The Antecedents and Consequences of Idiosyncratic Service Experiences (ISE) Model; An Empirical Study in Transport and Health Care Industry

Abstract

Customers want an extraordinary service experience, for many customers “good” service is not enough to create a memorable experience that warrants telling others. Service providers are struggling to figure out service experience, what does that really mean? A new approach to understand the customer has been conceptualized in a term called Idiosyncratic Service Experience (ISE) from the previous research. ISE represents the interpersonal aspects that create these unique or special service experiences. ISE is a higher order construct made up of a) perceived employee effort, b) surprise, and c) perceived employee empathy. This present study aims to examine the antecedents and consequences of ISEs in a structural model toward particular both transport service and health care service. Structural Equation Modelling with Partial Least Square (PLS-SEM) was deployed. The sample was taken by purposive sampling. The results demonstrated that ISEs promoted feelings of delight which lead to brand usage intent, higher tolerance to future failures, and evoked self-enhancing word-of-mouth. Result also found how the exception making or the willingness of an employee to break a service norm influences ISEs and evaluations of delight. Few managerial implications found in this study could beneficial to improve service management in particular industry.