Study Of Customer Productivity-using Technology-based Self-service Options

Technological innovation is considered to be the engine of the market and economic growth. The network information technology has not only changed the way people live and work, and far-reaching change people’s values.With the development of information technology and globalization, information technology is playing a more and more important role in the service delivery process.At the same time, along with the shift of IT costs and labor costs, many companies are committed to the implementation of the technology capital instead of human labor, such as self-service technology to achieve marketing innovation, and guide customers to actively participate in the service process. With the growth of labor costs, and enhanced customer self-awareness, many service enterprises regards customer as prospective employees in the terminal retail part to implement self-service, the enterprises are gradually transferring the work of frontline employees to the customer through the self-service technology.On the one hand, they bring the decreasing of enterprise labor cost, on the other hand they also bring a completely new customers’experience which customers need to pay extra efforts and emotions, thus bring the changes of traditional front desk service experience.Self-service technology (Self-Service Technology, SST) is a technical contact, without the direct help of the staff, the customer can production and consumption of services, so that their needs are met. In the same time, self-service has also become a new marketing channel, providing wider and more convenient market coverage. Self-service by a customer to participate in the service, so that the contribution of the retailers productivity, reduce labor costs, and the potential to improve the quality of service, and also to maintain a high customer satisfaction.The traditional productivity literature is mainly based on the employee to customer service, which studies input and output of employees and enterprises. Recently many of the services marketing literature has studied the input-output of customers and input-output of enterprises, however, in the background of self-service, we need to do systematic integration researches in the process of common value creation based on the vision of enterprise-customer and concentrate more on the study of self-service.In this study, we focus more on the study of customer productivity, analyzing the combining impacts to the customer value which caused by customer inputs and enterprise inputs, including functional and experiential outputs of the customer.. This new productivity concept can be thought of as a relationship between "the service output experienced by a customer" and "the inputs provided by that customer as a participant in service production".Research on self-service technology in the field of marketing has just started, mainly based on innovation diffusion theory and rational behavior theory. Some scholars have the technology and the individual psychological and demographic variables combined with new technology adoption research, some conduct separate study on businesses or customers inputs-outputs. However, there are few research studies the combined effects of both businesses and customers on customers’ultimately perceived value.This paper reviews related concepts and theory of self-service technology, customer perceived value, customer productivity related concept, customer inputs and outputs.In this study, I introduce labor productivity theory into the field of marketing science, the exact field of consumer behavior. Although some scholars have proposed the concept of service productivity, few study customer productivity. Customer productivity and research in the context of self-service technology is a new research perspective, it combines finance, management and economics theory. Online banking regards customers as prospective employees, which crosses theories of marketing and human resource management. Application of customer productivity theory in self-service technology background not only enriches the usable range for the customer productivity theory, but also provides a new direction and the starting point for theoretical and empirical studies of the inputs and outputs of consumer and business behavior. This is an innovative point of this article.Theoretical and practical significance of this study:First, I develop the concept of "customer productivity" based on the concept of "labor productivity" in labor economics, treat customers as main body of service and production. Customers input not only time and money but also emotional, cognitive and learning factors. At the same time, their outputs are multidimensional, such as experience and functional ones. There is an interaction effect between customer and corporate. Second, self-service suppliers need to analyze input-output of self-service technology and from full range of customer productivity, otherwise it may not get expected return of huge invest in self-service network device. Corporate investment will have an impact on customer value, and service providers should increase their investment in network equipment, service and technical support, to enhance their competitive strength. Based on previous literature this study proposes the theoretical framework and research model, the empirical model verifies the theoretical hypothesizes significantly. The main conclusions of the paper include:1,The study found out that customer mental and emotional inputs are relevant to experiential output. The path coefficient between customer mental input and self-efficacy is negative, the same as the path coefficient between customer mental input and risk perception of self-service technology. The path coefficient between customer emotional input and self-efficacy, risk perception is positive.2,The study found out that customer emotional input is relevant to functional output. The path coefficient between customer mental input and time and financial savings by using self-service technology is negative, the same as it between customer mental input and perception of the quality of self-service technical services. The path coefficient between customer emotional input and time and financial savings by using self-service is positive, the same as it between customer emotional input and perception of the quality of self-service technical services.3,This study verifies input of enterprise self-service technology also influences customer functional output and experiential output. The path coefficient between input of device network and perception of the quality of self-service technical services is positive, the same as it between input of device network and perception of time and financial savings; the path coefficient between the input of device network and risk perception is negative.