DHanken: Service Experience in an Innovation Context

Vía: DHanken: Service Experience in an Innovation Context

Service Experience in an Innovation Context

Helkkula, Anu

Abstract:

• Service researchers and practitioners have repeatedly claimed that customer service experiences are essential to all businesses. Therefore comprehension of how service experience is characterised in research is an essential element for its further development through research. The importance of greater in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of service experience has been acknowledged by several researchers, such as Carú and Cova and Vargo and Lusch. 
• Furthermore, Service-Dominant (S-D) logic has integrated service experience to value by emphasising in its foundational premises that value is phenomenologically (experientially) determined. The present study analyses how the concept of service experience has been characterised in previous research. As such, it puts forward three ways to characterise it in relation to that research: 1) phenomenological service experience relates to the value discussion in S-D logic and interpretative consumer research, 2) process-based service experience relates to understanding service as a process, and 3) outcome-based service experience relates to understanding service experience as one element in models linking a number of variables or attributes to various outcomes. 
• Focusing on the phenomenological service experience, the theoretical purpose of the study is to characterise service experience based on the phenomenological approach. In order to do so, an additional methodological purpose was formulated: to find a suitable methodology for analysing service experience based on the phenomenological approach. The study relates phenomenology to a philosophical Husserlian and social constructionist tradition studying phenomena as they appear in our experience in a social context. The study introduces Event-Based Narrative Inquiry Technique (EBNIT), which combines critical events with narratives and metaphors. EBNIT enabled the analysis of lived and imaginary service experiences as expressed in individual narratives. 
• The study presents findings of eight case studies within service innovation of Web 2.0, mobile service, location aware service and public service in the municipal sector. Customers’ and service managers’ stories about their lived private and working lifeworld were the foundation for their ideal service experiences. In general, the thesis finds that service experiences are (1) subjective, (2) context-specific, (3) cumulative, (4) partially socially constructed, (5) both lived and imaginary, (6) temporally multiple-dimensional, and (7) iteratively related to perceived value. In addition to customer service experience, the thesis brings empirical evidence of managerial service experience of front-line managers experiencing the service they manage and develop in their working lifeworld. The study contributes to S-D logic, service innovation and service marketing and management in general by characterising service experience based on the phenomenological approach and integrating it to the value discussion. 
• Additionally, the study offers a methodological approach for further exploration of service experiences. The study discusses managerial implications in conjunction with the case studies and discusses them in relation to service innovation.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10227/634

Insights into consumers' emerging interest in mobile services

Vía original: herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9789514263644/isbn9789514263644.pdf

Insights into consumers' emerging interest in mobile services

Ristola, Annu,

University of Oulu, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Department of

Marketing, P.O.Box 4600, FI-90014 University of Oulu, Finland

Acta Univ. Oul. G 47, 2010

Oulu, Finland

Abstract

The present study develops our understanding of consumers’ emerging interest in novel mobile services by adopting two approaches. First, structural equation modeling is used as a statistical tool to create a context-sensitive model for consumer acceptance of novel mobile services. Secondly, the study creates an interpretive framework of contemporary consumer culture to help understand how consumers construct their emerging practices in novel mobile services based on their actual experiences.

The empirical data was gathered at a Housing Fair, where a Mobile Fair Diary was piloted, and

it is that Mobile Fair Diary application that provides the selected tool of the empirical study. Therefore, real user experience played a significant role in how our consumers perceived mobile services and the way the cultural discourse was produced. The model developed indicates that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, anxiety, trust and attitude have an impact on consumers’ intention to use mobile services. Furthermore, the various representations related to mobile services were identified in order to understand emerging practices.

Consumers are likely to change the routines involved in the management of information if useful alternatives are available to them. An ongoing insecurity emerging from technology change is often a characteristic of the contemporary life of consumers. On the one hand, consumers are dependent on technology, but on the other hand, do not fully understand it. Therefore, consumers have to be active to keep up with the continuous changes going on around them. Furthermore,

consumers need support from the service provider and their social context. Consumers should also believe in their own capability to learn and their power to make choices, which will result in

changes to their practices.

Keywords: cultural consumer research, mobile service, postmodernism, practice theory, structural equation modeling, technology acceptance

Review of Service Design Methods - Peter J Wild

http://www.peterjwild.org/papers/I15.6.pdf

Review of Service Design Methods

Version 0.5

Peter J Wild

This report should be cited as: Wild, P.J. (2007) Review of Service Design Approaches. IPAS

Deliverable I15.6 Report, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.

Minor updates undertaken in June 2009

Abstract

A number of authors have written explicitly about methods for the design of

services (e.g. Alonso-Rasgado et al. 2004b, Morelli 2006b); there are modelling

approaches developed that are explicitly associated with services (Polonsky and

Garma 2006, Shostack 1982); and others have adapted and merged existing

approaches such as personas into a service design approach (Parker and Heapy 2006).

This report surveys a number of such methods / methodologies for the design of

services.

In section 2, we present a number of service-design ‘approaches.’ We cover the

Service Blueprinting and work on approaches such as Functional Products (Alonso-

Rasgado and Thompson 2007, Alonso-Rasgado et al. 2004b), Product Service

Systems (McAloone 2006, Morelli 2006a); and Journey to the Interface (Parker and

Heapy 2006).

After this in section 3, we consider how a number of service design methodologies

compare against different stages of the V model.

Finally, in section 5 we report on a number of miscellaneous issues, such as

Allmendinger and Lombreglia’s notion of Smart Services (2005); Hollins’ guidance

on service design (Hollins 2006), and some consideration of the organisational factors

that support service development (de Jong and Vermeulen 2003, Edgett 1994).

En estudio: Social Media as Means for Company Communication and Service Design

Paper original de: SpringerLink - Capítulo del libro

Communications in Computer and Information Science

Networked Digital Technologies Second International Conference, NDT 2010, Prague, Czech Republic, July 7-9, 2010. Proceedings, Part I

10.1007/978-3-642-14292-5_42

Filip Zavoral, Jakub Yaghob, Pit Pichappan and Eyas El-Qawasmeh

Elina Annanperä¹ and Jouni Markkula¹

(1)	Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 3000, FI-90014, Finland

Abstract

Service development in companies can have a new form when using social media as a communication interface. This communication can occur between company and its customers, but also the company’s internal communication using social media services can prove beneficial. In this paper, we review and analyze the use of social media as a means for company communication in general and specifically in the case of customer involvement in service development. As a result, we present guidelines for of using social media tools in companies for improving the customer centric service development process.

Keywords Social media - service development - service design - company communication - user involvement