Journal of Serviceology
(ISSN 2435-5771)
Back number
- Vol.9, No.1 New!
- Vol.8, No.2
- Vol.7, No.2
- Vol.6, No.2
- Vol.4, No.1
- Vol.3, No.2
- Vol.3, No.1
- Vol.2, No.1
- Vol.1, No.1
Vol.9, No.1
Original paper
Clarifying Experience Formation from the Customer's Perspective Using Critical Incident Technique
Jing Zhang
Vol.9, No.1, pp.1-8, 2024.4
ABSTRACT: Academic and practical interest in customer experience has grown in recent years. However, most existing studies define it as a response to a specific stimulus and lack a holistic understanding of this phenomenon. This study introduces the Critical Incident Technique to identify the characteristics of the experience from the customer's perspective and factors influencing its formation. We chose the food-related behavior as a slice of the customer's lifeworld and conducted a descriptive questionnaire survey. Using deductive and inductive analytical methods, we found that incidents that evoke emotions through actions that make people aware of their novelty create customer experience. Additionally, contextual factors (other people, individuals, and the environment) and service provider-relevant factors (direct and indirect interaction) influence the formation of customer experience. Other people and indirect interactions with service providers have the most significant impact. These findings indicate that managing the context in the consumption process in the customer’s lifeworld could be more effective in forming the customer experience.
Keywords: Customer Experience; Experience Formation; Service Marketing and Management
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Vol.8, No.2, Special Issue of the 10th Domestic Conference of Society for Serviceology
Research Note
Customer Experience Management - a guided Framework for Qualitative Research
David Marutschke
Vol.8, No.2, pp.1-6, 2023.7
ABSTRACT: Customer experience (CX) has received remarkable attention in recent years by scholars and practitioners, but there is still ongoing debate about how to manage the increasingly complex set of customer interactions. One of the key challenges in academia is to define an appropriate research framework and methodology that is capable of providing a holistic view on the complex set of touchpoints across the entire customer journey. This paper applies established principles in the field of process management, experiential marketing, service design and service quality to the field of CX. The outcome is a conceptual framework that can be used to conduct semi-structured interviews with companies and to study how interactions between customers and companies are planned, executed, and controlled. Insights from this study will help to facilitate the fieldwork necessary to develop an integrated model of CX for managing the complex set of customer touchpoints across different channels and platforms.
Keywords: Customer Experience, Customer Journey, Touchpoints, Service Quality, Process Management
Vol.7, No.2, Special Issue of ICServ 2020
Original paper
Selling Advanced Service: The Case of an Agricultural Machinery Company in Japan
Towako Sakama
Vol.7, No.2, pp.1-8, 2022.3
ABSTRACT: Recently, many manufacturers have been working diligently to develop advanced services but have struggled to market them. Advanced services are services that support products and customers while leveraging information and communications technology. This paper focuses on the concept of value-based selling as a way to sell advanced services and the capabilities needed to practice value-based selling. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of value-based selling as a selling activity to facilitate the sale of advanced services and to explore the capabilities associated with value-based selling. This paper is a qualitative case study. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with a director and a senior manager of one Japanese agricultural machinery manufacturer that successfully sold advanced services. The analysis results showed that the manufacturer that successfully sold advanced services practiced value-based selling. In addition, the study found that the manufacturer utilized five capabilities in value-based selling. This paper suggests that manufacturers aiming to sell advanced services should practice value-based selling, and that the five capabilities are important elements for this practice.
Keywords: Servitization, Value-based selling, Capabilities
Vol.6, No.2, Special Issue of ICServ 2020
Preface (Special Issue of ICServ2020)
Preface: Special Issue of ICServ2020
Chieko Minami, Takeshi Takenaka, Hisashi Masuda and Nariaki Nishino
Vol.6, No.2, p.1, 2021.9
Invited Short Paper (Special Issue of ICServ2020)
An Integrated Service System in BOP Economy
Md Abul Kalam Siddike, Kazuyoshi Hidaka and Jim Spohrer
Vol.6, No.2, pp.2-5, 2021.9
ABSTRACT: We proposed an integrated service system for the economy of the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) for improving the quality of life based on technological innovation. Specifically, a service portal works as a platform for integrating financial, healthcare, and educational service systems in the BOP economy. In the proposed service system, technological innovation like artificial intelligence (AI)-based cognitive assistants (CAs) could be applied to provide better communication, searching, and linkage for the service receivers. Finally, this paper discussed the feasibility of the proposed integrated service system in the BOP economy.
Keywords: Bottom of the pyramid (BOP) economy; capabilities of service receivers; an integrated service system; technological innovation
Smart Interactive Humane Service with CPHS for Healthcare Industry
Toshiya Kaihara and Daisuke Kokuryo
Vol.6, No.2, pp.6-11, 2021.9
ABSTRACT: It is crucially important to provide personalized health and exercise management services to reduce national health care costs of the impending super-aging society. As an research target to solve such a problem, we propose an innovative smart interactive humane service that provides personalized rational health and exercise instruction, which are calculated using daily life movement simulation and data analysis with development of a personalized digital human model and life log database. This research activity is carried out in the area of "Creation of humane service industry" of Future Society Creation Project supported by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). In this paper the basic concepts of smart interactive humane service and CPHS (Cyber Physical Humane System) are proposed, and our several use cases related to healthcare industry are explained to evaluate POC in this project.
Keywords: Smart interactive service; cyber physical humane system; health care service; digital health modelling
Does Good Service Recovery Improve Consumer Affinity?
Shinichiro Terasaki and Keigo Taketani
Vol.6, No.2, pp.12-15, 2021.9
ABSTRACT: Increasing cross cultural contacts elicit a new breed of consumers with favourable attitudes toward foreign countries, or consumer affinity. Unlike its growing popularity in international marketing, its antecedents have been relatively neglected particularly in terms of quantitative investigations. In this study, we focus on service recovery in intercultural service encounters as one of the leading antecedents of consumer affinity and investigate whether appropriate service recovery increases consumer affinity for the country to which the employee belongs to, introducing consumer animosity as a moderating factor between them. The results of simple slope analysis revealed that service recovery has a positive effect on consumer affinity only when consumer animosity is low; when consumer animosity is high, it does not elicit consumer affinity. Hence, service providers can increase consumers' affinity through good service recovery if low consumer animosity is observed. This research presents a new theoretical implication for service recovery in intercultural service encounters by incorporating the concepts of two different types of country biases into service marketing.
Keywords: Service recovery; consumer affinity; consumer animosity
Developing Preliminary System for Smart Welfare Interactive Service
Go Nakamura, Yuichiro Honda, Takaaki Chin, Mitsunori Tada, Tsubasa Maruyama, Yasunori Goto and Ichiro Hirata
Vol.6, No.2, pp.16-20, 2021.9
ABSTRACT: This paper proposes a smart welfare interactive service system that can collect the body parameters/conditions (e.g., height, weight, gender, age and medical history), motion parameters (e.g., step length, walking velocity, walking time and walk score) and usage status of assistive devices is proposed. The system provides the information for assistive devices or improving living environment based on elderly people's physical ability. In this paper, the authors investigated the optimum grip height and assist modes of a robot assist walker, which is an electrically assisted walking support device with elderly subjects who can walk independently. Body composition for all subjects were measured by the body composition monitor (inner scan 50V BC-622, TANITA Corp.). The 10-m walking test was conducted to evaluate the walking ability, and time and number of steps were measured. The results indicated that the system was able to provide feedback of the optimum grip height and assist mode for the user with their body information based on the evaluation database.
Keywords: Assistive devices; collective intelligence; welfare; IoT
Vol.4, No.1
Original paper
Consumer Experience as Suppliers on Value Co-Creation Behavior
Bach Q. Ho, Yuna Murae, Tatsunori Hara and Yukihiko Okada
Vol.4, No.1, pp.1-7, 2019.10
ABSTRACT: Service providers face deteriorating working environments because of consumers' high expectations for services. Consumers should participate in value co-creation, and support service providers to relieve service providers from overburden. In home delivery services, carrier overburden is often caused by the receivers’ behavior, such as requests for re-delivery. However, the consumer experience of suppliers—the sender experience—may also affect the value co-creation behavior of receivers. The purpose of this study is to clarify the impact of supplier experience on participation in value co-creation as a recipient of home delivery services. Multiple group structural equation modeling was used to analyze 30,000 consumers' responses to an online questionnaire. Our findings demonstrate that the quality of customer citizenship behavior as a dimension of value co-creation behavior changed because of the supplier experience. The overburden of service providers will be lessened as consumers increase their supplier experience. Although they may want to help service provider, consumers without supplier experience cannot support service providers effectively. This study identified this "recipient myopia" from justification of the hypothesis model.
Keywords: Value Co-Creation, Consumer Behavior, Consumer Participation, Service Experience, Service Context
Vol.3, No.2
Original paper
Customer Behavior Analysis Using Service Field Simulator
Takashi Okuma, Ryosuke Ichikari, Keiko Tagai, Hitomi Shimakura, Hiroko Isobe, and Takeshi Kurata
Vol.3, No.2, pp.18-24, 2019.1
ABSTRACT: A virtual environment system for human behavior analysis, called a service field simulator, and its application to marketing investigation are described. The practicability and advantages of applying this service field simulator to marketing investigation are demonstrated through two case studies involving actual business scenarios. The first case study highlights the similarities and differences that occur when in-store marketing investigation is carried out in a real store versus a virtual store. The results of the second case study, an actual in-virtual-store marketing investigation, verify the feasibility of the proposed service field simulator.
Keywords: human behavior sensing; virtual reality; in-store marketing
Vol.3, No.1
Original paper
Consumer service innovation in a circular economy – the customer value perspective
Maria Antikainen, Minna Lammi and Taru Hakanen
Vol.3, No.1, pp.1-8, 2018.8
ABSTRACT: We are already overusing non-renewable resources and exceeding the environmental capacity of our planet and consumption is constantly growing. There is an alarming need to replace the current linear economic model with a more sustainable and preserving model called the Circular Economy (CE). The idea of the CE is to keep products and materials in use as long as possible, preserving or even increasing their value. The transition towards a CE requires a fundamental redesign of business models and end-to-end value chains. Instead of selling products, companies should move to retain ownership and sell their use as a service, allowing them to optimize the use of resources. Thus, buying for a service creates value differently for consumers than buying and owning a product. Therefore, there is a need to understand how CE-based services create value for consumers. In this study, customer value is perceived as a trade-off between the benefits and sacrifices that a consumer perceives when purchasing a product or a service. Our data is derived from consumer group interviews that took place in February 2016 in Finland. In the group interviews we introduced potential CE services to consumers. The data show that consumers are gaining practical, economic and personal benefits from three potential CE rental services: a sofa, a washing machine and clothing. Moreover, the study revealed that the benefits elicited by the washing machine model related mainly to practical benefits, while the sofa model, in particular, offered personal benefits to consumers. It also seemed that the sofa and clothing CE models entailed more psychological sacrifices compared to the washing machine model. The results also indicate that when making a decision on renting or owning, the balance between the economic benefits and sacrifices is crucial. If buying is seen as economically favourable, it easily wins out over renting, since it is a more familiar way to act. With regards to some products, personal and emotional benefits tend to override other factors.
Keywords: Circular economy, customer value, services, value creation, innovation
Original paper
Triggers for Modifying Dysfunctional Customer Behaviour
Wataru Uémoto
Vol.3, No.1, pp.9-17, 2018.8
ABSTRACT: Dysfunctional customer behaviour in service settings are known to create problems for company managers and to have a negative impact on service performance. Although some prior researches suggested some customer management tactics in service settings, researchers have paid little attention to how customers modify their dysfunctional behaviours. Consequently, validity of customer management tactics and possibility of other customers' contribution for modifying dysfunctional behaviour have not yet been revealed. This article describes the thematic analysis that reveals a wide variety of elements and triggers which affect the modification of dysfunctional customer behaviour. According to the research findings, two major elements (other customers and employees) are identified and interactions with unknown other customers particularly may have a strong impact on modifying dysfunctional customer behaviours. Furthermore, seven triggers for modifying dysfunctional customer behaviours were exploited: other customer's dysfunctional behaviour, other customer' s appropriate behaviour, negative reaction of other customer, advice from other customer, employee concession, employee notice, and employee fatigue. Results reveal the positive aspects of the negative phenomenon of dysfunctional customer behaviour in service settings and limited effectiveness of customer management tactics in service settings.
Keywords: Modification of dysfunctional customer behaviour, Customer management, Services marketing
Vol.2, No.1
Original paper
Prototype Verification for Co-creation of an Experiential Value Platform for E-learning Skill-Based Education Service
Satoshi Suzuki, Masato Anakubo and Yasue Mitsukura
Vol.2, No.1, pp.1-11, 2017.12
ABSTRACT: E-learning is an effective e-business approach; however, it does not perform well for skill-based education involving body motion and implicit knowledge, typically neglecting experiential value which has a strong relationship with changes in the psychological status of the receiver and provider. The current study introduces a platform for co-creation of experiential value (CcEV) and a proposed prototype app named e-training analyzer. A pseudo e-learning experiment was conducted using the app to test the CcEV concept. We utilized a teaching-timing assistance (TT-assist) method, because suitable teaching-timing corresponds to changes in learners' short-term experience value during practice. Moreover, an algorithm for objectively estimating the users' feeling-of-satisfaction from the brain wave measurement was implemented in the app. Using three evaluation methods, we confirmed that the TT-assist method was able to enhance learners' skill level as effectively as normal teaching (Welch's t test : t(38.28) = 0.04, p = 0.03). In addition, TT-assist significantly enhanced learners' subjective feeling-of-satisfaction (t(20) = 3.86, p < .001, d = 0.66), and maintained learners' objectively estimated feeling-of-satisfaction. Taken together, the results suggest that the prototype CcEV platform was effective for overcoming the difficulties of e-learning for skill-based education.
Keywords: Skill education service, E-learning, Experiential value, Co-creation, Feeling-of-satisfaction
Vol.1, No.1
Invited paper
Innovation in Service Ecosystems
Stephen L. Vargo, Heiko Wieland and Melissa Archpru Akaka
Vol.1, No.1, pp.1-5, 2016.7
ABSTRACT: We apply service-dominant (S-D) logic and its service-ecosystems perspective as a means for reconceptualizing innovation taking a broader and deeper perspective. More specifically, we argue that a service-ecosystems perspective enables researchers and managers to consider the interactions among a full range of actors and processes involved in value creation. This systemic perspective helps to shed light on the processes and practices that are foundational to the formation and re-formation of technologies and markets. Importantly, a service-ecosystems view broadens the scope of innovation to include the social structures (i.e., institutions) that guide and are guided by the actions and interactions among multiple actors.
Keywords: Innovation; Market Formation; Ecosystems; Institutions
Original paper
FNS Model of Service as Value Co-creation in Design Processes
Hideyuki Nakashima, Haruyuki Fujii and Masaki Suwa
Vol.1, No.1, pp.6-14, 2016.7
ABSTRACT: We formalize a design process as a synthesis. One important phase of the process is utilization of the designed object, either it is concrete or abstract. This phase is a service provision. We define "X service" as a provision and utilization of X, where X is something or some system. Value co-creation by the provider and the user through use has been discussed in the society of Serviceology. We claim that the concept of co-creation also applies to design. We have been working on formalizing the process of design and synthesis, or constructive science, as FNS diagram. It is an infinite loop of generation, interaction (of the system) with the environment, analysis and scripting (and then back to generation). This loop is infinite in the sense that to design is never ending activity of making and improving a certain type of artifacts recursively towards a preferable situation even though each artifact has its lifetime. Service in its narrow sense corresponds to generation and interaction phase where a generated system is actually put into use. Service in its wider sense corresponds to the whole loop. When we take the definition of "design" to its widest meaning, service becomes an important part of a design process. Provision and utilization of designed system forms a twin FNS loops, one for the provider and the other for the user. Information technology (IT) plays an important role when we design an innovative service system. As an example, we report our design and implementation of Smart Access Vehicle System in Hakodate.
Keywords: Design, FNS-diagram, constructive methodology, value co-creation, serviceology