Pursuing fitness: how dialectic goal striving and intersubjectivity influence consumer outcomes

Abstract

Consumers increasingly engage expert service providers in their goal pursuits. While the literature focuses primarily on goal attainment, this presents just one stage of extended goal striving. Using Bagozzi and Dholakia's (1999) goal-striving framework as the foundation, this qualitative research examines the client-trainer interactions in the goal-striving process. We find that goal-striving with the aid of expert service providers entails intersubjectivity. The consumer wrestles with multiple understandings of fitness to determine and pursue a goal. This considers the individual's perceptions and desires, cultural and societal discourses, and trainer's views. Effective goal pursuit requires shared understanding between client and trainer. It entails a moment of release when consumers accept their inability to translate goals into actions alone. This occurs at multiple stages of the process. By examining the influence of service providers on goal-strivers, this research extends our understanding of goal-striving as an accepted agreement between the Self and Other.

Value Co-creation in Consumer-intensive Service Encounters: A Dyadic Perspective

“…All trainers interviewed explicitly or implicitly referenced the importance of personalizing training experiences to ‘fit’ the uniqueness of the client. As trainer Josh noted in Albinsson et al (2017): Everything is relative. What if you are a track athlete?…”

“…The trainer goes further by negotiating the intersubjective understanding of fitness with the consumer. In turn, to reach a positive outcome in the extended service encounter, the client engages in a moment of release (Albinsson et al, 2017) and commits to the negotiated, now shared, vision of fitness.…”

“…Consumers choose to enter the service arrangement; however, to attain satisfactory outcomes, clients must partially surrender control to the trainer in the process of developing an intersubjectively defined understanding of fitness. In this process, they negotiate fitness goals which might markedly differ from the initial goals with which the client enter the service relationship (Albinsson et al, 2017).…”

“…Studies of co-production and its impact on customer loyalty in financial and medical services indicate that clear expectations regarding the customers’ role in value co-production foster more effective co-production efforts and greater customer loyalty to the firm (Auh, Bell, McLeod & Shih, 2007). However, although co-production has received some attention in the literature, limited research examines value co-creation process in consumer-intensive service encounters (e.g., Albinsson, Perera & Shows, 2017; Fischer et al, 2009).…”

A Tale of Two Perspectives

“…Intersubjectivity builds on and makes use of information distribution and representation discussed previously. Albinsson et al [4] refer to some intersubjectivity concepts in the relationship between a client and a trainer. Concepts such as a trainers' philosophy, vision, and what perfection means are negotiated in terms of the client goal, age, and physical abilities to reach a shared understanding.…”