Incorporating the Dual Customer Roles in e-Service Design

Mei Xue, Patrick T. Harker and Gregory R. Heim

Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers from Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: E-service involves the delivery of useful services through information technology based service delivery channels such as the Internet. A distinguishing feature of e-service is the active and significant participation of customers in the service co-production process. With increasing customer participation in the e-service co-production process, it is important to incorporate customers’ needs both as a co-producer and as a patron into the design of e-service systems. However, these dual customer roles create a complex decision problem during e-service design. In the current paper we present a customer orientation strategy for e-service design, and propose a corresponding two-stage decision model based upon the customer orientation strategy to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of e-service design when the focus of the design is to meet customers’ needs as both co-producers and patrons. The decision model is then applied in an empirical study of the design of e-services of Internet food retailers.

Key Words: Service Operations, E-Service, Co-production, Efficiency Analysis, Data Envelopment Analysis

Date: 2003-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://fic.wharton.upenn.edu/fic/papers/03/0304.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://fic.wharton.upenn.edu/fic/papers/03/0304.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://wifpr.wharton.upenn.edu/fic/papers/03/0304.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:pennin:03-04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers from Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().