Setting the stage for service experience:design strategies for functional services

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify service design strategies to improve outcome-oriented services by enhancing consumers’ emotional experience, while overcoming customer variability. Design/methodology/approach: An abductive, multiple-case study involves 12 service firms from diverse online and offline service sectors. Findings: Overall, six service design strategies represent two overarching themes: customer empowerment can involve design for typical customers, visibility, and community building, while customer accommodation can involve design for personas, invisibility, and relationship building. Using these strategies helps set the stage for a service to offer an emotional experience. Research limitations/implications: The study offers a first step toward combining investigations of service experience and user experience. Further research can strengthen these links. Practical implications: The six design strategies described using examples from case research offer managerial recommendations. In particular, these strategies can help service managers address the customer-induced variability inherent in services. Originality/value: Extant studies of experience staging have focused on particular sectors such as hospitality and leisure; this study contributes by investigating outcome-focused services and identifying strategies to create unique experiences that offset variability. It also represents a rare effort to combine research from service management and interaction design, shedding light on the link between service experience and user experience.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-08-2015-0234
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Operations & Information Management
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School
Additional Information: © Emerald Group Publishing Limited 2016 Published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited Licensed re-use rights only Part of the funding for this work has been provided from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under Grant Agreements Nos 251383 and 324448 as well as the UK Design Performance Project (Grant No. AH/E507662/1).
Uncontrolled Keywords: design,experience,service innovation,service operations,services management,Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous),Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management,Strategy and Management
Publication ISSN: 1757-5826
Last Modified: 29 Jan 2024 08:10
Date Deposited: 29 Mar 2017 09:20
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://www.eme ... -0234/full/html (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2016-10-17
Published Online Date: 2016-09-30
Accepted Date: 2016-07-24
Authors: Beltagui, Ahmad (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-2687-0971)
Candi, Marina
Riedel, Johann C.K.H.

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