Journal article
Trading Effort for Money: Consumers' Cocreation Motivation and the Pricing of Service Options
Journal of service research : JSR, v 17(2), pp 229-242
01 May 2014
Abstract
Services involve cocreation, such that businesses often treat consumers as partial employees to help boost productivity. However, not all consumers are intrinsically motivated to engage in the effort required to produce a service. Hence, service providers offer monetary incentives to compensate consumers for their effort by using cocreation options where consumers can either spend their own effort in exchange for extra savings or have service providers perform such options and incur additional cost. Consumers are likely to evaluate such options by determining the price that they would be willing to pay and the amount that they expect to save if they were to perform such options. In eight studies, this research shows that consumers seek more compensation for their effort than the amount that they are willing to pay a service provider. However, characteristics of the service option (expected vs. not expected), the service provider (fit with effort), the service itself (cost of labor), and consumers (budget constraints, expertise) moderate the differences between willingness to pay and expectations of compensation. Hence, companies that are expanding their markets and pursuing strategies that offer both full service and do-it-yourself service options would need to (a) consider the fit of such options with the positioning of the brand and (b) identify appropriate consumer segments that would be favorably disposed toward such options. Identifying such options and their prices would lead to effective price structures that will provide not only value to consumers but also profitability to firms.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Trading Effort for Money: Consumers' Cocreation Motivation and the Pricing of Service Options
- Creators
- Lan Xia - Bentley UniversityRajneesh Suri - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Journal of service research : JSR, v 17(2), pp 229-242
- Publisher
- Sage
- Number of pages
- 14
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Bennett S. LeBow College of Business
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000336226600008
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84898873746
- Other Identifier
- 991019168091904721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Business
- Management