Thesis
Transformative service experiences in a mundane service setting
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2023
- Thesis identifier
- T16712
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201568911
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Improving customer well-being through services has been highlighted as a research priority in recent years, with traditional service research being criticised for rarely considering the broader outcomes resulting from service experiences (Anderson et al., 2013; Ostrom et al., 2015). With continuous service usage and a variety of interactions that customers have with services and service systems in their daily lives, it becomes critical for researchers to look beyond traditional service measures such as customer satisfaction and loyalty, and investigate the transformative outcomes that can potentially result from service experiences. To date, studies, particularly within the context of transformative service research (TSR), have neglected mundane service experiences in favour of explicitly transformative contexts. Even for mundane services such as public transport, it is becoming increasingly challenging for researchers to understand customer experiences as customers now interact with firms through a myriad of touchpoints at multiple stages, resulting in more complex customer journeys (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). To date, there has been limited empirical work addressing the customer journey (Becker & Jaakkola, 2020; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; McColl-Kennedy et al., 2015). Accordingly, the relevance and rationale for this research are mainly grounded in knowledge gaps across both TSR and service experience. Based on a sequential exploratory design consisting of interviews and survey data, this mixed-methods research adopts the perspective of the customer journey to explore customer service experiences in a public transportation context and investigate their impact on customers’ well-being. The qualitative study (Study 1), conducted through semistructured interviews, revealed a clear idea of the salient touchpoints of everyday commuter experiences and the subsequent well-being, as well as potential indicators of halo effects. Building on this, particularly in the selection of items for the survey instrument and hypotheses formulation, the quantitative study (Study 2) was then conducted. The strong relationships among physical, hedonic, and eudaimonic aspects of well-being in the case of brand/partner-owned and customer-owned touchpoints confirm the significant impact of mundane service experiences on wellbeing, although this kind of experience does not have an implicitly transformative goal as opposed to more traditional transformative services such as healthcare and financial services. Critically, the findings suggest that negative well-being may be an unintended consequence of otherwise seemingly satisfactory experiences, and that service firms should consider alternative measures when evaluating performance. The research also reveals a previously unreported but important finding about the occurrence of halo effects within and across service touchpoints, and how customer well-being could be reduced or increased by halo effects at specific touchpoints – a distinctive finding to both customer experience and TSR literature.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Alexander, Matthew
- Wilson, Juliette
- Resource Type
- Note
- This thesis was previously held under moratorium from 2nd October 2023 until 2nd October 2025.
- DOI
Relations
Items
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Visibility | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
PDF of thesis T16712 | 2023-10-03 | Public | Download |