scholarly journals Self-service versus human interaction in private consumption: The moderating role of brand personality

Author(s):  
Seojin Stacey Lee ◽  
Kiwan Park ◽  
Yaeri Kim

We explored how consumer attitudes toward service delivery types (self-service technology vs. face-to-face) differ in a private consumption context depending on the brand personality (underdog brand vs. top- dog brand). Using banking service (Study 1) and hotel service (Study 2) scenarios, we empirically investigated the interaction effects between service delivery types and brand personalities on consumer attitudes. The results indicate that for humanized underdog brands consumers showed a more positive attitude toward self-service technologies than toward face-to-face services. However, for the top-dog brands there were no significant moderation effects. Thus, when managers in the marketing field are planning to regulate new directions for their service policy, they need to be very cautious by considering both consumption context and brand personality. We have theoretically and practically expanded the existing literature on service delivery by focusing on private consumption services.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth H. Manser Payne ◽  
James Peltier ◽  
Victor A. Barger

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships that influence the value co-creation process and lead to consumer comfort with artificial intelligence (AI) and mobile banking (AIMB) service platforms. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model was developed to investigate the value-in-use perceptions of AI-based mobile banking applications via five antecedents: baseline perceptions of current bank service delivery; service delivery configuration benefits; general data security; safety perceptions of specific mobile banking services; and perceptions of AI service delivery. Data were collected from 218 respondents and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings This study highlights the role and importance of the sequential relationships that impact the assessment of AIMB. The findings suggest that service delivery and the customer’s role in value co-creation change as AI is introduced into a digital self-service technology channel. Furthermore, AIMB offers transaction-oriented (utilitarian) value propositions more so than relationship-oriented (hedonic) value propositions. Research limitations/implications The sample consisted on digital natives. Additional age cohorts are needed. Practical implications As financial institutions redirect their business models toward digital self-service technology channels, the need for customers to feel comfortable while interacting with an AI agent will be critical for enhancing the customer experience and firm performance. Originality/value The authors extend the service-dominant logic (SDL) literature by showing that value co-creation is a function of both firms’ technologies and consumers’ value-in-use, a finding that appears to be unique in the literature. The authors advance the digital transformation literature by evaluating AIMB as an interactive process that requires an understanding of key technology constructs, including perceptions of baseline service relationships, desired service configurations, security and safety issues and whether AI is useful for value co-creation. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first SDL framework that investigates interactive and structural relationships to explain value-in-use perceptions of AIMB.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-56
Author(s):  
Zedekia Juma Adhaya ◽  
Stephen Ochieng Odock

Self-service technology (SST) continues to create tremendous impact on the business environment globally. A technology that allows consumers to take on the traditional place of service agents in the provision of services. Business organizations are taking advantage of the advancement in technology to improve service delivery and performance. The advancement in technology particularly with respect to nanotechnology, genome sequencing and artificial intelligence are among the drivers of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Consequently, information technology advancement is changing the marketing landscape of goods and services such that service industry, notably hospitality and transport have increased the prevalence of SSTs, as critical drivers of an organization’s industrial strength level. By a firm adopting technology-based strategy, this means higher clients’ satisfaction, cost minimization, and faster accurate service delivery with higher consistency among other benefits. This paper therefore, assesses the impact of SSTs and emphasizes on actual adoption and usage of self-service as proposed by technology acceptance model. The study reviews theoretical and empirical literature on the subject of SSTs and firm performance, identifies the research gaps and puts forward a suitable conceptual framework that can investigate the link between SST and firm performance. This paper uses secondary data to establish research gaps and the determinant of the success of adoption of SST by a firm. From a total of 54 articles reviewed, almost all studies on SSTs are based on the service sector focusing least on the internal customers in Kenya. A few studies related directly to the performance of the firms to the adoption of SSTs. Agricultural and manufacturing sectors particularly in the rural areas are unexploited directly. This is due to infrastructural imbalances in the urban and rural areas. The outcome of this review would enlighten; administrators of firms in Kenya and the entire East African region on the importance of ICT infrastructure, the information resources and the strategies for optimizing electronic services to attain competitive advantage. It widens the frontiers of knowledge for the academic community in production and operation management and enhances the understanding of the customer SST interactions in different industries. It creates further valuable implications on the industrial sectors, principally to the managers who use the information in drafting service related strategies and hence become a yardstick to evaluate the present service initiatives appropriately. It allows the managers to have a basis to determine whether the massive investment in adoption of technology is justifiable. Finally, this paper contributes to the existing knowledge in self-service technology and customer satisfaction and serves as source of reference to future researchers and academicians in this field.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kanika Gupta ◽  
Sanjay Sharma

Purpose The advent of technology has played a crucial role in changing the landscape of the hospitality sector. One such technology is the adoption and installation of kiosks in hotels. While some of the hotels have adopted and installed kiosks for self-services, the other hotels are still not very comfortable with the idea of self-service. This paper aims to explore the possibilities, challenges and issues that hoteliers face while dealing with self-service kiosks, it further investigates the customer’s perspective and its benefits to the end-user. Design/methodology/approach This study has assimilated data from hotel managers and executives that have deployed kiosks. This study involved the collection of primary data through structured interviews. Eight different hotels from the UK and India have been compared and analyzed to formulate subcategories to answer the research questions. A total of 200 customers from both the countries were approached to get the primary data; the customers were from the same hotel where the hotel executives and managers were interviewed. Findings The customers accepted Kiosks as easy to use, fast to run, fun to operate, but, lacking human interaction and counter language issues were simultaneously discussed. Kiosks have been emerging as self-service technologies in hotels and play a key role in reducing bottlenecks in hotel operations. The technology anxiety and counter service argument is merely a transition phase that will fade away gradually. However, the financial feasibility and the level of adoption depend upon the level of operations and the demographic characteristics of customers. Research limitations/implications The dependence of data from the person interviewed and their biases for answers, along with the trust and credibility of the data available online remain the biggest challenge. Increasing the sample size and more participation from different hotels would have made the study even more useful. Originality/value The research seeks to eliminate the gap in research by studying both the hotels' and the customers' perspective toward kiosks deployment in hotels. The results of the study would highlight the potential challenges being faced by hotel operations and opportunities they perceive in kiosks installation, therefore the results are very useful for hotels, hoteliers, academicians and students pursuing a career in the hospitality sector.


2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 471-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indranil Roy Chowdhury ◽  
Sanjay Patro ◽  
Pingali Venugopal ◽  
D. Israel

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to study the factors affecting the customer’s “Intention to Adopt TFS” (I-TFS), and a conceptual model has been proposed, while most previous studies have focused on the study of self-service technology (SST). Interactions between customer and service provider during delivery of a service is termed as “service-encounter”. The technology that enables service delivery without customer having a face-to-face service-encounter is known as “self-service technology” (SST). Froehle and Roth described five different ways in which technology can be used in service-encounter. One of the ways, known as technology-facilitated service (TFS), requires the simultaneous existence of three entities – customer, technology and service provider – during a service-encounter. Unlike SST, in TFS customer, technology and service provider must co-exist for the completion of the service. Design/methodology/approach – The factors affecting I-TFS can be divided in two categories: human – technology interaction (H-TI) and human–human interaction (H-HI). Although, existing literature has dealt with factors related to H-T I, e.g. “ease-of-use” and “perceived-usefulness”, the author tries to draw attention to H-H I variables, e.g. “facilitating-conditions”, which are potentially significant but have remained fairly untouched. For the study, participants were drawn from a target market where a TFS was operational. A scientifically developed survey was used to collect data from 222 participants. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyze the conceptual model. Findings – The results strongly suggest that while H-T I factors are important, H-H I factors are equally critical during service delivery. H-H I factors become especially more relevant than H-T I in developing countries. Research limitations/implications – The study strongly suggests that attitude towards the human element, i.e. service provider/front-line employee is an important factor that impacts the customer’s I-TFS. In the context of emerging economies where organisations provide innovative technology services to suit the needs of the respective populations human representatives are a must to support the service. We conducted this research within one TFS context. Additional studies with more diverse TFS with other consumer groups should be conducted to provide additional support and increase the generalisation of both the research framework and findings. Practical implications – The findings of the study are useful to all those firms that are considering the implementation of other TFS such as tele-medicine or distance education programmes. By investigating the main causal variables that have an impact of adoption of TFS, we provide an actionable set of factors to help firms understand and influence TFS adoption behaviour. Originality/value – Research on factors affecting adoption of services has traditionally focused either on interpersonal interactions between customers and service providers (H-HI) or non-interpersonal interactions of customer with technology (H-TI). However, very few have studied dimensions of H-HI and H-TI together to understand their impact on customer’s adoption of a service. Considering the need for more research, this study examines the relationships between H-HI, H-TI and their simultaneous impact on consumer adoption of services.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Srivisna Ayu Wardini

This research aims to focus on the examination of factors that influence consumer attitudes toward, and adoption of self-service technologies (SST) since advances the technologies have allowed service providers to incorporate many different technologies into the delivery of their services. These technologies have been implemented in the service encounter for the customer to use with varying degrees of success. The practical application of these findings may guide marketers to emphasize issues related to certain critical constructs when utilizing SST in their service delivery. A self-completion questionnaire was developed and administred to banking customers in Jakarta to obtain data pertaining to this research model’s of the adoption process for SST is developed and tested across three different technologies used in the banking industry. One of these technologies (ATM) has been available for many years and is widely adopted, other<br />technologies (e-banking and phone-banking) are relatively new to the marketplace. Findings support was found for the predicted relationship between inseparability, shared responsibility, emotions and service loyalty


2012 ◽  
Vol 182-183 ◽  
pp. 1387-1392
Author(s):  
Ying Chieh Yang ◽  
Yih Yuan Yang ◽  
Sheng Wen Liu

With the tremendous growth of self-service technologies (SSTs) in many industries, SSTs in service provision are recognized as more effective and important technologies to minimize investment costs and maximize service quality. By means of reviewing and integrating literature in several fields, the present paper attempts to provide an understanding of links between SST characteristics, consumer propensity towards SST usage, social pressures, and SST adoption. This paper also advances 14 tentative propositions for additional research and develops a conceptual model to predict and explain consumer attitudes and intentions towards SST usage. Besides the need for empirical confirmation of the propositions given, finally, there are several practical implications for service marketers and future research directions for scholars.


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