A quantitative approach to measure customer expectation for service innovation within service experience delivery

Customer-focused service design and innovation is the key for service providers to deliver what services customers actually want. Although numerous articles emphasize the importance of customer expectations in many disciplines, only there was the non real-time data captured by previous empirical research. Besides, there has been no mathematical mechanism to correctly catch customer expectations in previous research. Service providers must make additional efforts to analyze and predict customers' needs according to previous empirical research, yet the gap between service providers' prediction and customer expectations has been still obvious occurring in practice. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to propose a systematical and quantitative expectation measurement model, which is based on Fechner's Law and the concepts of operation risk, for service providers to measure the real time customer expectations during service experiences delivery.

[1]  Philip J. Calvert International Variations in Measuring Customer Expectations , 2001, Libr. Trends.

[2]  A. Reimer,et al.  The impact of servicescape on quality perception , 2005 .

[3]  Gary W. Loveman,et al.  Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work , 1994 .

[4]  J. Homer A system dynamics model of national cocaine prevalence , 1993 .

[5]  Jianmin Jia,et al.  What You Don'T Know About Customer-Perceived Quality: the Role of Customer Expectation Distributions , 1999 .

[6]  Leyland Pitt,et al.  Management of Customer Expectations in Service Firms: A Study and a Checklist , 1994 .

[7]  Mary Jo Bitner,et al.  Self-Service Technologies: Understanding Customer Satisfaction with Technology-Based Service Encounters , 2000 .

[8]  Mary Jo Bitner,et al.  Critical Service Encounters: The Employee's Viewpoint , 1994 .

[9]  Jukka Ojasalo,et al.  Managing customer expectations in professional services , 2001 .

[10]  David B. Eastwood,et al.  A Two-Step Estimation of Consumer Adoption of Technology-Based Service Innovations , 2003 .

[11]  A. Parasuraman,et al.  The nature and determinants of customer expectations of service , 1993 .

[12]  R. B. Chase,et al.  Experience, Service Operations Strategy, and Services as Destinations: Foundations and Exploratory Investigation , 2008 .

[13]  Deborah L. Kellogg,et al.  HOW PROFESSORS OF OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT VIEW SERVICE OPERATIONS? , 1999 .

[14]  Aleda V. Roth,et al.  DESIGNING AND MANAGING SERVICE OPERATIONS: INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE , 2009 .

[15]  Jon Sundbo Management of Innovation in Services , 1997 .

[16]  D. Sculli,et al.  Integrating customer expectations into the development of business strategies in a supply chain environment , 2005 .

[17]  Mary Jo Bitner,et al.  Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees: , 1992 .

[18]  Robert Johnston,et al.  Service operations management: return to roots , 1999 .

[19]  D. Peppers,et al.  Is your company ready for one-to-one marketing? , 1999, Harvard business review.

[20]  Mary Jo Bitner,et al.  Evaluating service encounters: The effects of physical surroundings and employee responses. , 1990 .

[21]  J. Rossiter,et al.  Store atmosphere: an environmental psychology approach , 1982 .

[22]  Kenneth E. Clow,et al.  The antecedents of consumer expectations of services: an empirical study across four industries , 1997 .

[23]  B. Lewis,et al.  Managing the Service Encounter: A Focus on the Employee , 1990 .

[24]  L. L. Thurstone,et al.  Fechner's law and the method of equal appearing intervals. , 1929 .

[25]  P. Kotler Atmospherics as a Marketing Tool , 1974 .

[26]  Madeleine E. Pullman,et al.  Ability of Experience Design Elements to Elicit Emotions and Loyalty Behaviors , 2004, Decis. Sci..

[27]  C. Meyer,et al.  Understanding customer experience. , 2007, Harvard business review.

[28]  Dan T. Dunn,et al.  Understanding how technology paradoxes affect customer satisfaction with self‐service technology: The role of performance ambiguity and trust in technology , 2008 .