Consumer (dis)engagement coping profiles using online services in managing health‐related stressors

Abstract

Keeling, Debbie, de Ruyter, Ko and Laing, Angus (2022) Consumer (dis)engagement coping profiles using online services in managing health-related stressors. Psychology and Marketing. pp. 1-16.

How can customers cope with cognitive demands of professional services? The role of employee coping support

“…While prior research has focused on activities comparable to action coping as a way to handle negative consequences of customer participation (e.g., Blut et al, 2020; Haumann et al, 2015), our research highlights the importance of emotional coping provided by the employee, especially for customers that expect high cognitive demands during the service encounter. Thus, the results of our two studies contribute to the literature on coping (e.g., Duhachek, 2005; Keeling et al, 2022; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), customer participation (e.g., Dong & Sivakumar, 2017; Haumann et al, 2015; Heidenreich et al, 2015), and particularly customer participation stress (Blut et al, 2020; Haager et al, 2022). To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first of its kind to show which combination of coping types initiated by which of the two value co‐creators is effective in the context of professional services.…”

“…Introducing employee‐initiated coping support . Moreover, we contribute to existing coping research by introducing employee‐initiated coping support as an important coping mechanism in addition to a customers' individual coping (e.g., Duhachek, 2005; Echeverri & Salomonson, 2019; Keeling et al, 2022; Kumar et al, 2022; Nikolova, 2022). While individual coping before a service encounter does not mitigate the negative effect of anticipated cognitive demands on customer participation stress, the study results show that employee coping support during an encounter can attenuate the negative effects.…”

“…Coping can occur in various forms: for instance, one involves a focus on taking action to solve a problem (i.e., action coping), while another focuses on improving an individual's emotional state (i.e., emotional coping). Notably, existing literature focuses on coping behaviors that are initiated by the affected individuals themselves , for instance, employees (e.g., Boyd et al, 2009; Jung et al, 2022), customers (e.g., Duhachek, 2005; Kumar et al, 2022), or patients (e.g., Keeling et al, 2022), and that aim to reduce their personal stress . While individual coping is well established and evidenced to be effective in reducing stress (e.g., Koeske et al, 1993; Lewin & Sager, 2009), we propose that coping behaviors can also be initiated by service employees to help customers reduce the stress resulting from cognitive demands.…”

“…While prior research has shown that customer participation in professional services can result in customer participation stress, which increases with high cognitive demands (Haager et al, 2022), there is a lack of research on effective coping strategies in such settings. Second, we introduce employee‐initiated coping support as an important coping mechanism in addition to individual coping (e.g., Jung et al, 2022; Keeling et al, 2022; Koeske et al, 1993; Kumar et al, 2022). Employee‐initiated coping support is especially relevant in service encounters where the service outcome is produced jointly by customers and service employees (e.g., Kumar & Pansari, 2015) and that involve high cognitive demands for customers.…”

Heeding emotions or seeking challenges? Family support processes cultivate consumers' emotion‐ and problem‐focused support‐seeking

“…The current research recognizes that consumers differ in how they seek social support to cope with stress (e.g., Keeling et al, 2022). Existing research shows that consumers obtain various support resources from other customers such as product information (S. A. Thompson et al, 2016) or resources fostering social connection (e.g., Jiang et al, 2020).…”