Customer participation and the roles of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how customers derive value and switching costs from their own participation conditional on their perceived efficacy of themselves (self-efficacy) and their advisers (adviser-efficacy) in financial services. Design/methodology/approach Student interviewers approached customers exiting banks with a skip interval of two. The respondents received the questionnaire items translated into Chinese. The final survey sample consists of 220 respondents. Findings Empirical results confirm that customer participation influences switching costs through customer value. The synergistic effect of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy moderates the relationships among customer participation, customer value and switching costs. The incongruent levels of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy can increase customer value and switching costs. Originality/value This study looks beyond self-efficacy to demonstrate that the synergistic roles of self-efficacy and adviser-efficacy significantly influence the relationships among customer participation, customer value and switching costs.