Customer choice of self‐service technology: the roles of situational influences and past experience

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore situational influences on customers' actual choice between self‐service and personal service and to examine the impact of past experiences on self‐service technology (SST) attitudes and behavior.Design/methodology/approachA supermarket self‐checkout machine is the SST under investigation. A mixed qualitative research design was used and a total of 209 observations and 47 interviews were obtained from customers in five supermarket stores in Australia.FindingsPerceived waiting time, perceived task complexity, and companion influence are the three situational factors that impact on a customer's actual choice between self‐service and personal service. Past experiences influence SST attitudes and behavior in a more complex manner than SST characteristics and other individual difference variables.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings may not be generalizable to internet‐ or telephone‐based SST contexts.Practical implicationsBy understanding what factors affect a customer's choice, better strategies can be developed to manage and coordinate multiple service delivery options. The findings also highlight the importance of preventing frequent failure and providing speedy recovery in the SST context.Originality/valueThis paper goes beyond SST attitudes/intentions and focuses on the moderating effect of situational factors on a customer's actual SST behavior. It also examines the impact of focal product and product‐norm experiences on SST attitudes and behavior.

Systems Thinking in Design: Service Design and self-Services

“…Since the cost savings from "enticing customers to serve themselves" (Bitner & Brown, 2006) can be extremely large, there is an extensive management and marketing literature that examines consumers' intentions to adopt self-service technologies . In demographic studies, the investigators typically study age, gender, education and income, while among the traits they distinguish: technology anxiety; need for interaction, (meaning people's desire to interact with person rather than with a machine); and openness to technology innovation (Meuter et al, 2000(Meuter et al, , 2005Bitner et al, 2010, Wang et al, 2010. Some interesting insights emerge.…”

Customer decision-making processes and motives for self-service technology usage in multi-channel hospitality environments

“…There is a need to explore how consumers use the technology that they have adopted and to understand the nuances of consumer behaviour which are difficult to capture with standard questionnaires (Baron et al, 2006;Lin and Chang, 2011). Furthermore, Wang et al (2012) suggest that SST research has predominantly studied the adoption of SST interfaces in isolation from contextual factors such as the other available channels to obtain the particular service. While SST adoption research provides a base for explaining customer reasons and factors for SST trial, it does not account for the fact that SST adoption may not mean that those customers will prefer the SST option on all occasions (Wang et al, 2012).…”

“…This review produced a number of SST adoption factors that were researched in various contexts for different SST types. These factors range from user characteristics and attitudes (Dabholkar and Bagozzi, 2002;Gelderman et al, 2011;Lin and Chang, 2011;Meuter et al, 2005;Walker and Johnson, 2006), consumer demographics (Dean, 2008;Lee et al, 2010;Nilsson, 2007), technology attributes to situational factors (Dabholkar and Bagozzi, 2002;Gelderman et al, 2011;Simon and Usunier, 2007;Wang et al, 2012). Seven of the most often researched SST adoption factors in the literature include demographic variables (e.g., age, gender, income and education), trust, perceived risk, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, technology readiness and preference for personal contact (Kelly et al, 2011).…”

“…However, customer behaviour towards SSTs has been predominantly researched in terms of the factors that affect consumers in their usage or intentions to use SSTs (Gelderman et al, 2011;Lin and Hsieh, 2007). A major shortcoming of SST adoption factor research, from the perspective of the customer, is the assumption that once SSTs are used by customers, they will then proceed to use them regularly on all occasions thereafter (Wang et al, 2012). In fact, a customers' attitude towards a given SST, may be a good predictor of SST usage intentions, but it may also be mediated by situational factors which may affect the actual usage behaviour (Wang et al, 2012).…”

“…A major shortcoming of SST adoption factor research, from the perspective of the customer, is the assumption that once SSTs are used by customers, they will then proceed to use them regularly on all occasions thereafter (Wang et al, 2012). In fact, a customers' attitude towards a given SST, may be a good predictor of SST usage intentions, but it may also be mediated by situational factors which may affect the actual usage behaviour (Wang et al, 2012). Therefore, whilst other studies to date have tended to focus on the factors affecting SST adoption by customers, this paper explores a different avenue by examining customer decision-making processes and motivations for SST usage in multi-channel hospitality service environments.…”