Conference Proceedings
SERVSIG 2016
Maastricht
Treger, S., Büttgen, M., Schuman, Jan. H., Ates, Z. (2016): Shedding Light on
the Dark Side of Customer Participation: Investigating Customer
Participation Stress
Stephanie Treger (University of Hohenheim), Marion Büttgen (University of Hohenheim), Jan
H. Schumann (University of Passau), Zelal Ates (HEC Management School - University of
Liège (HEC-ULg))
Relevance of the phenomenon being studied
Most studies stress the positive outcomes of customer participation for both customers and
firms. To the best of our knowledge, few studies acknowledge that coproduction also might
have downsides for customers. Taking the role of a partial employee (Bitner et al., 1997),
customers might face strains during co-production as well as employees do during their daily
business, particularly in complex services in which customers must make significant decisions
and often lack the necessary expertise to participate successfully (Hilgert et al., 2003; Lusardi
and Mitchell, 2007; Mayeaux et al., 1996). Thus, participation demands may overtax
customers’ participation abilities, which we expect to result in customer participation stress.
We develop and test a conceptual framework on the antecedents and consequences of
customer participation stress. In particular we build on the job demands-resources (JD-R)
model on the driver side and study the impact on customer participation and felt responsibility
on the outcome side.
Potential contributions to the field
This study aims to make a three-fold contribution to customer participation theory in general
and to research of negative aspects of customer participation in particular. First, we introduce
customer participation stress as a new construct to participation literature and examine which
factors determine the perception of stress. Second, we show that the JD-R model of
Demerouti et al. (2001) is applicable to a customer participation context. We both adopt
variables from the original model in our context, but also introduce new customer specific
variables to extend the model in a context-specific way. Third, we examine the influence of
customer participation stress on customer participation behavior and customers’ felt
responsibility. Thus, the findings of our study not only contribute to current research but also
offer valuable insights for practitioners to improve the service process itself. Practitioners
thereby can avoid overtaxing their customers and provide relevant support in the service
process.
Thus, we address the following research questions:
1. Which demands and resources do customers face during customer participation?
90
2. Do customers experience participation stress during the service production process,
and if so, to what extent does it influence their participation behavior and felt
responsibility for service outcomes?
Theoretical foundations
We draw on a framework based on the JD-R model of burnout (Demerouti et al., 2001). The
model assumes that demands and resources are negatively related because demands may
preclude the effectiveness of resources (Bakker et al., 2003; Demerouti et al., 2001). The JDR model has shown that job demands are primarily related to exhaustion components of
burnout and that a lack of resources is primarily related to disengagement (Demerouti et al.,
2001). Particularly in complex professional services, customers become partial employees
(Mills and Morris, 1986) and active co-creators of value: For example, clients seeking legal
advice need to disclose all relevant information and decide together with their lawyer on the
most effective legal strategy. Financial services customers need to provide information to
their financial advisor and understand as well as distinguish different products (Auh et al.,
2007). In this context, we expect that customer demands like role overload, high cognitive
demands and time pressure come up against customer resources like expertise, cognitive and
social support by the service employee. A mismatch between demands and resources might
cause stress and this in turn decreases customer participation and felt responsibility for the
service outcome.
Research context and conceptual framework
Financial services provide a suitable context for our study, because financial products are
highly complex and difficult to grasp, especially for financially unsophisticated people
(Crosby et al., 1990; van Rooij et al., 2011). Yet, structural reforms to social security and
retirement provisions continue to shift more responsibility from the service provider to
individual customers. Thus, we expect customer participation stress among people who have
to make significant decisions in financial services. Building on the JD-R model to explore the
emergence of customer participation stress we assume:
Job demands such as workload or role conflicts require physical or psychological effort by the
customer as a partial employee (Demerouti et al., 2001; Crawford et al., 2010). Facing
customer challenges during the service process we identify five relevant demands which we
91
adapt to our context, i.e. role overload, disliked employee, cognitive demands, perceived
partial employee status, and time-pressure.
H1: Customer demands, i.e. a) role overload, b) cognitive demands, c) perceived partial
employee status, d) time-pressure, e) disliked employee increase customer participation
stress.
According to the JD-R model demands can be balanced by job resources like supervisor
support or skills of the employee (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007). Adapted to our research
context we investigate cognitive and social employee support, customer expertise, and
behavioral expertise as relevant customer resources.
H2: Customer resources, i.e. a) cognitive employee support, b) social employee support, c)
customer expertise, d) behavioral expertise, decrease customer participation stress.
As stress is a negative psychological state, in which customers are overstrained by
participation demands, we expect a negative impact on participation behavior.
H3: Customer participation stress has a negative impact on customer participation
behavior.
In accordance with self- enhancement theory (Dunn and Dahl, 2012) self-threat relates
positively to self-serving biases, which help people protecting their self-concepts. Customers
who experience high levels of participation stress, associated with the danger of negative
service outcomes, might protect their self-concept by denying responsibility for the service
outcome.
H4: Customer participation stress has a negative impact on customers’ felt responsibility
for service outcomes.
Relying on job characteristics theory (Hackman and Oldham, 1976) employees’ felt
responsibility for output increases their extra-role (Pearce and Gregersen, 1991) and proactive
behavior (Fuller et al., 2006). Thus, we believe that customers’ felt responsibility might
influence their participation behavior as well.
H5: Customers’ felt responsibility has a positive impact on customer participation behavior.
Methodology and findings
92
In order to test our hypotheses, we sample from the population of customers who had used
an investment advisory service within the last 6 month. The sample (n=518) contains 254
customers with an investment advisory service within the last 1-3 month and 264 customers
with an investment advisory service within the last 4-6 month by now.
We used structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses with maximum likelihood
parameter estimation. First estimations predominantly support H1. We proposed a positive
effect of role overload, cognitive demands, perceived partial employee status, time-pressure
and disliked employee on customer participation stress. Role overload (β = .461, p < .001),
cognitive demands (β = .247, p < .001), time pressure (β = .323, p < .001) and disliked
employee (β = .311, p < .001) positively affect customer participation stress. The effect of
perceived partial employee status (β = .037, n.s.) is not significant but we found a trend in the
expected direction. We expected a negative effect of customers’ resources on customer
participation stress in H2. We found evidence for this hypothesis only for social support (β =.11, p < .05) and behavioral expertise (β =-.068, p < .05). However, we found an unexpected
negative effect of cognitive support on participation stress (β = .096, p < .01) and a nonsignificant effect of customer expertise (β =-.048, n.s.). We predicted that customer
participation stress has a negative impact on customer participation behavior (H3) as well as
on customers’ felt responsibility for service outcomes (H4). Both effects were not significant
(β =-.055, n.s., β =.012, n.s.). However, we can confirm H5 as we found that customers’ felt
responsibility positively affects customer participation behavior (β = .446, p < .001).
By the date of the conference we will be able to present our final model relying on an
intended sample size of 550 customers.
Conclusion
The objective of this research was to adapt the JD-R model to a customer context and thus
explain customer participation stress during service production. First results have shown that
customer participation stress is positively affected by cognitive factors (e.g., cognitive
demands, cognitive support) and can be reduced by social factors like social support. We also
found evidence for the hypothesis that customer participation stress negatively affects
customer participation behavior, which makes it a relevant aspect in the considerations of
managers and researchers as well.
93
References
Auh, Seigyoung, Simon J. Bell, Colin S. McLeod, and Eric Shih (2007), "Co-Production and
Customer Loyalty in Financial Services," Journal of Retailing, 83 (August), 359-70.
Bakker, Arnold B. and Evangelia Demerouti (2007), "The Job Demands-Resources Model:
State of the Art," Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22 (3), 309-28.
Bakker, Arnold B., Demerouti Evangelia, and Schaufeli, Wilmar B. (2003), “Dual process at
work in a call centre: An application of the job demands- resources model”, European
Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 12 (4), 393-417.
Bitner, M. J., Faranda, W. T., Hubbert, A. R., & Zeithaml, V. A. (1997), “Customer
contributions and roles in service delivery”, International Journal of Service Industry
Management, 8 (3), 193-205.
Crawford, Eean R., LePine, Jeffery A. and Rich, Bruce L. (2010), “Linking Job Demands and
Resources to Employee Engagement and Burnout: A Theoretical Extension and MetaAnalytic Test”, Journal of Applied Psychology, 95 (5), 834–848.
Crosby, Lawrence A., Kenneth A. Evans, and Deborah Cowles (1990), "Relationship Quality
in Services Selling: An Interpersonal Influence Perspective," Journal of Marketing, 54
(July), 68-81.
Demerouti, Evangelia, Arnold B. Bakker, Friedhelm Nachreiner, and Wilmar B. Schaufeli
(2001), "The Job Demands-Resources Model of Burnout," Journal of Applied Psychology,
86 (June), 499-512.
Dunn, Lea and Darren W. Dahl (2012), "Self-Threat and Product Failure: How Internal
Attributions of Blame Affect Consumer Complaining Behavior," Journal of Marketing
Research, 49 (October), 670-81.
Fuller, Jerry B., Laura E. Marler, and Kim Hester (2006), "Promoting Felt Responsibility for
Constructive Change and Proactive Behavior: Exploring Aspects of an Elaborated Model of
Work Design," Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27 (November), 1089-120.
94
Hackman, J. R. and Greg R. Oldham (1976), "Motivation through the Design of Work: Test
of a Theory," Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16 (August), 250-79.
Hilgert, Marianne A., Jeanne M. Hogarth, and Sondra G. Beverly (2003), "Household
Financial Management: The Connection between Knowledge and Behavior," Federal
Reserve Bulletin, 89 (July), 309-22.
Lusardi, Annamaria and Olivia S. Mitchell (2007), "Baby Boomer Retirement Security: The
Roles of Planning, Financial Literacy, and Housing Wealth," Journal of Monetary
Economics, 54 (January), 205-24.
Mayeaux, E. J.,Jr, P. W. Murphy, C. Arnold, T. C. Davis, R. H. Jackson, and T. Sentell
(1996), "Improving Patient Education for Patients with Low Literacy Skills," American
Family Physician, 53 (January), 205-11.
Mills, Peter K. and James H. Morris (1986), "Clients as “partial” Employees of Service
Organizations: Role Development in Client Participation," Academy of Management Review,
11 (October), 726-35.
Pearce, Jone L. and Hal B. Gregersen (1991), "Task Interdependence and Extrarole Behavior:
A Test of the Mediating Effects of Felt Responsibility," Journal of Applied Psychology, 76
(December), 838-44.
Van Rooij, Maarten, Annamaria Lusardi, and Rob Alessie (2011), "Financial Literacy and
Stock Market Participation," Journal of Financial Economics, 101 (August), 449-72.
95