“Deal with it”: How coping with e-service innovation affects the customer experience

Robert Ciuchita, Dominik Mahr and Gaby Odekerken-Schröder

Journal of Business Research, 2019, vol. 103, issue C, 130-141

Abstract: E-service customers have myriad alternatives, so they can easily reduce their use of an e-service or switch to competitors. To enhance existing customers' experiences and convince them to persist in their usage, companies often introduce new versions of e-services. However, the changes resulting from such incremental innovations can be effortful for customers to learn and potentially even ruin their experiences. If e-service providers want to avoid losing existing customers, they must understand how customers deal with the changes introduced by incremental innovations and the resulting impacts on the customer experience, with both the innovation and the e-service in general. To address these research questions, the current study proposes a conceptual model based on service innovation, appraisal and coping, and customer experience theories and empirically tests it with data from two quantitative studies. The results show that incremental changes in existing e-services affect the cumulative customer experience, but firms introducing such innovations can encourage certain coping strategies (e.g., problem-focused) to leverage different dimensions of the encounter experience (e.g., usefulness of the new version, pleasure in using it).

Keywords: E-services; Incremental innovation; Customer experience; Existing customers; Coping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:103:y:2019:i:c:p:130-141

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.05.036

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