Self-Serving Bias In Customer Participation: The Impact Of Customer-Service Provider Relationship

Customer participation in the production of goods and services appears to be growing. In service, it has been described as a behavioral concept that refers to the actions and resources supplied by customers for service production and delivery. In many services context, outcome and the quality of the resulting service is partially dependent on customer's active role as co-producer and the quality of the collaboration among service employees and customers.Encouraging customers to be "value co-creators" which is considered the next frontier in competitive effectiveness further inspires both marketing scholars and practitioners to pay more attention on customer participation.Although the different facets of customer participation or customer co-creation of value has been discussed, little is known about the effects participation may have on a customer's psychological processes and evaluations. Some scholars have suggested that research in social psychology on the self-serving bias (SSB) form an appropriate perspective on customer participation.This study highlights this research interest. Drawing on the social psychological literature on the SSB and personal relationship and using four experiments and one qualitative study, the author explores the effects of SSB on customer satisfaction in Chinese business context and the impact of customer-service provider relationship on the SSB in the process of participation. The major findings are listed as follows:First, the SSB emerges when customers participate in the process of co-creation value in Chinese context. Customer satisfaction with a firm differs depending on whether a customer participates in production. Whether the outcome is better than expected, as expected or worse than expect, a customer who participates in co-production with the firm is less satisfied than is a customer who does not participates in co-production, although this different is not significant when the outcome is worse than expect.Second, relationship closeness between customer and service providers acts as a refraining mechanism to customer's SSB in participation. That is, customer having a distant relationship with service provider assumes greater responsibility for the good outcome (better than expected) than for the bad outcome (worse than expect), thus manifesting the SSB. Customers who has a close relationship with service provider takes neither greater responsibility for the good outcome (better than expected) nor lower responsibility for the bad outcome (worse than expect). Further, close participants report making a less positive contribution to the service outcome relative to distant participants.Third, the participative roles adopted by customers in service production and delivery moderate the effects of relationship mechanism on SSB in participation. Specifically, the moderating effect of relationship closeness on SSB is stronger when customer highly participates in the service production and delivery. A customer who has a close relationship with service provider is much more satisfied than is a customer who has a distant relationship with service provider in high customer participation condition relative to low customer participation condition.Fourth, the strong relationship, such as commercial friendships, can be developed between customer and service provider from the customer's point of view in Chinese context. By qualitative study, the author also identifies 18 important components of such interpersonal relationship, including:identification, liking, understanding, trust, commitment, support providing, self-exposure, etc.Mixed research methods are used in this study, including scenario-based role-playing experiments, focus group, in-depth interviews, content analysis and empirical based survey research with real customers.Based on cross-discipline research, this study has theoretical and managerial implications. It contributes to examine and broaden current theories pertaining to customer participation by investigating the psychological responses and the factors or mechanism that has the potential to influence the psychological responses in customer participation. The finding regarding the impact of customer-service provider relationship on psychological response of customer deepen the understanding of customer-service provider relationship and broaden current research on service relationship in domain of service marketing. The result also offers suggestions and insights to companies to manage customer participation and relationships between customer and their employees effectively.Finally, the author discusses the limitation and direction for further research.