INTRODUCTION
Research motivation
Globalization entails profound changes in every facet of doing business of many firms in service industry (Yi & Gong, 2008) There are many business opportunities opening for service firms to improve their business as well as profit At the same time, many challenges have been raised in competition for service firm especially maintaining and enhancing competitive advantage in market In order to against those difficulties and find the directions to improve firm’s competitiveness service companies has transferred to concentrate on the role of consumer as a co- value creator
In service context, customer ‘s role is considered as “partial employees”
(Bowen & Schneider, 1985), role of customer could be classified in two mains types as in-role and extra role behavior (Bettencourt & Stephen, 1997) In-role behaviors is expressed through the participation of customer as arriving on time for appointment, provide necessary information for service facilitation, meanwhile, extra role consist of behaviors which takes customer’s time, effort, physical welfare, material possessions (Staub, 1978) And citizenship behavior is a type of customer’s extra role behavior which possibly poses the positive impact on service’s employee’s performance, service’s providers as well as other stakeholders not only inside but outside the service context Both in-role and extra role behaviors as customer participation and customer citizenship behaviors creates value for firm and become potential sources of competitive advantage (Paine & Organ, 2000) In fact, the nature of two behavior roles is not similar to each other The in-role behavior is performed when the customer shows their co-operation because of their outcome expectation
Meanwhile the customer citizenship behavior’s nature emphasizes the voluntary and discretional action beyond their own responsibility in purchasing and consuming service which might helpful for organization In this recognition, there are remarkable amount of research in line of customer citizenship behavior as providing supportive directions for service organization in enhancing their competitiveness Bettencourt
(1997) proposed that help firms to improve the service quality, assist the other customers to complete their service, or help employees to improve the service delivery are the main types of customer citizenship behavior Those mentioned aspects of customer citizenship behavior support firm to achieve effective performance (van Doorn, et al., 2010) In other word, customer citizenship behavior is considered as a type of value creation behavior toward firm (Gong, et al., 2016; Yi
& Gong, 2013) Although, there are many empirical and theoretical research in terms of customer citizenship topic (Bettencourt, 1997; Yi & Gong, 2008a; Bove, et al., 2009; Anaza, 2014), the number of paper in this topic is limited within around 20 years
Servicescape significantly influences toward customer behavior response through eliciting the customer’s emotion (Bitner, 1992) But only few studies have investigated how the servicescape influence on customer behavior Jung & Yoo
(2017) argued that the social interaction happens in the servicescape impacts customer’s emotion, positive customer – customer interaction, dysfunctional customer behavior has influences on customer citizenship behavior through customer’s affection toward service However, those investigated factors only reflect the social side of servicescape Moreover, Daunt & Harris (2012) pointed out that both physical servicescape as well as social servicescape has influence on the disaffection of customer and resulting in the dysfunctional behavior Even so, the number of research investigates the relationship between servicescape and customer citizenship behavior is clearly unremarkable
On the one hand, for 20 years since how customer citizenship behavior occurred has been taken into investigation It is not so new that the psychological process as customer’s affection, customer satisfaction are the important factors to engage customer into citizenship behavior Bettencourt (1997) argued that customer tends to engage in voluntary to benefit firms when they satisfied with the service provided
Furthermore, Yi & Gong (2008) basing on affective theory of social exchange explained how positive affect tightly related to customer citizenship behavior It could be concluded that, the most previous research applied on social exchange theory as the theoretical foundation to explain the psychological process forming customer citizenship behavior
Except for social exchange theory, the other theoretical foundation applied to construct the model and explore new factor appeared rarely in marketing and service research Widely applied in servicescape research - SOR theory has support significantly in explanation of how customer emotions have been raised then cause their approach or avoidance behavior in service context On this basis, my research plan to explore how the servicescape possibly influences customer citizenship behavior under the SOR theory approach
At the same times, the current study also approaches to explore this relationship between servicescape and customer citizenship behavior basing on the role theory to explore the influence process of physical environment on customer’s role readiness and then engage customer into customer citizenship behavior In line of role theory, customers who do not have confidence for service provider, service provider or other customers will likely less engage into behavior as help the other customer or help firm to improve the service or assist employee in service delivery Previous reseach has pointed out that, customer in general shows citizenship behavior when they have affection toward organization, but ignoring the customer’s psychology whether customer feel ready for a voluntary behavior or not Customer ingeneral engages in citizenship behavior when they feel confident about their competence, knowledge and skills about things relating to the service they have been used
In short, the research pioneeringly investigates the impact of servicescape on customer citizenship behavior in two different directions The first approach via SOR theory to understand how servicescape stimuli customer citizenship behavior through the positive affect The second approach via Role theory and take the role readiness into the theoretical model to explore the impact of servicescape on customer citizenship behaviors.
Research objective
To explore which factors of servicescape influence positive affect and role readiness to examine whether positive affect and role readiness influence customer citizenship behavior and imply suggestion for firm with the purpose of enhancing customer citizenship behavior.
Research question
How do servicescape factors influence customer positive affect which in turn influence customer citizenship behavior
How do servicescape factors influence customer role readiness which in turn influence customer citizenship behavior.
Research scope
The research conducted in service industry of Hanoi city and some other big cities as Đà Nẵng, Hồ Chí Minh where there are large amount of population as well as the diversification in terms of service type during the period from 2019- Oct to
This chapter brief the information relating to reseach such as the research motivation, research objective, research question and research scope
This chapter summarizes relevant theoretical and emperical research to define the theoretical gap By doing that, the reseacher designs the theoretical framework including the conceptual definition of relevant factors in the construct, the hypothesis development and the explaination which support for hypothesis
This chapter represents the research design, applied method and process of data collection
This chapter illustrates the interpretaion the data collected and processed then verify the hypothesis in chapter 2
Chapter 5: Implication and limitation The chapter is to answer the research questions, shows the theoretical contribution, practical implication and further research’s direction.
LITERATURE REIVEW
Customer citizenship behavior
For around 20 recent years, there is a remarkable number of research about customer citizenship behavior in the marketing research since Ford (1995) and Bettencourt (1997) posited that a productive organization need employees who are willing to perform in many kinds of behaviors beyond their own specific task in the job description Ford (1995) had found that similar to employees, customers also get involved in types of citizenship behaviors as giving the feedback to the employee, giving recommendation about the a place to friends or families
Bettencourt (1997) also supposed that the customer citizenship behaviors includes the voluntary and discretionary behaviors that partly helpful for firm to deliver the service such as sharing their positive experience with other customers about the service they have used or expressed the good attitude to employees Then, company can improve the operation performance through the customer’s contribution for the business improvement by their help behavior toward the other customers as sharing the experience with the other customers (Groth, 2005)
In short, customer citizenship behavior is a kind of extra role behavior which is performed by customer without the purpose of monetary and beyond their role voluntarily (Bove, et al., 2009) Those helpful and constructive behavior possibly contribute on performance of organization, employees and employees, organization and other customers
2.1.2 Dimensions of customer citizenship behavior and related research 2.1.2.1 Providing feedback to the organization
Bettencourt (1997) initially defined providing feedback toward firm as the main meaningful dimension of customer citizenship behavior, and later popularly studied al., 2013; Yi & Gong, 2013) Customer who has ever worked with the service firm can show their voluntary behavior as the providing the information about what they experienced during service delivery, it could be compliment, positive evaluation, complaint toward the customer service department, feedback about the features need improvement in survey conducted by firm It could be said that those are the important and valuable information sources or signal for service management to find out what they should adjust or what they have not done properly and put effort to improve their service quality (Bettencourt, 1997; Voss, et al., 2004)
The customer behavior regarding voluntary help toward the other consumers as explaining the way to use the service effectively, correctly (Anaza, 2014; Yi & Gong,
2008) These help behaviors takes customer’s time, effort to support other customer during the service delivery process (Anaza & Zhao, 2013; Bove, et al., 2009) In short, the behavior toward the other’s behavior to make sure that is a proper behavior could occur is also a concept of customer citizenship behavior – helping other customer
Recommendation is given voluntarily and discretionarily by the customer not because of monetary is a main type of customer citizenship behavior (Gremler &
Brown, 1999) Making recommendation as positive word- of mouth can support firm to enhance their reputation and competitive advantage (Bettencourt, 1997) The reason is customer before making the buying decisions, they tend to take the reference from other customer besides company’s advertising campaign (Bansal & Voyer,
The relationship affiliation is a kind of citizenship behavior, for example participation in the firm’s activities (Bove, et al., 2009) Or, the behavior discretionarily tell to other customers about the relationship between themselves and firm through indicating visible evidence like their personal belongings is one of citizenship behavior (Gruen, 1995; Bove, et al., 2009) Following this customer citizenship topic, (Keh & Teo, 2001) also suggested that customer tolerance is one of dimensions of citizenship behavior, the extra- role behavior takes customers’ time and effort to be patient in context of service failure Less mentioned dimensions of customer citizenship behavior include benevolent acts of service facilitation
Bettencourt (1997) demonstrates that the voluntary behavior as respect the quality of service delivery can help firm to create value, because of the facilitation in service delivery process The customer who exhibit the altruism, the polite, compliance, the consciousness, courtesy is considered as customer citizenship behavior toward organization (Di, et al., 2010)
In summary, both theoretical and empirical research have been defined a numerous dimension of customer citizenship behavior This paper approaches to analyze the influence of certain factors on two main types citizenship behavior of customer The first approach dimension is through the kind of citizenship behavior benefit directly benefit for firm and the remaining is through the dimension which benefit for other customers as below:
Customer citizenship toward customer include: Help the other customer to complete the service properly
Customer citizenship toward organization include: Help the firm to improve the service quality
2.1.3 The research investigating the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior
Many research have proved that the customer’s internal emotions as customer satisfaction, commitment, customer loyalty, trust are the main antecedences of customer citizenship behavior basing on the foundation of social exchange theory
Social exchange theory supposes that customer tend to reciprocate the same behavior benefit back to the organization or individuals who had benefit them (Blau, 1964)
Later studies demonstrated that customer satisfaction is a very strong factor in the formation process of customer citizenship behavior When customer feel satisfied about the service or products they tend to reciprocate toward the service providers, employees who had made benefit for them (Bettencourt, 1997; Groth, 2005; Verleye, et al., 2014; Yi & Gong, 2008) Similarly, customer commitment has been supposed as a determinant of customer citizenship behavior in marketing literature (Bartikowski & Walsh, 2011; Curth, et al., 2014) Another type of customer’s internal emotion response is taken into investigation is loyalty (Bartikowski & Walsh, 2011) and Customer trust (Di, et al., 2010)
Besides those factors relating to the internal emotion response of customer which lead to the citizenship behaviors, there are some investigations regarding the influence of employee characteristic as employee appearance, employee behavior, employee emotion Bove et al (2009) showed that customer tend to exhibit the voluntary behavior which benefit firm when they recognize employee commitment, credibility, benevolence, and loyalty Such perception about employee’s citizenship behavior and employee’s dysfunctional behavior are important predictor of customer citizenship behavior (Yi & Gong, 2008) Furthermore, Delpechitre, et al (2018) has found that customer citizenship behavior can be influenced by perceived employee’s emotions
Additionally, customer characteristics is also an important factor to let the customer citizenship behavior occur (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2007; Verleye, et al.,
2014) The positive interaction with other customer possibly lead to the customer citizenship behavior through customer experience and customer’s affection with service (Jung & Yoo, 2017; Kim & Choi, 2016) Yi, et al (2013) also indicated in their paper that the citizenship behavior of the fellow customer also relates to the citizenship behavior of customer
The service provider’s characteristic also accounts for a vital part in shaping the customer citizenship behavior Basing on the flow theory paradigm, Verleye, et al (2014)’s study demonstrated that organizational support and organizational socialization have impact on customer citizenship behavior toward organization and toward customer through the mediating role of customer role readiness Bartikowski
& Walsh (2011) also mentioned in their empirical research that organizational reputation positively influences on customer citizenship behavior and this relationship is mediated by customer commitment and customer loyalty
In conclusion, the number of investigations about customer citizenship behavior topic has increased year by year, in terms of both theoretical and empirical research Even so, there is no research conducted to investigate the relationship between servicescape and customer citizenship behavior In environmental psychology, human behavior is evidently associated with the service environment (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) In marketing research, numerous conceptual papers and empirical research has proved the importance of the servicescape on customer’s internal emotion response and outcome behavior (Bitner, 1992; Lee, et al., 2008;
Servicescape
The service context is conceptualized in different terms Forexample, it has been mentioned as service environment (Baker, 1987), defined as atmospheric (Kotler, 1973), marketing environment (Turley & Milliman, 2000), and servicescape (Bitner, 1992) This current research used the term servicescape which given by (Bitner, 1992), in mentioning to the design of physical environment and social service environment including service satff characteristic and the interaction with other customers inside the service context which elicit internal reactions from customers leading to the display of approach or avoidance behavior
First, this study will examine the association between servicescape including physical servicescape and social servicescape on positive affect then result in customer citizenship behavior basing on SOR theory The second approach of the study hightlights the relationship between servicescape and customer citizenship behavior through role readiness on the foundation of role theory
2.2.1 S-O-R theory and influence of servicescape on customer’s positive affect
The figure 2-1 indicates the S-O-R conceptual model which had been developed by
Physical servicescape and customer positive affect
Kotler (1973) emphasized the role of service atmospheric in the relationship with customer behavior as “the design of buying environments to produce specific emotional effects in the buyer that enhance his/ her purchase probability”(p 50)
Later & Baker (1986) examined the effect of servicescape such as ambient condition, design of layout and social factors on customer perception of service Booms & Bitner
(1982) officially used the term “servicescape” to refer to the physical environment in which the service was delivered and servicescape comes as the marketing term The majority of scholars about physical environment on customer behavior is based on (Bitner, 1992)‘s conceptual model In this theoretical framework, physical servicescape encompasses three main dimensions: ambient conditions, spatial layout, functionality, and signs, symbols & artifacts The ambient ‘s characteristic can be felt through the temperature, lighting, noise, music and scent Spatial layout or design dimensions consists of the size, shape, seat arrangement And signs, symbols & artifacts dimension comprises the information about the service facilities Later studies examined the influence extent of physical servicescape factors on customer emotion and behavior in various kinds of service contexts For example, Wakefield
& Blodgett (1994) pointed out that the physical elements of serivcescape as layout cleanliness influences on customer’ desire to stay or remaining patronage behavior though customer satisfaction Lucas (2003) admitted that layout navigation, cleanliness, seating comfort, interior décor and ambient have influence on customer’s desire and stay, patronage and customer recommendation through customer satisfaction in the context of Casino USA Lee & Kim (2014) demonstrated the impact of physical servicescape on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the context of public self-service, the dimensions had been investigated including attractiveness, cleanliness, layout The majority of papers showed that the physical servicescape strongly influence on customer emotions through the evidence about customer satisfaction, customer’s pleasure But there are many duplications among those dimensions of physical servicescape The current study will examine the impact of common dimensions of physical servicescape in the majority of previous research on customer citizenship behavior including Design Layout & Signage ambience condition and facility equipment
Gardner (1985) defined that affect is generated and perceived by customer during the process of using service The concept of emotions, mood, affect is also mentioned as the typology of mental feeling process which comprise emotions, moods, and attitudes This state of feeling has changed and influenced by the external environment Affect can be classified in two main dimensions: positive affect and negative affect (Watson & Clark, 1984) The state positive affect can be understood as pleasurable engagement, satisfaction, joyful, happiness
Bitner (1992) also found out influence of physical servicescape on the customer’s emotional and cognitive response and psychological response Besides that, Mehrabian & Russell, (1974) proposed the theoretical model in which the physical servicescape stimulated the customer emotions and thus influenced the behavioral intentions The model focuses on emotional context of the servicescape, which is pleasure, arousal, and dominance Pleasure refers to the happiness or satisfaction (feeling satisfied is just a component of the pleasure emotion) Lee (2011) in the research about the investigation in context of the health care servicescape, show that the way finding, convenience, privacy and cleanliness have correlation with the customer satisfaction and perceived quality of care Newman (2007) pointed out that wayfinding (or signage) and spatial arrangements, the lay out and legible signage help as the main key of physical servicescape to generate the positive mood to customer
In the restaurant context, Kim & Moon (2009) illustrates that the customer’s perception about physical the servicescape directly influences customer emotions (pleasure feeling) and in turn affects their behavioral intentions through testing dimensions: facility aesthetics, layout, electronic equipment, seating comfort and electronic equipment
From those theoretical and empirical research about the relationship of physical servicescape and the customer emotion response, my research hypothesizes that:
H1: The physical servicescape (a Ambient conditions; b Design layout &
Signage; facility equipment) positively influences customer’s positive affect
Social servicescape and customer positive affect
It is clear that the customer behavior is not only influenced by the physical servicescape but also by the social environment as the employee, interaction with employees or service provider, or with other customers inside the service context
Frontline employees’ attitudes and behavior are realized an important factor toward customer’s perception emotion and behaviors (Bove & Shiu, 2009) Turley &
Milliman (2000) mentioned the human variables as the employee characteristics, employee uniforms, crowding and customer’s characteristic in the servicescape model also have the influence on customer’s enjoyment and satisfaction Ryu & Jang
(2007) also based on S-O-R model describes the influence of employee’s characteristic on the customer arousal and pleasure emotion and satisfaction Daunt
& Harris (2012) has mentioned that physical servicescape, the social facet of service and the form of dysfunctional behavior, disaffection with the service simultaneous related with each other Yi & Gong (2008) argued that employee citizenship behavior and employee’s dysfunctional behavior can cause the significant effect on customer’s satisfaction and finally result in customer citizenship behavior Kim, et al (2016) has prove that employee characterisitic as helpfulness and friendliness has positive relationship with customer satisfaction through his the emperical Thus, research hypothesizes:
H2 : Employees characteristic positively influences on customer’s positive affect
2.2.3.2 Customer - Customer know how exchange and positive affect
Although customer - customer interaction is important in the formation process of customer behavior, however in service literature, the number of research conducted to examine the relationship of customer- customer interaction on customer citizenship behavior is not remarkable There is an increase in the stream of research in investigation of influence of social behaviors within service context and how it contributes to the service experience According to Grove & Fisk (1997), other customers significantly influence on customer’s experience Davies et al (1999) demonstrates that customer - customer interaction in the context of retail store can be understood as sharing the experience and enhance enjoyment of service experience
Jung & Yoo (2017) indicated that positive customer interaction influence customer’s service affection which in turn influence customer citizenship behavior Kim & Choi
(2016) highlighted the impact of friend interaction, neighboring customer interaction and audience interaction on customer citizenship behavior In general, form of interaction spin around how they share the emotion with each other such as the feeling or the enjoyment moment On the other hand, customer has not only share emotion with each other, they also share knowledge, or know-how with other customer within service context However, the research focus on this kind of interaction is quite limited Know-how is understood as the certain competence, skills or expertise that facilitate what they do (von Hippel, 1988) Know-how is a type of knowledge that is tacit, complex, and difficult to codify Dyer & Nobeoka (2000) has defined that, know
-how can be considered as a kind of tacit knowledge which is difficult to codify, it can increase the productivity in task complement and support firm to enhance their sustainable advantage
Customer to customer know-how exchange is understood as a kind of social interaction among customers which is valuable for each individual because it can support them to increase their own competence, skill and knowledge as the source of information Once the customer gets themselves involved in this kind of interaction, the likelihood they comprehend how the service or product operated increases, this kind of interaction elicit positive emotion as reflection on what they received the support and answer from other people (Henig-Thurau, et al., 2004) Gruen, et al
(2006) found that Customer - Customer knowhow exchange has direct relationship with e- word of mouth a form of customer citizenship behavior It is possible that the Customer – Customer knowhow exchange can influence other dimensions of customer citizenship behavior Rosenbaum & Massiah (2007) supposed that, the social support directly influence on customer citizenship behavior in the service context but ignored the psychological process of customer Later, in online service, Zhu, et al (2016) proved that the social support influences customer citizenship behavior through customer satisfaction The Customer - Customer know how exchange would be a souce of social support for customer that is valuable for customer Thus, research hypothesizes:
H3: The customers know how exchange will positively influence on customer’s positive affect
Positive Affect and Customer citizenship behavior
The affect theory of social exchange (Lawler, 2001) shows that emotion plays the important role in the group’s production, the success in interaction will accomplish and generate the positive result for actor The benefit they received will result in positive emotion then motivate them to interact in the next time, they may expect about the upcoming joy and satisfaction
Affective states of individual possibly influences the likelihood of exhibiting the citizenship behavior (Williams & Shiaw, 1999; Yi & Gong, 2008; Verleye, et al.,
2014) Spector & Fox (2002) argued that in positive affect state, people tent to engage in behavior that support their affect which can help them feel better SOR theory states that the service environment stimuli customer’s emotion and form customer’s outcome behavior The positive affect is a kind of customer’s internal emotion Yi and Gong (2008) confirmed that customer customer’s positive affect positively relates customer citizenship behavior In some other forms of customer’s internal emotion response which have similar attribute to customer’s positive affect as customer’s satisfaction is also the most popular antecedent of customer citizenship behavior in service sector Therefore, the research hypothesizes:
H4a: There is a positive relationship between customer’s positive affect on customer citizenship toward customer
H4b: There is a positive relationship between customer’s positive affect on customer citizenship toward organization
Role theory and customer’s role readiness
The 2nd approach of this research applies role theory to expand the understanding about the relationship between servicescape and customer citizenship behavior Role theory assumes that customer tend to engage in customer citizenship behavior not only depends on the positive affect toward organization but also depends on their role readiness Based on the role theory (Kahn, et al., 1964), the likelihood customer would exhibit the customer citizenship behavior toward the firm or other stake holders possibly depends on their readiness
Customer’s role readiness is a common term in technology based service delivery which indicates the state customer feel ready for the first time using technology (Meuter, et al., 2005), however, the number of research takes role readiness into non-technology based service delivery is quite limited According to Verleye, et al (2014): “customer role readiness as the degree to which customers feel prepared for encounters with the organization in terms of feeling confident and having the appropriate knowledge and skills” Poushneh & Vasquez-Parraga (2016) pointed out that in non-technology based, customer ‘s role readiness also played the important role in forming customer’s voluntary behavior such as willingly recommend to other customer which positively influence customer satisfaction In this scale, they advocated that customer role readiness means the extent customer feeling confident, sufficient knowledge, experience, skills and motivation to take part in the service production process or service delivery
Customer role readiness has impact on customer participation in technology based service (Meuter, et al., 2005) Verleye, et al (2014) shows the influences of customer’s role readiness on customer citizenship behavior in the context of nurshing home At the same times, the paper also pointed out the role of organizational socialization, organizational support and other customer’s support as the determinant factor on customer role readiness Poushneh & Vasquez-Parraga (2016) shows that customer ‘s role readiness mediated the relationship between customer’s experience and customer citizenship behavior
Therefore, the research will take customer’s role readiness in explaining the relationship between servicescape and customer citizenship behavior In speficific, the study also intends to find out impact of two facets of servicescape as physical servicescape (ambient condition, design layout & sigage, factility equipment), social facet of servicescape (employee characteristic and customer customer knowhow exchange) on customer’s role readiness and result in customer citizneship behavior
2.3.1 The physical servicescape and customer role’s readiness
Eventhough, there is no research about the relationship between physical servicescape and customer’s role readiness In the study in terms of e-servicescape about the self- service context in banking sector, basing on the result about the relationship between perceived ease of use and the customer’s role readiness (Ho &
Ko, 2008) stated that: “Banks should design a friendly and fool-proof interface for their Internet banking services If customers can access and utilize Internet banking services such as transactions and information enquiry without effort, they can build up their self-esteem and self-efficacy and further appreciate the usefulness of new technology” In the other word, the appropriate design of e-servicescape possiblly help customer gain expertise, knowledge and skills and confidence at use Similarly, in non e- service scape, the design of physical servicescape can also enhance customer’s expertise, knowledge and skills which result in their role readiness to exhibit their customer citizenship behavior Bitner (1992) states that atmospherics have stimuli customer’s internal reaction in servicescape through improving the service setting as color, lighting, design layout, signage The design of physical servicescape could create conditions for customer to anquire knowledge and expertise in terms of using service which might motivate them to perceive their important role in the service environment Moreover, the physical servicescape can be designed to increase the perception of organizational support which influences customer’s role readiness In here, the physical servicescape can be considered as a kind of support tool for customer which help them to acquire expertise, knowledge and skills
H5: The physical servicescape (a Ambient conditions; b Design layout and signage; c Facility Equipment) positively influences customer’s Role readiness
2.3.2 Employee’s characteristic and customer ‘s role readiness
Customer contributes to firm’s value creation, at the same time, firms create the condition to facilitate the value creation process by delivering resources that represent value for customer There’s influence on customer’s role readiness through employee’s characteristic perceived by customer which motivate them to engage in customer role readiness Customer emphasized employee as the representative for service firm, if they feel they are being supported by service employees they also have feeling supported by service organization, therefore the attitude and behavior of employee are important in motivating customer engage in interaction with organization once they feel confident with their own knowledge and skills
Bettencourt (1997) confirm that the support coming from organization as employees’ empathy or emotional help or informational help can enhance customer’s understanding about organizational value and foster their knowledge, necessary competence and skills to interact with other customer or employees Employee is a key role in organizational support as well as socialization by providing customers the necessary information, practice help and emotional support (Verleye, et al., 2014)
Thus, it could be concluded that employee’s characteristic possible influence customer’s role readiness
H6: The employee’s characteristic positively influences customer’s role readiness
2.3.3 Customer to customer know-how exchange and customer’ role readiness
Not only get supports from employees, customer can also get support from other customers in the service environment (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2007) The other customer supports have shown the effect on customer‘s feeling prepared for encounters with organization The other customer citizenship behavior in a social environment potentially receive the support from the other customer or realize the other customer behavior which can help them to improve the skills and knowledge or competence, thus it could be stated that the support of other customer possibly relates to the customer’s role readiness
H7: Customer- customer knowhow exchange positively influences on customer role readiness
2.3.4 Customer’s role readiness and customer citizenship behavior
Wang (2011) has shown that customer role readiness can help firm to create value through their proactive feedback Verleye, et al (2014) also shows that the customer’s socialization can enhance the role readiness and lead to the increase the likelihood of customer getting involve in customer citizenship behavior in the nursing home service Auh, et al., (2007) demonstrated that customer’s role readiness appeared in engaging customer co production in the financial service Research hypothesizes:
H8a: Customer’s role readiness positively impacts on customer’s citizenship behavior toward customer
H8b: Customer’s role readiness positively impacts on customer’s citizenship behavior toward customer
Conceptual model
Customer citizenship behavior toward customer
Customer citizenship behavior toward organization
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Sampling
The sample conducted in research is 249 Hair, et al (2006b) suggested that the appropriate number of sample should be equivalent to the number of questionaire items multiple by 5 This is the least number of survey which a research should conduct to collect The number of items in the measurement scale is 35, thus the minimum required sample is 175 The larger number of respondents is, the higher realibility of measurement scale is
The study focuses on how the servicescape (physical servicescape and social servicescape) influence customer’s psychological response then resulting in customer citizenship behavior This research used non probability sampling (Malhotra, 2004) because of limited availability resouce (time and financial budget) Leary (2004) claimed that non probability sampling is acceptable for research that has an objective, to test hypotheses regarding how the variables influence on behavior outcome The location was selected is Hanoi and other big cities where there are diversified types of service and highly dense population The survey is executed online and the respondents is randomly chosen and no limit in the demographic characteristic.
Data collection process
The questionaire is designed in English then translate into Vietnamese for Vietnamese respondents The translation version is designed based on the refference from people who are fluent at either English or Vietnamese as well as understand deeply Vietnamese thinking, reading culture First, the questionaire is given to 1 expert in marketing field, 1 expert in econometric field, and 1 working in the service industry field to improve the validity of the questionaire and measurement scale
Based on their recommendation and improvement ideas, the questionaired has been revised Then, the questionaire is delivered to people who have formal education background and experience in using hospital service, hotel service, beauty care service Then, the feed back from them about the ambiguilty and potentially misunderstanding question and difficulty when giving answers are collected
Accordingly, the illustration way in the designed questionaire is adjusted
Finally, the pilot test is conducted in group of 30 peoples with variety of education background and experience in different kinds of service, people can give the respondents and they can understand clearly the questionaire and no ambiguity and difficulty in giving answer The complete version had been delivered widely to many other people through Google Drive
Because of the limitation in time and resource, the online survey conducted on the interface of Google drive is chosen This method helps the researcher can spread the survey and collect the data many place simultaneously in a certain time.
Questionnaire design
This study gathered the respondent’s infographic information including:
Education: High school/ College/ Post graduate
Age: From 18- below 24/ From 24- below 30/ From 30- below 40/ Above 40
Furthermore, this research also collected the information about the type of service that the respondents have ever experience in order to understand how different the types of service could influence on customer’s behavior The information about the frequency of visiting the service as well as the when the last time the respondents used the service was
This study conducted the survey questionaire including 35 questions
Section I : Ambient conditions ( 4 items), layout design & signage (7 items), facility equipment (3 items)
Senction II: Employee characteristics (5 items) and Customer- customer know how exchange (4 items)
Senction III: Customer positive affect (3 items)
Section IV: Customer role readiness (3 items)
Section V: Customer citizenship behavior toward customer (3 items) and customer citizenship behavior toward organization (3 items)
Malhotra (2004) showed that people in general would like to express their opinion, thus, section I, II, III, IV has appeared innitially in the designed questionaire
The sensitive information about demographic information of customer is moved to the end part of the questionaire Because, in general if the respondents have to show their personal information, they tend to avoid to answer the question as what they think The questionaire is designed on the interface of google drive which is a popular online survey tool in Vietnam All the questions relating to the research was put in one page and un-marked the numerical order, to reduce feeling that is a long survey when they saw it at the first time and to increase the patience respondents The questionnaire is designed with simple, clear, and unbiased wording in order to help every people can response without confusing The questionaire is designed in English then translated into Vietnamese for Vietnamese respondents The translation version is designed based on the refference from people who are fluent at either English or Vietnamese as well as understand deeply Vietnamese thinking, reading culture.
Measurement scale
Hair et al (2006b) recommend that, if the literature has provided a reliable suficient study about the related investigated topic, that literature can be applied to establish the instrument development The adoption of scale measuremense which has been support by previous literatre can be accept as the valid scale (Hair, et al., 2006b) The table 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-4 are the illustration of the scale development applied in this current study Firstly, this research focus on customer citizenship behavior in service industry, the relevant literature in terms of customer citizenship behavior in service sector will be reviewed and examined Secondly, this research takes the items that measure the content and has definitions into the scale measurement All the dimensions in the study are defined and discussed in the literature The researcher adopted the scale of customer citizenship behavior toward customer, customer citizenship behavior toward organization, physical servicescape (Ambient condition, Design layout & Signage, Facility equipment), employee’s characteristic, customer- customer knowhow exchange, customer role readiness, customer postive affect, from previous research The details of the measurement scale items of the construct are explained and discussed in the following subsections
Table 3-1 Measurement scale development of physical servicescape
Type Variables Item Source Co- ding
1 The atmosphere in X is comfortable
2 The background noise in X is acceptable
3 The service is keep clean in X AC3
4 The music is appropriate in X AC4
1 Layout design in X make me easy to move
2 Layout in X was properly designed to avoid the crowding
(Layout make me easy to locate designed place)
3 There is sufficient signage in the service
4 The signage in X make you easy to find your way
5 The signage in X used are helpful DS6
6 The signage in X is easy to understood
7 The signage in X is provide information clearly and correctly
1 The equipment is well-equipped in X
2 The equipment is of high quality in
3 The equipment is always used in good working condition in X
Table 3-2 Measurement scale development of social servicescape
Type Variables Item Source Co- ding
1 The employee of X is kind
2 The employee of X is quick response on request
3 The employee of X is willingness to help
4 The employee of X has enough knowledge
5 The employee of X is courteous EE5
Customer- customer know how exchange
Overall, the other customer in X is an important source of information for me
I can depend on the customer to provide answers to my questions
In general, the ideas suggested from others in X are reliable
I find the interaction among customer in
Table 3-3 Measurement scale developmentof customer internal response
Type Variables Item Source Co- ding
1 I am joyful about using the service in X (Yi &
2 I am satisfied about using the service in X
3 I love using service in X PA3
1.I know how to deal with the employees in X
2 I know how to use the services of
3 I feel like I fit in with the other customers of X
Table 3-4 Measurement scale development of customer citizenship behavior
Type Variables Item Source Co- ding
Customer citizenship behavior toward customer
1 How likely are you to teach a friend how to use the service correctly
2 How likely are you to help other customers when they don't know how to use this service
3 How likely are you to explain to other customers how to use the service correctly
Customer citizenship behavior toward organization
1 How likely are you to provide information when surveyed by the business
2 How likely are you to provide helpful feedback to customer service
3 How likely are you to Inform the firm about the service provided by this employee
To measure the extent of each measurement scale, the study uses the Likert scale which is presented as below:
Disagree Neither agree nor disagree
Data analysis procedure
The data collected will be processed on the basis of SPSS 20 application
3.5.1 Testing reliability – Validity of scale measurement
It is necessary to check the reliability and validity of the a construct when testing any measurement model (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988; Hair, et al., 2006b)
This study applied the Cronbach ‘s Alphas to test the reliability of the measurement construct as the majority of other research in marketing field The value of alpha indicates how closely a set of items are as in a group In general, this value ranges from 0 to 1 According to George & Mallery (2003), this co-efficient is over 0.9 can be considered highly reliable and low reliable if the value is below 0.5 At the same time, the correlation between items and total is also an important indicator (Nunnally
& Bernstein, 1994), this value indicates the correlations of one item with other items in a same measurement scale The accepted level is more than 0.3 for the item- total correlations, and if less than 0.3, that item will be deleted
EFA is used to explore which factors have influence on the variables and gather the variables basing on the analysis (DeCoster, 1998) EFA is a method to identify that there are k latent factors to be explored from analysis of data input, and the purpose is to shorten the list of common factors that will appear in the correlations (McDonald, 1985) EFA is a method to reduce the certain number of variables k into a group of smaller number variables but still keep meaningfulness of the original list of variables (Hair, et al., 2006b) EFA is helpful for study which comprise the number of observed variables from some to hundred which can be grouped into smaller number of variables to realize the hidden concept and facilitate the explanation (Rummel, 1970)
There are some requirements in order to perform EFA:
The number of sample size is conducted at least 300, and each variable that are supposed to explore latent factor should have from 5 to 10 observed items (Comrey & Lee, 1992) The larger number of sample size will minimize the error in the data collected However, in general, the researcher basing on the previous scale measurement and relevant literature, thus the validity of the measurement scale in general acceptable
Besides, Guadagnoli & Velicer (1988) discussed that, if the data contains the high scores factor loading (>0.8), the size of sample is 150 possibly appropriate to create a valuable research
Hair, et al (2006b) proposed that the minimum number of sample size should be more than 50 and better with 100 He suggested that each variable should have 5 observations
Kaiser – Meyer – Olkin (KMO) of Sampling Adequacy is greater than 0.5 If the KMO is less than 0.5, It means that there is no distinction and validities among variables
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity, Significant level of p 0.5, which proves that the data used for factor analysis is appropriate Bartlett’s test result with Sig significance level = 0.000 50% It can then be said that these 5 factors explain 85% of the data variation
Execute factor analysis according to the Principal components with Varimax rotation The results show that the initial 22 observed items are allocated into group of 5 variables The first component comprised 7 items from DESIGN LAYOUT AND SIGNAGE scale, the next is EMPLOYEE CHARACTERISTIC with 5 items The third component is CUSTOMER- CUSTOMER KNOWHOW EXCHANGE with 4 items The last 2 components are FACILITY EQUIPMENT with 3 items and AMBIENT CONDITION with 3 items
4.3.2 EFA for positive affect variables
Table 4-6 Exploratory factor analysis of positive affect
POSITIVE AFFECT scale consists of 3 items KMO index is 0.756 (greater than 0.5) and Barlett's test has a significance level less than 0.05 to prove that the data used for factor analysis is appropriate Value of the total variance extracted is 87% >
Table 4-7 Rotated component of positive affect scale
POSITIVE AFFECT scales include 3 observed variables extracted into 1 component
4.3.3 EFA for role readiness variables
Table 4-8 Exploratory factor analysis of role readiness
KMO index 0.718 0.5< 0.718 < 1 Sig (Barlett's Test) ,000 0.00050%
ROLE READINESS scale consists of 3 items KMO index is 0.718 (greater than 0.5) and Barlett's test has a significance level less than 0.05 to prove that the data used for factor analysis is appropriate Value of the total variance extracted is 84% >
Table 4-9 Rotated component of role readiness
ROLE READINESS scales consist of 3 observed variables, extracted to 1 component
4.3.4 EFA for customer citizenship behavior scale
Table 4-10 Exploratory factor analysis of customer citizenship behavior
KMO index 0.822 0.5< 0.822 < 1 Sig (Barlett's Test) ,000 0.00050%
CUSTOMER CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR scale consists of 6 items KMO index is 0.817 (greater than 0.5) and Bartlett’s test has a significance level less than 0.05 to prove that the data used for factor analysis is appropriate Value of the total variance extracted is 91% > 50% Eigenvalue is 1.350 (greater than 1)
Table 4-11 Rotated components of customer citizenship behavior scale
CUSTOMER CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR includes two components The first component is CUSTOEMR CITIZENSHOP BEHAVIOR TOWARD CUSTOMER with 3 items, the second component is CUSTOMER CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR with 3 items
In conclusion, the SERVICESCAPE Includes 5 components (3 items of Ambient Condition, 7 items of Design Layout &Signage, 3 items of Facility Equipment, 5 items of Employee Characteristic and 4 items of Customer- Customer know how exchange) The customer’s internal response variables consist of 2 variables, Positive affect variables with 3 items, Role readiness variables with 3 items
The last, outcome variables comprise 2 components (Customer citizenship behavior toward customer with 3 items, Customer citizenship behavior toward organization).
Regression Analysis
AC DS FE EE CE PA RR CCBC CCBO
The table 4 -12 demonstrates the correlation among independent variables with each other Except for the correlation coefficient between FE and CCBO is less than 0.219, the remaining variables possibly have relationship with each other, or in the other word, the multi collinearity phenomenon might happen Thus, it is necessary to diagnose the VIF coefficient in the next step
Table 4-13 Multi collinearity coefficient diagnostic (VIF)
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2 - tailed)
From the table 4-13, the VIF value is shown among independent variables less than 2, so the multi- Collinearity phemomenon does not happen, and the regression analysis is appropriate for observed variables
Ambient condition to customer positive affect
& Signage to customer positive affect
Facility Equipment to customer positive affect
Employee Characteristic to customer positive affect
Customer - Customer knowhow exchange to customer positive affect
Ambient condition to customer Role Readiness
& Signage to customer Role Readiness
Facility Equipment to customer Role Readiness
Employee Characteristic to customer Role Readiness
Customer - Customer knowhow exchange to customer Role Readiness
> customer citizenship behavior toward customer
-> customer citizenship behavior toward customer
-> customer citizenship behavior toward organization
-> customer citizenship behavior toward organization
Servicescape (AC, DS, FE, EE, CE) and Positive affect
Looking at Table 4.14 testing the hypothesis of the overall fit of the model with sig.