavior of a customized CDS system in the high-volume, complex environment of the live EHR is a challenging problem. This article identifies technology failures that impacted clinical care related to web service-based advanced custom CDS systems embedded in the complex sociotechnical context of a production EHR. In an academic health system's primary care network, we performed an inventory of incidents between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2016 related to a customized CDS system and performed a targeted review of changes in the CDS source code. Additional feedback on the root cause of individual incidents was obtained through interviews with members of the CDS project teams. We identified five CDS malfunctions that impaired clinical workflow. The mechanisms for these failures are mapped to four characteristics of well-behaved applications: (1) system integrity; (2) data integrity; (3) reliability; and (4) scalability. Over the 9-year period, two malfunctions of the customized CDS significantly impaired clinical workflow for a total of 5 hours. Lesser impacts-loss of individual features with straightforward workarounds-arose from three malfunctions, which affected users on 53 days. Advanced customization of EHRs for the purpose of CDS can present significant risks to clinical workflow. This case study highlights that advanced customization of CDS within a commercial EHR may support care for complex patient populations, but ongoing monitoring and support is required to ensure its safe use.

Novel Technique to Simulate Hood Closing Effort under Quasi-Static Condition and Its Strategic Correlation

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Hood closing effort under quasi-static conditions, known as static latching, is an event where the hood latch moves from secondary position to primary latched position due to external force applied by the customer to the hood. When customers close the hood slowly, it may not get latched due to insufficient force transfer to the latch thus requiring additional effort. Recent vehicle designs have the hood latch mounted further rearward than typical from the hood leading edge due to architectural challenges. Pedestrian protection (PedPro) requirements drive hood designs with reduced stiffness above the latch resulting in poor load transfer from the customer to the latch. This often results in high customer effort during quasi-static hood closing events. This additional effort may cause undesirable permanent deformation on the hood outer panel. In absence of proper simulation procedures, design engineers must adjust the latch and hood bumper interfaces on a trial basis during vehicle builds, leading to potential gap and flushness issues on the vehicle. Poor closing effort can result in costly engineering changes late in the vehicle development cycle. To shorten the hood development time and avoid late design changes, it is critical to develop a virtual simulation procedure that can reproduce the hood quasi-static closing event. This paper proposes a strategy to sense hood latching by calculating the force at the latch striker wire through simulation. The proposed strategy was validated with hardware measurements on multiple vehicles. The proposed method was able to achieve excellent correlation with the test in predicting hood latching for a specific customer effort. This paper also examines the sensitivity of various other parameters like seal stiffness, bumper interference (pre-load), latch connection type, non-linearity and loading direction in order to identify significant parameters contributing to hood latching effort.</div></div>

An automated supermarket checkout system utilizing a SCARA robot: preliminary prototype development

In recent years, a number of retail stores have introduced self-checkout systems at the cash point, however these normally require a high degree of participation by the customer, often leading to requests for help by store attendees. A review of the literature has shown that the use of robots at checkout points, with their potential to reduce customer effort, has not yet been addressed. A separate literature review has shown that the four-axis SCARA robot, used extensively in the manufacturing industry due to its advantages in cost, speed and rigidity, is rarely applied to service tasks. In this work these two research gaps are being addressed. A first prototype of an automated supermarket checkout system, exploiting the advantages of the SCARA robot and including machine vision, has been developed. The system is able to recognize various items placed by the customer on a conveyor, transfer the items to a container, pack them neatly, and total the bill. Evaluation of the prototype indicates that acceptable speed and reliability of the system can be attained.

ANALISIS KEPUTUSAN NASABAH DALAM MEMILIH JENIS BANK: PENERAPAN MODEL REGRESI LOGISTIK BINER (STUDI KASUS PADA BANK BRI CABANG BALIKPAPAN)

This paper analyze factors that influence customer preference between conventional and sharia bank, and which factor is the most dominant. The study was conducted in Balikpapan city from May 2017 until August 2017. The sample is 25 customers of BRI Sharia and 31 customers of conventional BRI. Statistical analysis model used in this paper is Binary Logistics Regression. There are 8 predictor variables to be analyzed to know their effect to customer decision in choosing bank between sharia bank and conventional bank. The variables are: knowledge of respondents about sharia bank (X1), knowledge of respondents about the difference between conventional and sharia banks (X2), knowledge of respondents about products offered by sharia bank (X3), promotion of sharia bank via printed media (X4), promotion of sharia bank via electronic media (X5), promotion of sharia bank in social activities (X6), the customer's efforts to observe religious orders (X7), and the customer's efforts to avoid the religious prohibitions (X8). The results of individual significance test indicate that knowledge of respondents about sharia bank, and promotion of sharia bank through electronic media has significant effect to the customer’s decision in choosing bank. And the most significant effect is promotion through electronic media (X5). Keywords : binary logistic regression, decision, sharia bank

Detecting Meta-Patterns from Frameworks Using Hybrid Genetic Algorithm

Meta-patterns are a sort of basic object-oriented constructs that have been used to design an object-oriented framework. It has been used to precisely describe possible design pattern of a framework at meta-level to manifest framework hot-spots and its corresponding adaptability. The present study is an attempt to develop a genetic algorithm approach for detecting the types and numbers of meta-patterns. For this purpose we have converted the UML class diagram of object-oriented framework and meta-patterns into directed graph and applied hybrid genetic algorithm. The obtained results from the proposed algorithm are further validated manually with the recall and precision percentage of 86.20 and 80.64 respectively. Overall the study demonstrates the utility of the uniquely proposed algorithm for the near accurate identification of meta-patterns for high reusability. This can be applied on frameworks for assessing the evolution process, documentation of hot-spots and reducing the customization effort.

User experience sharing

PurposeThis paper aims to propose user experience sharing (UES) as a customer-based initiation of value co-creation pertaining to service provision, which represents customers’ level of effort made for the direct benefit of others in their service network. The authors propose and empirically examine a user experience sharing model (UESM) that explicates customer-to-customer (C2C) UES and its impacts on firm-desired customer-based outcomes in online communities.Design/methodology/ApproachBased on an extensive review, the authors conceptualize UES and UESM. By using online survey data collected from mobile app users in organic online communities, the authors performed structural equation modeling analyses by using AMOS 24.FindingsThe results support the proposed UESM, showing that C2C UES acts as a key driver of both firm-desired customer efforts and customer insights. The results also confirmed that service-dominant (S-D) logic-informed motivational drivers exert a significant impact on C2C UES. Importantly, C2C UES mediates the relationship between S-D logic-informed motivational drivers and firm-desired customer-based outcomes.Originality/valueThis study offers a pioneering attempt to develop an overarching concept, UES, which reflects customers’ initiation of value co-creation, and to empirically examine C2C UES. The empirical evidence supports the key contention that firms should proactively facilitate C2C UES.

Toward a conceptualization of perceived complaint handling quality in social media and traditional service channels

PurposeThis study aims to conceptualize and test the effect of consumers’ perceptions of complaint handling quality (PCHQ) in both traditional and social media channels.Design/methodology/approachStudy 1 systematically reviews the relevant literature and then carries out a consumer and manager survey. This approach aims to conceptualize the dimensionality of PCHQ. Study 2 tests the effect of PCHQ on key marketing outcomes. Using survey data from a German telecommunications company, the study provides an explanation for the differences in outcomes across traditional (hotline) and social media channels.FindingsStudy 1 reveals that PCHQ is best conceptualized as a five-dimensional construct with 15 facets. There are significant differences between customers and managers in terms of the importance attached to the various dimensions. The construct shows strong psychometric properties with high reliability and validity, thereby opening up opportunities to treat these facets as measurement indicators for the construct. Study 2 indicates that the effect of PCHQ on consumer loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM) communication is stronger in social media than in traditional channels. Procedural justice and the overall quality of service solutions emerge as general dimensions of PCHQ because they are equally important in both channels. In contrast, interactional justice, distributive justice and customer effort have varying effects across the two channels.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the understanding of a firm’s channel selection for complaint handling in two ways. First, it evaluates and conceptualizes the PCHQ construct. Second, it compares the effects of different dimensions of PCHQ on key marketing outcomes across traditional and social media channels.Practical implicationsThis study enables managers to understand the difference in efficacy attached to different dimensions of PCHQ. It further highlights such differences across traditional and social media service channels. For example, the effect of complaint handling on social media is of particular importance when generating WOM communication.Originality/valueThis study offers a comprehensive conceptualization of the PCHQ construct and reveals the general and channel contingent effects of its different dimensions on key marketing outcomes.

Customer Satisfaction and Service Quality in the Marketing Practice: Study on Literature Review

Both public and private parts have given considerable keenness with respect to the perfect customer satisfaction in the current decades. Customer satisfaction has been a renowned point in advertising practice and educational research since Cardozo's (1965) a basic examination of customer effort, expectations and satisfaction. The service quality and customer satisfaction are associated with their definitions to their associations with alternate points of view in business. The service quality is an attracted assessment that mirrors the customer’s perception of reliability, assurance, responsiveness, empathy and tangibility; and significant quality while satisfaction is more careful and it is affected by point of view of service quality, item quality and cost, also situational fragments and individual components. This paper concentrated on the literature on the key elements of this study which was service quality, customer satisfaction and expectation. In particular, the accompanying principle focuses were demonstrated about service quality, customer expectation, customer satisfaction, theory of SERVQAL, and related studies on Customer satisfaction and service quality. This study used a descriptive design, by exploring some of the literature that discusses on customer satisfaction and service quality how to improve the both public and private business parts in marketing practice.

A Concept towards Automated Data-Driven Reconfiguration of Digital Assistance Systems

Constantly changing assembly tasks and reduced production cycles increase the risk of cognitive stress of operators. A large number of digital assistance systems implemented in assembly lines contribute to operator’s stress reduction. However, small and medium sized companies confront major challenges in implementing digital assistance solutions due to high investment costs and high customization effort. In addition, technological risks are mainly summarized as i) choosing the right assistance system, ii) realizing suitable interfaces within the in-house IT landscape for machine-to-machine and machine-to-human communication and iii) creating assembly instructions and configuring data systems in terms of supplying specific and adaptable information. Considering the aforementioned challenges and related technological risks, this paper presents a concept for automated data-driven reconfiguration of digital assistance systems. We discuss its impact on certain use cases defined in the TU Wien Pilot Factory Industry 4.0. Finally, we outline learning design principles for students and industrial stakeholders to implement automated reconfigurable digital assistance systems.

The impact of price promotions on checkout donations

PurposeThis paper aims to present a model linking price promotions to checkout donations. It is argued that price promotions evoke two perceptions/emotions, namely, feelings of gratitude and perceived sacrifice of purchase, which consequently, influence the likelihood to donate. Feelings of gratitude dominate when the discount is high, while feelings of sacrifice dominate when the discount is low. Compared to no-discount situations, high discounts enhance consumers’ intention to donate while low discounts reduce this intention.Design/methodology/approachA total of four studies using shopping scenarios are conducted. Study 1 examines the main effect and the mediating factors. Study 2 replicates the findings in different product categories and at different unit-price levels. Studies 3 and 4 test the moderating effects of customer effort and discount framing.FindingsFindings of the four studies provide support for the proposed model. Compared to no-discount situations, high discounts enhance consumers’ intention to donate, while low discounts reduce this intention. The effects are mediated by feelings of gratitude and sacrifice and moderated by effort obtaining the discount and format of the discount.Research limitations/implicationsTheoretically, this research advances the understanding of consumers’ interpretations of price promotions. All studies are conducted in an online context.Practical implicationsThis research informs retailers and charity institutions on the best timing for soliciting checkout donations and indicates specific tactics to enhance consumers’ donations.Originality/valueThis is the first study linking price discounts to the growing phenomenon of checkout donations. The research is different from cause marketing where the donation is included in the price of a specific product. The work also differs from studies examining the spillover effect where additional purchases benefit the consumers instead of a cause.

Improving Performance in Supply Chain

The performance has different meanings and ways of defining and measurement. One cannot evaluate the supply chain of a company without using the concept of performance. There are two ways of measuring it: with qualitative and with quantitative instruments. The quantitative measures include financial and non-financial appraise. This article analysis some of the most used metrics. Resources, flexibility and output are listed among them. The non-financial performance measurements will be analysed from the point of view of the company as well as from the point of view of several of its main customers. The customer evaluation will be used in the second stage for describing the qualitative performance of the analysed supply chain. Customer satisfaction score, customer effort score and net promoter score will be calculated as framework for the qualitative performance of supply chain. The results will provide managerial information for the improvement of this supply chain.

A critical incident approach to consumer response in the smartphone market: product, service and contents

Multitudes of theory-based models have been developed and applied to identify drivers behind user behaviors in various information systems (IS) markets. Although these theory-based models have been successful in identifying and explaining consumer behavior, their fixed nature necessitates customization efforts when applied to a specific usage context. In this paper, we utilized critical incident technique (CIT) as a complementary approach to IS user behavior study to traditional theory-based models in the context of the smartphone market. Through a two-stage survey, both positive and negative critical incidents are collected, which are categorized into device, device-related services, network services and content services. Then, their impacts on user intention variables of loyalty and recommendation are derived by a structural equation analysis of 795 smartphone users’ responses. The results can be summarized as follows: Positive critical incidents improve user intentions whereas negative ones worsen them; among the positive incidents, the events related to network services are the most influential; Critical incidents related to application contents are the most influential among the negative; Mobile device manufacturers are the most strongly affected by critical incidents among the smartphone supply chain parties. Merits of CIT in IS user behavior study have been demonstrated: CIT’s flexible nature provides convenience in adapting to a particular IS usage context; Both positive and negative incidents are examined, yielding a complementary implication to other methods. We also revealed that a conventional wisdom of CIT to focus mainly on negative critical incidents might have to be adjusted since positive ones might be more influential depending on the particular context of IS usage.

Exploring the Customization Decision Support System Using Waypoint Solutions

Product customization has been popular since Internet shopping began. Many firms have introduced customization configuration systems, allowing customers to choose a wide range of product attributes, attracting them to participate in the shopping process, and increasing customer satisfaction. Paradoxically, the attribute-by-attribute (AbA) choice in the customization process requires a high-information processing load resulting in shopper confusion. To reduce this confusion, the CvSS (customization via starting solution) system has recently been developed. However, this system provides solution support only for the starting point of the configuration process. Thus, in this study, the authors proposes the CvWS (Customization via Waypoint Solutions) system, which would greatly reduce the customer effort needed to complete the configuration process by using a novel approach to solve the nonlinear knapsack problem. The newly proposed system is theoretically compared with the AbA customization as well as the CvSS system. Also, its feasibility is discussed in the context of the nonlinear multiconstraint knapsack problem.

How CEOs Can Become More Customeric

Far too often, academics, consultants and advisors complain that companies are not doing enough to become more Customer-centric, though it seems obvious that the Customer should be given more importance. This article examines why that is the case. It starts with the premise that the CEO is smart and perceives higher priorities or tasks than the Customer priority, which explains the lack of change in organizations. Since the CEO feels his/her current priorities are successful, there is no pressure to change. It suggests that consultants and advisors are not able to convince the CEO that there are better (Customer-centric) options. In other words, the lack of organizational change is due to the fact that consultants fail to make a strong enough case for change. This article then helps the advisor develop arguments about tasks versus priorities and the effective use of time (if the lack of time is used as an excuse) in order to assist them in making the case for change. Another problem is that these advisors confuse the executives with various Customer terms and portray their terms as the only way to success, be they Customer experience (CX), Customer journey, Customer value, Customer effort, etc. This article goes on to show what Customer-Centric and Customer value creation ideas the CEO should use in order to facilitate change. It shows how Customer priority can change and what is the impact of that change. A complete and revolutionary transformation of the company is required to make it Customer-Centric.

Customer Effort in Value Cocreation Activities

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.