CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION AND FINAL REMARKS
7.2 Further avenues for research
Further avenues for research are mentioned in each ‘Paper 1, 2 and 3’ and additional avenues for research have been suggested in section (4.1), where reflections over the work done with the three papers are presented.
Additional avenues for research:
It would be relevant to investigate CEB also in the context of other types of industries (for instance hospitality, fashion or fast moving consumer goods) as well as other types of markets (for instance business to business or business to government). This study has been conducted at Danish ground, and all participants are embedded in the Danish culture (with the exemption of one of the members of the research team). It might be fruitful to expand the investigations to other parts of the World, both from a cultural perspective, and since Denmark has a high penetration of digital solutions, which is not the case in every other country.
Finally, it would be relevant to expand the research into how CEB changes service relationships (and other types of customer-firm relationships) in greater detail, for instance to which degree, why and how human interaction might safe-guard against unfavorable CEB?
Or, whether, how and why some types of customer – service relationships might stimulate particular types of CEB?
The CEB landscape offers several scenic routes and academics and business managers alike will most probably prosper from exploring this novel territory further.
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APPENDIXES
Appendix A: Conference proceedings
I: EMAC 2014
True or False Customer Engagement Behaviour:
What can we learn from Customers’ Touch point Histories?
Abstract
Customers’ engagement behaviours are considered an important source of value to the company. So far, the discussion has mainly been conceptual and focused on the
company’s perspective. By adopting the customer’s perspective we investigated how customers perceive their service relationship encounters with a company, using in-depth interviews. We found the following key factors driving and explaining customers’
engagement behaviours: (1) transactions matter and inconsistent engagement
behaviours are a reality, (2) mundane products and services are still highly relevant for customers, and (3) different degrees of customer experience alignment with services and products exist. Moreover, the distinction between true and false engagement behaviours we suggest indeed is relevant and we could establish their mediating capabilities.
Key Words: Customer engagement behaviours, customer dominant logic, loyalty discrepancy
Track: Relationship Marketing
1. Customer Engagement Behaviours
Customer Engagement Behaviours (CEB) has recently been introduced as an important perspective for managing customer value (Verhoef & Lemon, 2013), focusing on
non-transactional customer behaviour (Verhoef, Reinartz and Krafft, 2010). CEB is
conceptualized “as a construct with the objective to capture how and why customers behave in numerous ways that are relevant to the firm and its multiple stakeholders” (Van Doorn et al., 2010, p. 253). CEB are driven by different motivations and are performed through, for instance, a post in a community on the Internet, a suggestion for new product development or word-of-mouth activities online or offline or simply telling others about one’s experiences (Verhoef & Lemon, 2013). The construct CEB consists of customer-, firm- and context-based antecedents, behaviours manifested in various ways, and customer, firm and “other”
consequences (Van Doorn et al., 2010).
Kumar et al. (2010) suggested an additional concept, namely Customer Engagement Value (CEV), which consists of four core dimensions as metrics for the company’s
measurement of engagement behaviours. The metrics are an expression of the value (consequence to the company) of customers’ (observable) behavioural manifestations
(including transactions). Customer value management (CVM) is to a large extent driven by IT rather than taking a customer centric approach (Verhoef & Lemon, 2013). Yet, the focus on IT rather than on customers might lead to CVM that only measures but not maximizes customer equity (Rust et al., 2004). Hence, there is a need to understand how to motivate, engage and manage customer engagement (Verhoef & Lemon, 2013) and to relate these insights to relationship marketing (Ashley, Noble, Donthy and Lemon, 2011) in a customer centric manner. It is difficult though to empirically assess how these many elements interplay both concurrently and over time and with which consequences (Bijmolt et al., 2010).
Particularly for firms that offer mundane products and services such as energy supply or telecommunication it is challenging to encourage engagement behaviour, since their offerings are commonly regarded as basic necessities that only receive attention in case of
malfunctioning. Such firms often use various initiatives to add content and value to their relationships - ranging from customer service closely related to the service offered to company-hosted events such as invitations for concerts or soccer-games, which often have little to do with the firm’s core offerings.
The main challenge for a firm is that customer engagement behaviours are eclectic and consist of many different elements that most often lie outside the customer-company sphere and are embedded in customers’ everyday life (Heionen, Strandvik and Voima, 2013).
While extant research on CEB as a core construct in customer value management mainly takes the firm perspective, our research is concerned with identifying patterns at the individual customer level that are a reflection of patterns at the company level. We
investigate, from a customer’s perspective, which factors drive and explain CEB, how various elements lead to either true or false CEB, and which consequences they may have for the customer-company relationship.
2. True or False Customer Engagement Behaviours
Based on our findings from 12 interviews with senior executives and managers in a major Danish telecommunication company, we suggest distinguishing between ‘true’ and
‘false’ engagement behaviours. The executives and managers found it challenging to
comprehend, and thus manage, CEB due to customers’ inconsistent and divergent behaviours.
The executives and managers explained for instance how customers who express their
satisfaction with a certain service encounter or the overall service relationship directly towards the company for instance by calling the callcenter, would not express the same satisfaction with the company in other contexts such as social media or other private spheres.
Sometimes customers even expressed dissatisfaction with the company in these other contexts.
Hence, the starting point for our research is the proposition that ‘true’ and ‘false’
engagement behaviours are an important distinction to understand “how and why customers behave in numerous ways that are relevant to the firm” (Van Doorn et al., 2010, p. 253). We also propose that taking the customers’ perspective instead of the firm’s perspective is adding valuable insights to customer engagement management.
‘True engagement behaviour’ consists of either positive or negative activities but without conflicting elements, i.e. consequential behaviours that are consistent with the experiences during a given encounter. An example would be the customer who benefits from superb service for instance in the physical shop and endorses the company in a relevant context, or when the customer experiences bad service in a certain touch-point and expresses it directly to the company.
‘False engagement behaviour’ occurs when either positive or negative
experiences lead to conflicting elements because the consequential behaviours are inconsistent with the experience during a given encounter. This is the case when a customer enjoys a company-hosted event such as a concert but does not change his or her attitude towards the company or satisfaction with it. Another example would be the customer who benefits from superb service of the company’s callcenter and expresses his or her satisfaction directly to the company in the subsequent feedback session, but refrains from telling other customers about his or her good experiences, or even engages in negative word-of-mouth activities about the company.
Our research model therefore introduces the concept of ‘true and false engagement behaviours’ as crucial for a better understanding of which factors drive and explain CEB. We also suggest that these behaviours can empirically be captured through customers’ touch point history (cf. Figure 1).
Figure 1: Research Model
The concept of customers’ touch point history describes the aggregate sum of
customers’ encounters with a company over time. Such a record of ‘touches’ is important for services that are provided continuously (for instance energy or telecommunication) and is seen as an important ‘tactic’ to understand the effectiveness of various touch-points (Rust et al., 2004). Touch point stories then are narratives about customers’ various experiences with goods and services (Gorry & Westbrook, 2011), in this case with a telecommunication
company. Customers’ touch point (hi)stories therefore contain both antecedents for customer engagement behaviours and the actual behaviours from the customer perspective (C1).
Customers’ touch point (hi)stories also include transactions (typically purchases) with the company. Transactions with a company are a natural part of a customers’ touch point history and therefore considered part of the engagement behaviours (Kumar et al., 2010). The second construct (C2) is following the terminology of the CEB conceptualization by Van Doorn et al.
(2010) and is referred to as ‘Consequences of customer engagement behaviours.’
3. The Study
The research was conducted applying a qualitative research design with customers of a major Danish telecommunication company. We used semi-structured in-depth interviews for exploring customers’ touch point histories and the consequences of their engagement
behaviours (Hair, Bush and Ortinau, 2009). The in-depth interviews were revolving around the customers’ histories with the company over time and aided by customers’ visual mapping of their encounters and activities (Langley, 1999). These techniques aimed at embracing spatial, temporal, eclectic and descriptive elements of the interplay between antecedents for customer engagement behaviours and the actual behaviours as well as their various
consequences. The informants were selected based on demographic and lifestyle variables in order to provide for greatest possible diversity. They had to be customers for a minimum of two years to ensure that touch point histories were accessible. Saturation was achieved with 13 informants.
The informants were primarily interviewed in their homes. The interviews were conducted in October and November 2013 and lasted on average one hour (the interview guide and additional material are available in Danish upon request). The informants did not receive any information before the interviews, but were simply invited to a ‘conversation about service’.
The research was retrospective since the pool of knowledge that we tapped into was in the touch point histories the informants had had with the company over at least two years. The interviews were conducted using various techniques to facilitate memory retrieval (Hansen, 2000). The research was conducted using the interview guide’s themes as primary analytic units, yet incorporating new themes if they emerged. In the following, we will present the essence of the interviews concerning the key factors driving and explaining CEB. For reasons of space limitations we have refrained from including interview citations.
4. Key Factors driving and explaining CEB from a customer perspective
4.1 Factor 1: Transactions matter and inconsistent engagement behaviours are a reality In general, informants expressed overall satisfaction with and trust in the company.
Most of them gave as main reason the company’s long history and presence in the Danish telecommunication market.
Informants explained that they saw the company as the ‘expert company’ and a source of valid information and reliable products and services of all kinds such as information about country codes, arrangements for conference calls or legal information. Many informants pointed out how they engaged with the company by spending time searching the company’s website for this type of information and emphasized their intention of concluding a
transaction, however often with little luck. The subsequent frustration was typically excused