Participative customers as partial employees and service provider workload
International Journal of Service Industry Management
ISSN: 0956-4233
Article publication date: 1 April 2004
Abstract
For service providers, whether customers can act the role of partial employees when participating in the service production and delivery process is a subject that has been receiving conflicting explanations and has not been analysed empirically. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between customer participation and service providers' perceived workload. Empirical results of survey data collected from 293 customer‐contact employees at 64 restaurants in Taiwan indicate that customer participation is positively related to service providers' perceived workload, which implies that it is inappropriate to decrease the number of service employees based on service designs that include customer participation. Implications of these findings for managing customer participation, as well as future research directions, are subsequently discussed.
Keywords
Citation
Hsieh, A., Yen, C. and Chin, K. (2004), "Participative customers as partial employees and service provider workload", International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 187-199. https://doi.org/10.1108/09564230410532501
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited