Text mining analysis roadmap (TMAR) for service research

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer a step-by-step text mining analysis roadmap (TMAR) for service researchers. The paper provides guidance on how to choose between alternative tools, using illustrative examples from a range of business contexts. Design/methodology/approach The authors provide a six-stage TMAR on how to use text mining methods in practice. At each stage, the authors provide a guiding question, articulate the aim, identify a range of methods and demonstrate how machine learning and linguistic techniques can be used in practice with illustrative examples drawn from business, from an array of data types, services and contexts. Findings At each of the six stages, this paper demonstrates useful insights that result from the text mining techniques to provide an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon and actionable insights for research and practice. Originality/value There is little research to guide scholars and practitioners on how to gain insights from the extensive “big data” that arises from the different data sources. In a first, this paper addresses this important gap highlighting the advantages of using text mining to gain useful insights for theory testing and practice in different service contexts. </jats:sec

Unpacking customer rage elicitation: a dynamic model

Unlike prior research that has confined customer rage to a single point in time, this article explores the unfolding of rage over three time periods, at the initial service failure (Episode 1) and two ineffective service recovery attempts (Episodes 2 and 3). In each episode, we examine the association between loss, or a threat of loss, of personal resources (e.g., self-esteem, sense of justice, sense of control, and economic resources such as time and money) and negative emotions. We empirically demonstrate for the first time that although rage may sometimes take place at the initial service failure (Episode 1), rage does not tend to be an immediate reaction. Rather, it is when service failures remain unresolved that residual negative emotions are carried forward into the next episode, so that rage is dominant in Episodes 2 and 3. This carryover of negative emotion spirals with more resources being threatened, propelling the customer into rage. The authors offer a methodological contribution demonstrating the dynamic nature of appraisals and emotions in a sequence of related episodes in the elicitation of rage. Finally, differences between U.S. and Thai responses are discussed with important theoretical and managerial implications

Customer effort in value cocreation activities: improving quality of life and behavioral intentions of health care customers

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 diseasescancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Our findings highlight how an integrated care model has benefits for both customers and providers and can enhance customer EVCA

Professional service firms are relationship marketers: But does size matter?

There are few research-based insights into professional service firms’ (PSFs) contemporary marketing practices. This is unfortunate as the professional services sector is a key contributor to growth in Australian and other economies around the world. As professional services are unique in a number of ways and their operations and marketing activities inextricably intertwined, the present study investigated the extent to which PSFs practice marketing and whether this differs according to size. Depth interviews were held with thirty seven Australian senior managers in four key industries. We examined the extent of relationship marketing, conceptualised at an overall managerial level as well as four sub-practices identified in research by Coviello and colleagues. We found relationship management and interaction marketing were the most common practices, which is consistent with the inseparability concept, and that relationship management and database marketing were more common in larger firms, which is consistent with their relative resource strength

Customer rage: Triggers, tipping points, and take-outs

The article presents the results of a study of customer rage, which involved 50 interviews with enraged customers from the U.S., Australia, Thailand and China. It focuses on the psychological processes underlying incidents of customer rage. These are defined as cases where customers become so infuriated at a perceived lack of customer service that they may verbally or physically attack employees, or damage corporate property. It was found that such incidents typically were the result of escalating anger, rather than an immediate reaction. They usually were preceded by a series of interactions with the firm which were perceived as insulting or threatening by the customer

Reconceptualizing professional service firm innovation capability: Scale development

Building on capability theory, this paper presents a reconceptualization of the innovation capability construct within a knowledge-intensive service context, specifically, professional service firms (PSFs). Employing a rigorous multi-stage scale development process we interviewed 37 participants and surveyed 463 respondents across a wide range of PSFs including lawyers, accountants, consulting engineers and management consultants. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses highlight the multi-dimensional nature of innovation capability within this context. Three dimensions were identified: client-focused, marketing focused, and technology-focused innovation capability. We provide evidence of face validity, content validity, convergent and discriminant validity, nomological validity and reliability of our scale. Our scale offers a new way to measure innovation capability within PSFs and highlights the need to move beyond the narrow manufacturing mind-set focus of prior innovation research. Implications for theory and practice are discussed

Gaining Customer Experience Insights that Matter

Contextualized in post-purchase consumption in B2B settings, the authors contribute to customer experience management theory and practice in three important ways. First, by offering a novel customer experience conceptual framework that integrates prior customer experience research to better understand, manage, and improve customer experiences - comprised of value cocreation elements (resources, activities, context, interactions and customer role), cognitive responses and discrete emotions at touchpoints across the customer journey. Second, by demonstrating the usefulness of a longitudinal customer experience analytic based on the conceptual framework that combines quantitative and qualitative measures. Third, by providing a step-by-step guide for implementing the text mining approach in practice, thereby showing that customer experience analytics that apply big data techniques to the customer experience can offer significant insights that matter. The authors highlight six key insights practitioners need in order to manage their customers’ journey, through: (1) taking a customer perspective; (2) identifying root causes; (3) uncovering at-risk segments; (4) capturing customers’ emotional and cognitive responses; (5) spotting and preventing decreasing sales; and (6) prioritizing actions to improve customer experience (CX). The article concludes with directions for future research

Understanding service failure and recovery: A customer-based phenomenographic approach

To date, researchers have largely considered service failure and recovery as a combination of individual constructs, often in isolation, rather than viewing failure and recovery holistically. Consequently, our understanding is fragmented. Furthermore, while some attempt has been made to gain a better understanding of service failure and recovery from both the customer and the employee’s perspective (cf. Bitner et al.1990; McColl-Kennedy and Sparks 2003), no study has employed an interpretative perspective that potentially offers a rich, in-depth approach to this important area of research. Given this gap, our paper presents the value of taking a customer-based interpretive approach to obtaining a fuller understanding of the way customers view service failure and recovery. In this paper we report the findings of our phenomenography study of twenty in-depth interviews. Not only do we argue the benefits of adopting this fresh approach to studying service failure and recovery, we also present an innovative conceptual framework derived from our phenomenographic research findings, which has significant theoretical and practical implications