MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY -------------------------------- VU THI MAI CHI DOES CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ALWAYS BENEFIT SERVICE COMPANIES? EXAMINING CUSTOMERS’ EPISTEMIC MOTIVATION AND INTERACTION WITH THE BEAUTY SERVICE CONTEXTS THE DISSERTATION OF ECONOMIC DOCTOR Ho Chi Minh city – 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY -------------------------------- VU THI MAI CHI DOES CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ALWAYS BENEFIT SERVICE COMPANIES? EXAMINING CUSTOMERS’ EPISTEMIC MOTIVATION AND INTERACTION WITH THE BEAUTY SERVICE CONTEXTS Major: Business Administration ID: 9340101 THE DISSERTATION OF ECONOMIC DOCTOR Supervisor: Assoc. TRAN HA MINH QUAN Ho Chi Minh city – 2022 DECLARATION OF AUTHENTICITY I would like to declare that, the thesis “Does customer experience always benefit service companies? Examining customers’ epistemic motivation and interaction with the beauty service contexts” is my own and conducted with the instruction and advice of Assoc. Tran Ha Minh Quan. Apart from the acknowledged references, there are not any materials previously published or written by another authors, or has not been previously submitted to any other educational and research programs or institutions.
I take full responsibility for the legality of the whole scientific research process of this dissertation. PhD Student Vu Thi Mai Chi i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I am sincerely acknowledging the managing boards of Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City (IUH) and University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) for offering me the chance of studying PhD and financially supporting my study. I would like to thank the lecturers, researchers who have imparted their knowledge and experience in research so that I could fulfill all requirements for the degree of PhD. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.
TRAN HA MINH QUAN makes me a better reader, a better thinker, and a better writer. His constant guidance, invaluable suggestions, and deep research insights have immensely shaped this study. This dissertation would never have been written without their kind and patient assistance. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to all my kindly colleagues and friends who had contributed to the completion of this study.
Above all, the dissertation is dedicated to my beloved parents, my son, who have been encouraging me along the way. ii TABLE OF CONTENT DECLARATION OF AUTHENTICITY. i LIST OF TABLES .v LIST OF FIGURES. viii CHAPTER 1 - RESEARCH OVERIEW.
Research background and rationales of the research. Research objectives and questions. Beauty service industry. Beauty service industry in Vietnam.
Beauty salon service. Beauty salon service in Vietnam. Research subject and scope. Structure of the research .19 CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW.
Review of Customer experience (EX). Conceptualization of Customer experience. Consequences of Customer experience. Review of Customer engagement behavior (EG).
Conceptualization of Customer engagement behavior. Antecedences of Customer engagement behavior. Customer-Dominant Logic. Social Identity Theory.
Need for Cognition. Operationalization of the selected variables. Customer engagement behavior (EG). Relationship between Customer experience (EX) and engagement behavior (EG).
Mediating role of Customer-firm identification (FI) and employee identification (EI). Moderating role of Customer epistemic motivation (EM) .59 CHAPTER 3 - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Research framework and hypotheses. Population and sampling.
Sample size determination. Scales used in the research framework. Measurements of Customer experience. Measurements of Customer epistemic motivation.
Measurements of Customer- Firm Identification. Measurements of Customer-employee identification. Measurements of Customer engagement behavior. Data collection process.
Data analysis process. The results of Pilot study. The results of Qualitative pilot study. The results of Quantitative pilot study.95 CHAPTER 4 - DATA ANALYSIS.
Descriptive analysis of Sample. Validation of Measures: Reliability and Validity. Reflective-reflective second-order construct. Reflective-formative second-order construct.
Reliability and Validity of Measurement model. Assessment of Common method bias. Testing hypotheses by PLS-SEM application .116 CHAPTER 5 - DISCUSSION AND CONTRIBUTIONS. Findings of the research.
Discussion of the findings. Characteristics of demographic. Scale validates of customer experience. Relationship of EX and EG – mediating and moderating role.
Contributions of the research. Limitations and Future research suggestions .133 APPENDIX I: ENGLISH QUESTIONNAIRE. xi APPENDIX II: VIETNAMESE QUESTIONNAIRE. xvi APPENDIX III: LIST OF BEAUTY SALONS.
xxi APPENDIX IV: LIST OF EXPERTS OF IN-DEPT INTERVIEW .xxv APPENDIX V: DATA FROM QUANTITATIVE PILOT STUDY. xxvi APPENDIX VI: SCALE ASSESSMENT OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT BEHAVIOR. xxxvii APENDIX VII. SCALE ASSESSMENT OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.
xlii APENDIX VIII. xliv v LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Classification of beauty services in Vietnam .2 Services offered by beauty establishes .1 Overview of some important definitions of EX. Relevant literature on EX’s dimensions and consequences. Overview of some important definitions of EG.
Relevant literature on EG’s dimensions and antecedences. Value creation nature of Customer-Dominant Logic .1 Research implementation progress. Summary of demographic variables. “Customer experience” scale.
“Customer epistemic motivation” scale. “Customer- Firm Identification” scale. “Customer-employee identification” scale. “Customer engagement behavior” scale .8 Summary of data collection procedure.
Data analysis techniques and purposes for Pilot test. Synthesis of data analysis methods for the main research. Discriptive analysis of Sample. ANOVA for Customer experience.
Outer loadings of ‘Customer engagement behavior’ scale. Convergent validity of ‘Customer engagement behavior’ scale. HTMT value of ‘Customer engagement behavior’ scale. HTMT confidence interval of ‘Customer engagement behavior’.
Convergent testing results of ‘Customer experience’ scale. Convergent validity of Constructs .9 Correlations and Discriminant validity of Constructs .10 Path analysis results. The results of mediation analysis. Summary of Hypotheses test results for Structural model .117 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Categorize services by customer interaction .2 Quality evaluations for goods and services .1 Customer experience framework.
Conceptual model of Customer experience. Conceptual model of Customer engagement. Characteristics of the offering and actor focus. Customer-dominant logic of service and service management.
Research framework and hypotheses. Validity testing result of Customer engagement behavior. Validity testing result of Customer experience. Relationships in Path analysis model .118 vii ABSTRACT The primary purpose of this study is to explain how and when customer experience benefits the company.
Built upon Customer-Dominant Logic, Social Identity theory and Need for Cognition, the study propose that customer experience leads to customer engagement behavior via two routes: customer-firm and customer-employee identification. Furthermore, the study advances that customers’ epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior. The methodologies used for the research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative technique. A survey method was employed for the two studies by recruiting female consumers of beauty salons in Vietnam.
The results demonstrated that customer experience quality as a measurement for customer experience applies to the context of the study and provided empirical support for the hypotheses. This research found that customer experience positively influences customer engagement behavior mediated by customer-firm and customer-employee identification. Furthermore, this research revealed that customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior via customer-employee identification. However, the moderating role of customer epistemic motivation is insignificant for the mediated relationship via customer-firm identification.
Finally, this research offers theoretical and practical contributions that are elaborated and further discussed. Keywords: Customer experience, Social identity theory, Customer-dominant logic theory, Need for cognition theory, customer engagement behavior, beauty service viii TÓM TẮT Mục đích chính của nghiên cứu là giải thích khi nào trải nghiệm khách hàng mang lại lợi ích cho công ty và cách nó mang lại. Mô hình nghiên cứu được đề xuất từ ba thuyết đó là Thuyết sự thống trị khách hàng, bản sắc xã hội và nhu cầu nhận thức trong đó trải nghiệm khách hàng dẫn đến hành vi gắn kết khách hàng thông qua trung gian sự nhận diện khách hàng-nhân viên và sự nhận diện khách hàng-tổ chức. Luận án đã kết hợp cả hai phương pháp nghiên cứu định tính và định lượng.
Một cuộc khảo sát đã được thực hiện cho hai nghiên cứu (sơ bộ và chính thức) bằng cách phỏng vấn những khách hàng nữ của các thẩm mỹ viện tại Việt Nam. Kết quả chứng minh rằng cấu trúc thang đo trải nghiệm khách hàng có thể áp dụng và hỗ trợ thực nghiệm trong bối cảnh dịch vụ thẩm mỹ tại Việt nam. Kết quả nghiên cứu cũng cho thấy trải nghiệm khách hàng ảnh hưởng tích cực đến hành vi gắn kết khách hàng khi có vai trò trung gian của nhận diện khách hàng-nhân viên và nhận diện khách hàng-tổ chức. Hơn nữa, nghiên cứu còn chỉ ra rằng động cơ nhận thức điều tiết tiêu cực tới mối quan hệ gián tiếp giữa trải nghiệm và hành vi gắn kết khách hàng thông qua trung gian nhận diện khách hàng-nhân viên.
Tuy nhiên, vai trò điều tiết của động cơ nhận thức khách hàng là không đáng kể đối với mối quan hệ gián tiếp qua trung gian nhận diện khách hàng- tổ chức. Cuối cùng, kết quả nghiên cứu được thảo luận kỹ lưỡng để đưa ra một số đóng góp cả về lý thuyết và thực tiễn. Từ khóa: Trải nghiệm khách hàng, Thuyết nhận diện xã hội, Thuyết sự thống trị khách hàng, Thuyết nhu cầu nhận thức, hành vi gắn kết khách hàng, dịch vụ thẩm mỹ. 1 CHAPTER 1 - RESEARCH OVERIEW Chapter 1 is an overview of the research introduced with the main content: the research topic and a concise background following by a dilemma statement, research questions, research objectives, scope and limitations, research context and the significance and structure of the dissertation.
Research background and rationales of the research Competition in a global market has been increasingly challenging, including within the service sector (Gentile, Spiller, and Noci, 2007). Thus, service companies need to ensure their competitive advantages (Lovelock, Patterson, and Wirtz, 2015). Service researchers have suggested customer experience is now becoming vital competitive advantages a service company can pursue (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Gentile, Spiller and Noci, 2007; Pine and Gilmore, 1998). In the same vein, service companies have realized the importance of improving customer experience, such as by putting customer experience as the top priority of the company as well as assigning executives to specifically handle customer experience management (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; De Keyser, et al.
There are multiple touchpoints pre- consuming, action, and post-consuming a service, and they are all equally important. At any touchpoint, a bad experience can derail an organization's efforts to offer an impressive customer experience (Rawson and Jones, 2013; De Keyser, et al., 2020; Siqueira, et al. Designing an effective customer experience means generating revenue for the business, preventing competitors from capturing the business' loyal customers, creating customer engagement and a distinctive culture for business (Thakur, 2016; Homburg, et al. According to a recent report from Acquia – Closing the Customer Experience Gap: Customer Experience Trends Report 2019 – globally, more than three-quarters (76%) of consumers switch to a brand competitor after just one bad experience (Brown, 2019).
Your business will witness significant performance improvements across the top and bottom-line, if businesses focus effectively on the customer experience (Brown, 2019). Customer experience is conceptually defined as an internal and subjective response, including cognitive and affective responses, that customers have direct or indirect contact (Meyer and 2 Schwager, 2007; De Keyser, et al. Understanding customer experience helps executives design their services (Pullman and Gross, 2004; Teixeira, et al.