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

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

International students' university preferences: how different are Malaysian and Chinese students?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine factors that influenced international university preference, looking at country of origin (COO), that is the COO of the course and program modes (PMs). This study specifically focusses on differences in perceptions across students from Malaysia and China. Design/methodology/approach: Conjoint analysis was used to examine the relative importances and part-worth scores of these attributes on international university preferences. Findings: PM and country of design (COD) had a major influence on Malaysian and Chinese students’ preferences for international universities. Online distance learning was the least preferred option, while offshore campuses were more acceptable to Malaysian students compared to Chinese students. Malaysian students preferred to study in the UK, while Chinese students favored Australia. Malaysian students were also found to be more cost sensitive compared to Chinese students, while the latter were more motivated by job prospects offered by an institution. Research limitations/implications: Limitations include the specific sample, pre-university students only from developed countries (Malaysia and China), which limits the generalizability to students from other countries. Practical implications: This study offers insights in the effect of COD and PM on students’ preferences for international universities, as well as other previously studied university-level attributes in a higher education setting. With a better understanding of factors affecting these preferences, higher educational institutions are better placed to implement a suitable marketing strategy to attract more international students. Originality/value: This study examines the impact COD, Delivery Mode (DM) and other university level attributes have on Malaysian and Chinese pre-university students' preferences for international universities. COD and DM were found to be extremely important factors that dominated the students' preferences. The study highlights the need to focus on different university attributes in different markets and to consider COD and DM issues in order to gain a larger market share of international students

A short form of Sweeney, Hausknecht and Soutar's cognitive dissonance scale

To describe and assess the legal requirements for transparency in appointments and promotions in the higher-education institutions of Sweden. The study explore legal documents. There is potential for further research to explore transparency in similar procedures in other comparable countries. Quality assurance and quality control with respect to appointments and promotions in higher-education institutions might be enhanced by legal requirements for transparency of documentation and decision-making procedures. The study provides original research into the administration of part of the Swedish public service and suggests that this might be seen as a potential benchmark for quality assurance and quality control with respect to public access to documentation and decision-making procedure

Service quality attribute weights: How do novice and longer-term customers construct service quality perceptions

Service experiences often unfold over a series of consumption episodes, yet customer perceptions of these experiences are often treated as static events. This prevents a good understanding of the impact of consumption stage on service perceptions. Prior research reveals little about the variation in the salience of service quality attributes between novice and longer-term customers, especially in terms of contribution to overall service quality perceptions or about the effect of service quality and service satisfaction on behavioral intentions across consumption stages. This study examines these issues using cohort analysis within the context of ongoing health care services. Results indicate that the contribution of attributes to overall service quality differs across novice and longer-term customer cohorts, as does the interrelationship of service quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. These findings have important implications for managing service processes, improving service provider performance, and enhancing customer service