A Preliminary Investigation Into the Influence of Customer-Firm Interface on Information Processing and Task Activities in Service Organizations

Abstract

This study examined how customer-firm interface (CFI) mediates the relationship between information processing and task activities in service organizations. Data were collectedfrom 181 service clerks, 83 nurses, and 126 pilot trainers, with average ages of 27 years, 38 years, and 31 years, respectively. The subjects were selectedfrom two retail organizations, two hospitals, and a military installation. Ninety-one percent of the pilot trainers and 63% of the retail clerks were male; all the nurses were female. Information processing was measured in terms of equivocality and amount, and correlational and hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine the data. CFI was found to mediate the relationship between information equivocality and task activities. CFI and task activities were also independently related to information amount. These findings suggest an expansion of earlier research showing only a bivariate relationship between information processing and task activities.

The influence of customer participation on service failure perceptions

“…Mental inputs may include the information given by the customer to the service firm, as well as the mental efforts the customer agrees to engage to receive the service product (Mills, Chase, & Margulies, 1983;Mills & Turk, 1986;Rodie & Kleine, 2000). In this case, the customer actually does a 'cognitive labor' (Rodie & Kleine, 2000, p. 112), that is, she/he makes a mental effort to structure the information given to the company, to understand how to get the service product or to understand what she/he is supposed to do as a participant.…”

An Information-Processing Approach for Evaluating In-Store Retail Operational Design Strategies

“…Degree to which the customer requirements are unknown to the store's servers, so that the servers must analyze information to complete a service transaction Mills, 1986;Mills and Morris, 1986;Mills and Turk, 1986;Kellogg and Chase, 1995;Buzacott, 2000;Johansson and Olhager, 2004;Xue and Field, 2008 Design choices for managing shopper encounters Design for self-service (SS) Degree to which the store structure and layout supports a "do it yourself" service environment for customer product selection Chase, 1978;Bateson, 1985;Huete and Roth, 1988;Bitner, 1992;Roth and Jackson, 1995;Bitner et al, 1997;Xue et al, 2007; Hefley and Murphy, 2008 Front-line employee task empowerment * (TE)…”

Insights Into Consumer Resource Integration And Value Co-Creation Process

“…Rodie and Kleine (2000) mention three kinds of inputs: mental, physical and emotional. Mental inputs or "cognitive labour" (Rodie and Kleine, 2000: 112) are the efforts made by consumers to understand the information they give to the company (Mills et al 1983;Mills and Turk, 1986;Rodie and Kleine, 2000). Physical inputs "include customers' own tangibles and physical efforts" (Rodie and Kleine, 2000: 112).…”