Why the little things matter: Exploring situational influences on customers' self-service technology decisions

The Influence of Situation-Dependent Factors on Mobile Shopping Usage

“…This covers particularly the location aspect, but is further linked to the temporal perspective as we assume that willingness for mobile purchasing behavior is increased when alternative channels are not directly available. Similarly, self-service technologies in retail are used more frequently by customers when alternative sales channels are not directly available [41]. Therefore, we state:…”

Customer Roles in Self-Service Technology Encounters in a Tourism Context

“…Self-service technologies (SSTs) now constitute a norm in the contemporary marketplace (Collier, Moore, Horky, & Moore, 2015;Elliott, Hall, & Meng, 2013). SSTs range from wellestablished, traditional offerings, for example, online travel booking, to newer platforms, for example, mobile flight check-in facilities.…”

Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety through Access to Human Contact

“…Rather, firms may improve customer choice satisfaction in high-anxiety settings by providing access to other customers, which may be virtually costless. Prior research has shown that the presence of other people may help or hurt customer-firm relationships during self-service (Collier et al 2015, Li et al 2013. We show that access to human contact is primarily a significant driver of customer satisfaction and trust, when customers feel anxiety.…”

“…An important source of the profitability and productivity gains that firms experience by introducing SSTs is the reduction of live operators as a part of the service encounter. However, this loss of human contact can have a material effect on customer perceptions and behaviors (Collier et al 2015. Although SSTs may be preferred by customers specifically to avoid service personnel (Dabholkar 1996, Dabholkar et al 2003, studies have shown that SST adopters may simultaneously increase their use of traditional service channels .…”

“…When people are anxious, they are more likely to seek advice (Gino et al 2012), and customer comfort, defined as reduced anxiety, plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of service relationships (Spake et al 2003). To balance heterogeneous customer needs while preserving the efficiency potential of self-service, firms have begun to offer employee-assisted self-service (Froehle 2006) -adding back a portion of the cost of human servers that SST options are intended to reduce -but the lack of privacy engendered by the presence of store employees may in some cases exacerbate feelings of anxiety and reduce satisfaction (Collier et al 2015, Dabholkar and Bagozzi 2002, Dabholkar and Spaid 2012.…”