Does customer experience always benefit service companies examining customers’ epistemic motivation and interaction with the beauty service contexts doctor of philosophy major business ad

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY VU THI MAI CHI DOES CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ALWAYS BENEFIT SERVICE COMPANIES? EXAMINING CUSTOMERS’ EPISTEMIC MOTIVATION AND INTERACTION WITH THE BEAUTY SERVICE CONTEXTS THE DISSERTATION OF ECONOMIC DOCTOR Ho Chi Minh city – 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY VU THI MAI CHI DOES CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ALWAYS BENEFIT SERVICE COMPANIES? EXAMINING CUSTOMERS’ EPISTEMIC MOTIVATION AND INTERACTION WITH THE BEAUTY SERVICE CONTEXTS Major: Business Administration ID: 9340101 THE DISSERTATION OF ECONOMIC DOCTOR Supervisor: Assoc Prof TRAN HA MINH QUAN Ho Chi Minh city – 2022 DECLARATION OF AUTHENTICITY I would like to declare that, the thesis “Does customer experience always benefit service companies? Examining customers’ epistemic motivation and interaction with the beauty service contexts” is my own and conducted with the instruction and advice of Assoc Prof Tran Ha Minh Quan Apart from the acknowledged references, there are not any materials previously published or written by another authors, or has not been previously submitted to any other educational and research programs or institutions I take full responsibility for the legality of the whole scientific research process of this dissertation PhD Student Vu Thi Mai Chi i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I am sincerely acknowledging the managing boards of Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City (IUH) and University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) for offering me the chance of studying PhD and financially supporting my study I would like to thank the lecturers, researchers who have imparted their knowledge and experience in research so that I could fulfill all requirements for the degree of PhD I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof TRAN HA MINH QUAN makes me a better reader, a better thinker, and a better writer His constant guidance, invaluable suggestions, and deep research insights have immensely shaped this study This dissertation would never have been written without their kind and patient assistance I would also like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to all my kindly colleagues and friends who had contributed to the completion of this study Above all, the dissertation is dedicated to my beloved parents, my son, who have been encouraging me along the way ii TABLE OF CONTENT DECLARATION OF AUTHENTICITY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vi ABSTRACT vii TÓM TẮT viii CHAPTER - RESEARCH OVERIEW 1.1 Research background and rationales of the research 1.2 Research gaps 1.3 Research aims 1.4 Research objectives and questions 1.5 Research context 1.5.1 Beauty service industry 10 1.5.2 Beauty service industry in Vietnam 13 1.5.3 Beauty salon service 16 1.5.4 Beauty salon service in Vietnam .17 1.6 Key terms 18 1.7 Research subject and scope .19 1.8 Structure of the research 19 CHAPTER - LITERATURE REVIEW 21 2.1 Review of Customer experience (EX) .21 2.1.1 Conceptualization of Customer experience .21 2.1.2 Consequences of Customer experience 27 2.2 Review of Customer engagement behavior (EG) 33 2.2.1 Conceptualization of Customer engagement behavior 33 2.2.2 Antecedences of Customer engagement behavior 36 2.3 Theoretical background .39 2.3.1 Customer-Dominant Logic 39 2.3.2 Social Identity Theory .42 2.3.3 Need for Cognition 44 iii 2.4 Proposal framework 45 2.5 Operationalization of the selected variables 47 2.5.1 Customer experience (EX) .47 2.5.2 Customer engagement behavior (EG) .50 2.5.3 Relationship between Customer experience (EX) and engagement behavior (EG) 52 2.5.4 Mediating role of Customer-firm identification (FI) and employee identification (EI) .53 2.5.5 Moderating role of Customer epistemic motivation (EM) 56 2.5.6 Controlled variables 59 CHAPTER - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .61 3.1 Research framework and hypotheses 61 3.2 Research design 64 3.3 Population and sampling 67 3.3.1 Sampling method .68 3.3.2 Sample size determination .69 3.4 Instrument development 69 3.5 Scales used in the research framework 71 3.5.1 Measurements of Customer experience 72 3.5.2 Measurements of Customer epistemic motivation 74 3.5.3 Measurements of Customer- Firm Identification 74 3.5.4 Measurements of Customer-employee identification 75 3.5.5 Measurements of Customer engagement behavior 75 3.6 Data collection process 77 3.7 Data analysis process 82 3.8 The results of Pilot study 89 3.8.1 The results of Qualitative pilot study .89 3.8.2 The results of Quantitative pilot study 95 CHAPTER - DATA ANALYSIS 101 4.1 Descriptive analysis of Sample .101 4.2 Validation of Measures: Reliability and Validity 104 iv 4.2.1 Reflective-reflective second-order construct 104 4.2.2 Reflective-formative second-order construct 108 4.2.3 Reliability and Validity of Measurement model 109 4.3 Assessment of Common method bias .113 4.4 Testing hypotheses by PLS-SEM application 113 4.4.1 Mediation analysis 115 4.4.2 Moderation analysis .116 CHAPTER - DISCUSSION AND CONTRIBUTIONS 119 5.1 Findings of the research 119 5.2 Discussion of the findings .121 5.2.1 Characteristics of demographic .121 5.2.2 Scale validates of customer experience 121 5.2.3 Relationship of EX and EG – mediating and moderating role 122 5.3 Contributions of the research 124 5.3.1 Theoretical contributions .124 5.3.2 Practical contributions 125 5.4 Limitations and Future research suggestions 127 5.5 Conclusion .128 PUBLICATION 132 REFERENCES 133 APPENDIX I: ENGLISH QUESTIONNAIRE xi APPENDIX II: VIETNAMESE QUESTIONNAIRE xvi APPENDIX III: LIST OF BEAUTY SALONS xxi APPENDIX IV: LIST OF EXPERTS OF IN-DEPT INTERVIEW .xxv APPENDIX V: DATA FROM QUANTITATIVE PILOT STUDY xxvi APPENDIX VI: SCALE ASSESSMENT OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT BEHAVIOR xxxvii APENDIX VII SCALE ASSESSMENT OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE xlii APENDIX VIII PLS – SEM xliv v LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Classification of beauty services in Vietnam 14 Table 1.2 Services offered by beauty establishes .16 Table 2.1 Overview of some important definitions of EX 24 Table 2.2 Relevant literature on EX’s dimensions and consequences .31 Table 2.3 Overview of some important definitions of EG .34 Table 2.4 Relevant literature on EG’s dimensions and antecedences .37 Table 2.5 Value creation nature of Customer-Dominant Logic 41 Table 3.1 Research implementation progress 67 Table 3.2 Summary of demographic variables 70 Table 3.3 “Customer experience” scale 72 Table 3.4 “Customer epistemic motivation” scale 74 Table 3.5 “Customer- Firm Identification” scale .75 Table 3.6 “Customer-employee identification” scale 75 Table 3.7 “Customer engagement behavior” scale 76 Table 3.8 Summary of data collection procedure .78 Table 3.12 Data analysis techniques and purposes for Pilot test .87 Table 3.13 Synthesis of data analysis methods for the main research .88 Table 4.1 Discriptive analysis of Sample .101 Table 4.2 ANOVA for Customer experience .103 Table 4.3 Outer loadings of ‘Customer engagement behavior’ scale 105 Table 4.4 Convergent validity of ‘Customer engagement behavior’ scale 106 Table 4.5 HTMT value of ‘Customer engagement behavior’ scale .106 Table 4.6 HTMT confidence interval of ‘Customer engagement behavior’ 107 Table 4.7 Convergent testing results of ‘Customer experience’ scale 108 Table 4.8 Convergent validity of Constructs 110 Table 4.9 Correlations and Discriminant validity of Constructs 112 Table 4.10 Path analysis results 114 Table 4.11 The results of mediation analysis 116 Table 4.12 Summary of Hypotheses test results for Structural model 117 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Categorize services by customer interaction 11 Figure 1.2 Quality evaluations for goods and services .12 Figure 2.1 Customer experience framework .27 Figure 2.2 Conceptual model of Customer experience 28 Figure 2.3 Conceptual model of Customer engagement 35 Figure 2.5 Characteristics of the offering and actor focus .39 Figure 2.6 Customer-dominant logic of service and service management 40 Figure 2.7 Proposed framework .47 Figure 3.1 Research framework and hypotheses .62 Figure 3.2 Research procedure 66 Figure 4.1 Validity testing result of Customer engagement behavior 107 Figure 4.2 Validity testing result of Customer experience 109 Figure 4.3 Relationships in Path analysis model 118 vii ABSTRACT The primary purpose of this study is to explain how and when customer experience benefits the company Built upon Customer-Dominant Logic, Social Identity theory and Need for Cognition, the study propose that customer experience leads to customer engagement behavior via two routes: customer-firm and customer-employee identification Furthermore, the study advances that customers’ epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior The methodologies used for the research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative technique A survey method was employed for the two studies by recruiting female consumers of beauty salons in Vietnam The results demonstrated that customer experience quality as a measurement for customer experience applies to the context of the study and provided empirical support for the hypotheses This research found that customer experience positively influences customer engagement behavior mediated by customer-firm and customer-employee identification Furthermore, this research revealed that customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the mediated effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior via customer-employee identification However, the moderating role of customer epistemic motivation is insignificant for the mediated relationship via customer-firm identification Finally, this research offers theoretical and practical contributions that are elaborated and further discussed Keywords: Customer experience, Social identity theory, Customer-dominant logic theory, Need for cognition theory, customer engagement behavior, beauty service 47 Customer epistemic motivation Customeremployee identification Customer engagement behavior Customer experience Customerfirm identification Figure 2.7 Proposed framework 2.5 Operationalization of the selected variables 2.5.1 Customer experience (EX) Customers experience occurs every time customers interact with the services across multiple channels and at numerous points in time, even before and after the service interaction (Stein and Ramaseshan, 2016; Klaus and Maklan, 2012) Customer experience results from their evaluation of the accumulative contacts that customers have with the services (Stein and Ramaseshan, 2016; Pimpakorn and Patterson, 2010) Also, customer experience is multi-dimensional consisting of spiritual, sensorial, physical, rational and emotional evaluations of the service touchpoints (Gentile, et al., 2007; Pekovic and Rolland, 2020; Kuppelweiser and Klaus, 2020) The dimensions that construe customer-experience vary across contexts (Bustamante and Rubio, 2017; Happ at al., 2020; De Keyser, et al., 2020) For example, while the quality of materials, signage, and personal artifacts are essential for luxury hotels customers, those aspects are less of important to budget hotels 48 customers (Walls, et al., 2011; Ren, et al., 2016) Also, the dimensionality of customer experience is different for an identical industry across different cultures (Shobeiri, Mazaheri and Laroche, 2018; Srivastava and Kaul, 2014) Such as, for Indian customers, social interaction and convenience are the major concern when evaluating experience in retail stores (Srivastava and Kaul, 2014) People also evaluate customer experience differently between online and offline contexts, such that the elements that are important within an online context are not necessarily important for offline context (Rose at al., 2012; Bustamante, 2017) Although customer experience had been conceptualized clearly, measuring customer experience has been problematic as customer experience measures tend to represents product or service evaluation by assessing each dimension of the product or service (Klaus and Maklan, 2012; Gentile, et al., 2007) Consequently, there has been no unified measure for customer experience across research due to the variety in service dimensionality (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016) Furthermore, as a product of the interaction between customers, the services and contextual elements, customer experience cannot be simply assessed by evaluating companies’ offerings (Verhoef, et al., 2009; Teixeira, et al., 2012) In other words, researchers propose that customer experience is partly controllable and uncontrollable to the company (Teixeira, et al., 2012; Verhoef, et al., 2009) To address the abovementioned issues, Klaus and Maklan (2012) conceptualized and developed a measure for customer experience They posit that customer experience involves four dimensions that represent a perceptual or higherorder perception such as, product experience, outcome focus, moments-of-truth, and peace-of-mind (Klaus, 2011: Klaus and Maklan, 2012; Klaus and Maklan, 2013) Product experience refers to the importance of customers’ perception of having choices and the ability to compare offerings even if they were from the same provider (Klaus and Maklan, 2012) Whereas, outcome focus represents the importance of goal-oriented experience, such that the service helps the customers achieve their goals (Roy, et al., 1996) 49 However, although some elements personal to customers such as social influence and purpose of shopping might apparently are not controllable, understanding customers’ personal elements might help company to design services that lead to the desired customer experiences (Verhoef, et al., 2009; Teixeira, et al., 2012) Existing research on customer experience generally examine the antecedents and consequences (Gounaris, et al., 2007; Chen, 2015; Berry, et al., 2002; Rose, et al., 2012) For instances, several studies examine the antecedents of customer experience, however they tend to limit the view from the companies’ perspectives and only involve the visible aspects of the experiences (Teixeira, et al., 2012; Gentile, et al., 2007; Rose, et al., 2012) For example, a study by Rose, et al., (2012) examines the effects on service attributes to cognitive and affective evaluation and purchase intention Gentile, et al., (2007) and Klaus and Maklan (2012) indicated that customer experience is multi-dimensional and consisting of spiritual, sensorial, physical, rational and emotional evaluations of the service touch points Rose, et al., 2012 showed that customer experience results from their evaluation of the accumulative contacts that customers have with the services Stein and Ramaseshan (2016) defined that customers experience occurs every time customers interact with the services across multiple channels and at various points in time In addition, Verhoef, et al., (2009) and Teixeira, et al., (2012) concluded that as a product of interaction between customers and the services, customer experience cannot be simply produced by the company but has to be co-created with the customers In other words, customer experience is both partly controllable and partly uncontrollable to the company However, although some elements personal to customers such as social influence and purpose of shopping might apparently are not controllable, understanding customers’ personal elements might help company to design services that lead to the desired customer experiences Consistent with the customer experience concept, the customer experience quality scale was developed based on an overall assessment of cognitive and emotional value from the customer's point of view by Klaus and Maklan (2012) It 50 captures the value-in-use not only the attributes, and assess the emotional responses and functionality of the company offerings (Klaus and Maklan, 2012) Despite its potential, the customer experience quality scale has not been widely tested empirically Thus, this paper also aims to examine the applicability of the scale in beauty salon located in Vietnam (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016) Subsequently, the study aims to test whether the scale is relevant to measure customer experience with the beauty salon services in Vietnam Using a qualitative study, we purify the measurement items prior to examining the relationship with other constructs Further, we will examine the proposed research framework (Figure 2.7) 2.5.2 Customer engagement behavior (EG) Previous studies show that customers’ identification with the company and the employee will motivate customers to perform a behavior that supports the company beyond the transactions, that often named as customer engagement behavior (Kang, et al., 2015; Jaakola and Alexander, 2014; Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003; Chan, et al., 2017) Kumar and Pansari (2016) show that customer engagement increases a firm’s performance Customer engagement itself is defined as a psychological process in which customers’ mind is fully absorbed by a specific context, characterized by a particular level of cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity within an interaction (Thakur, 2016; Bowden, 2009) In other words, customer engagement behavior represents customers’ behaviors that go beyond the customers’ role within a service provision and behave according to their initiative and motivation toward the company (Roy, et al., 2018; Cheung, et al., 2020) There are various forms of customer-engagement behavior such as customer involvement in positive word-of-mouth about the company, customers’ action in helping the company as well as other customers, product improvement suggestion, recruiting other customers, and proactive communication of anticipated problems (Jaakola and Alexander, 2014; Pansari and Kumar, 2016) For example, customers contribute various resources toward the company and its offerings that eventually improve the value for customers (Jaakola and Alexander, 2014; Pansari and Kumar, 2016) In sum, customer-engagement behavior provides companies with a pool of 51 customers who are not merely transactional and hence, it is an essential source of competitive advantage for the company (Roy, et al., 2018) Research has found that several factors may enhance or inhibit customer propensity to engage with the service, one of them is the contextual factors of services (Patterson, et al., 2006; Fernandes and Esteves, 2006) For example, customers are more likely and more desire to engage with the service when services involving high-involvement service, interaction-based services, low-availability and high switching cost Fernandes and Esteves, 2006; Bolton and Saxena-Iyer, 2009) Consistently, customer identification with the context is also considered as one of the most important factors that enhance customers’ engagement (Coelho, et al., 2018; Ahearne, et al., 2005) For example, studies on brand identification found that customer’s identification with the brand leads to customer engagement with the brand (Coelho, et al., 2018; Stephenson and Yerger, 2014) In sum, the interaction between the customer and the company as well as the service providers are considered as the elements of customer experience (Stein and Ramaseshan, 2016; Tynan, et al., 2014) When the customers perceive that their customer experience, specifically related to their interaction with the company and service providers are positive the customers are more likely to be engaged with the service, hence it produces positive outcomes for the firm such as customer engagement behavior (Yi and Gong, 2009; Yim, et al., 2008; Coelho, et al., 2018) In each of the previous studies, the concept of customer engagement behavior was synthesized from many perspectives The term was stub, and scholars and practitioners alike lacked understanding of the ways in which customer engagement contributes to value co-creation In 2014, a study by Jaakola and Alexander marked the first attempt to conceptualize the role of customer engagement behavior (CEB) in co-creation value in a service system Research has identified four types of customer engagement behaviors that offer important potential for future research The four dimensions of customer engagement behavior are: Augmenting behavior; Co-developing behavior; Influencing behavior; Mobilizing behavior Research suggests that understanding the motivations for these types of engagement behaviors 52 will be essential for companies looking to benefit from voluntary customer contributions 2.5.3 Relationship between Customer experience (EX) and engagement behavior (EG) The importance of the experience construct in terms of customer and brand engagement has been highlighted by engagement research linked to consumption in general and brands in particular According to Hollebeek (2011), "engagement" is personal, context-dependent, and the result of a subject-object interaction (i.e., the outcome is based on a particular customer experience) Customers are engaged “by way of immersive co-creative consumer interactions with a focal agent/object (e.g., a brand) in focal service relationships,” according to (Brodie, et al., 2011) Customers' immersive situation-specific interactions in the service relationship are thus critical to the evolution of the service relationship in general and of customer engagement in particular (Brodie, et al., 2011) Consumer brand engagement tends to be a multi-dimensional phenomenon that incorporates elements such as focus, conversation, interaction, feelings, sensorial enjoyment, and instant activation to create a complete brand experience for customers (Gambetti, Graffigna, and Biraghi, 2012) In “a complex, iterative process within service relationships,” engagement and experience coexist (Brodie, et al., 2011) The relationship between different modes of engagement and experience leads to the inference that communication is likely to be unstable across contexts and cannot be explained conclusively (Bijmolt, et al., 2010; Fehrer, Woratschek and Germelmann, 2014; Kumar, et al., 2010; Van Doorn, et al., 2010; Rather, et al., 2020; MohdRamly and Omar, 2017) Furthermore, in the review of theories and previous studies related to the two concepts "customer experience" and "customer engagement behavior" in section 2.1 and section 2.2, evidence shows that customer experience is the antecedent of customer engagement behavior, and conversely customer engagement behavior is the consequence of customer experience Therefore, this study proposes that Customer experience directly affects customer engagement behavior Accordingly, a hypothesis was proposed as follows: 53 H1 - Customer experience has a positive impact on customer engagement behavior 2.5.4 Mediating role of Customer-firm identification (FI) and employee identification (EI) Customer-company identification is an affective and sociological foundation that is critical to developing an enduring relationship between the company and the customer (Homburg, et al., 2009; Kang, et al., 2015) Conceptually, customer identification consists of cognitive and affective components (Wolter and Cronin, 2016) Accordingly, the cognitive component of customer identification represents a cognitive connection between the definition of the company and the definition a person applies for themselves as reflected by self-categorization and conceptual overlap (Bergami and Bagozzi, 2000) Whereas the affective component of customer identification refers to a positive emotional connection between the identity of an organization and the evaluation a customer applies to themselves as reflected by positive self-conscious emotions (Wolter and Cronin, 2016) Previous studies have found that customer experience leads to customer identification with the company, such that when customers experience positive cognitive and emotional interaction with the service providers as well as with the other consumers, they will be more likely to identify themselves with the company (Ahearne, et al., 2005; Hong and Yang, 2009; Karaosmanoglu, et al., 2011) The explaining rationale is that when the company is evaluated positively by the consumers, an identification with the company will provide customers with an opportunity to satisfy their self-defining needs via the company’s displaying features such their image, perceived characteristics of the company (Chan, et al., 2017; Ahearne, et al., 2005; Keh and Xie, 2009) Additionally, the interaction between service providers and customers is also an important component of customer experience (Chan, et al., 2017; Stein and Ramaseshan, 2016) Customers often base their impression on the company on their interaction with the service providers (Hartine and Ferrel, 1996; Solnet, 2006) Furthermore, customer experience that is formed through positive cognitive evaluation and emotional bonds with the service providers will also increase their 54 value associated with the relationship between customers and the service providers and hence will potentially increase customers’ identification with the service providers (Ashforth, et al., 2016; Chan, et al., 2017) Despite being closely related, researchers suggest that customers evaluate the service providers and the companies separately (Guenzi and Pelloni, 2004; Ngo, et al., 2020) Subsequently, previous studies demonstrate that customers’ identification with the company and the service providers represent a distinct construct that may lead to different outcomes (Chan, et al., 2017; Yim, et al., 2008) Consistently, as customers’ interaction with the service providers is an important aspect of customer-experience within the service industry, we will examine both constructs separately (Chan, et al., 2017; Stein and Ramaseshan., 2016) Previous studies show that customers’ identification with the company and the employee will motivate customers to perform a behavior that supports the company beyond the transactions, that often named as customer engagement behavior Kang, et al., 2015; Jaakola and Alexander, 2014; Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003; Chan, et al., 2017) Customer engagement itself is defined as a psychological process in which customers’ mind is fully absorbed by a specific context, characterized by a particular level of cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity within an interaction (Thakur, 2016; Bowden, 2009) In other words, customer engagement behavior represents customers’ behaviors that go beyond the customers’ role within a service provision and behave according to their initiative and motivation toward the company (Roy, et al., 2018; Cheung, et al., 2020) There are various forms of customer-engagement behavior such as customer involvement in positive word-of-mouth about the company, customers’ action in helping the company as well as other customers, product improvement suggestion, recruiting other customers, and proactive communication of anticipated problems (Jaakola and Alexander, 2014; Pansari and Kumar, 2016) For example, customers contribute various resources toward the company and its offerings that eventually improve the value for customers (Jaakola and Alexander, 2014; Pansari and Kumar, 2016) In sum, customer-engagement behavior provides companies with a pool of 55 customers who are not merely transactional and hence, it is an essential source of competitive advantage for the company (Roy, et al., 2018) Research has found that several factors may enhance or inhibit customer propensity to engage with the service, one of them is the contextual factors of services (Patterson, et al., 2006; Fernandes and Esteves, 2006) For example, customers are more likely and more desire to engage with the service when services involving high-involvement service, interaction-based services, low-availability and high switching cost (Fernandes and Esteves, 2006; Bolton and Saxena-Iyer, 2009) Consistently, customer identification with the context is also considered as one of the most important factors that enhance customers’ engagement (Coelho, et al., 2018; Ahearne, et al., 2005) For example, studies on brand identification found that customer’s identification with the brand leads to customer engagement with the brand (Coelho, et al., 2018; Stephenson and Yerger, 2014) In sum, the interaction between the customer and the company as well as the service providers are considered as the elements of customer experience (Stein and Ramaseshan, 2016; Tynan, et al., 2014) When the customers perceive that their customer experience, specifically related to their interaction with the company and service providers are positive the customers are more likely to be engaged with the service Hence it produces positive outcomes for the company such as customer engagement behavior (Yi and Gong, 2009; Yim, et al., 2008; Coelho, et al., 2018) Therefore, this study proposes that the effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior is mediated by an increased customer-employee identification and customer-company identification, which in turn leads to customer engagement behavior Accordingly, a set of hypotheses were proposed as follow: H2 - Customer experience increases customer-engagement behavior, mediated by customer-employee identification H2a - Customer experience has a positive impact on customer-employee identification H2b - Customer-employee identification has a positive impact on customer engagement behavior 56 H3 - Customer experience increases customer-engagement behavior, mediated by customer-firm identification H3a - Customer experience has a positive impact on customer-firm identification H3b - Customer-firm identification has a positive impact on customer engagement behavior 2.5.5 Moderating role of Customer epistemic motivation (EM) Before exploring the moderating role of customer epistemic motivation, research needs to understand its concept Epistemic motivation is defined as the tendency that an individual wants to have in-depth knowledge of a subject, information processing process, or a comprehensive understanding of a related field (Kruglanski, 2012; Nijstad and De Dreu, 2012) Epistemic motivation is a propensity to deeply understand an experience (DeBacker, et al., 2008) When someone concentrates on searching or guessing information, their epistemic motivation is high (Kruglanski and Webster, 1996; Kruglanski, et al., 2010) Epistemic motivation is a tendency to be concerned with expressing the feelings of others, paying attention to internal emotions and to the gestures of the person they are communicating with (Wang Ze, et al., 2017) For example, an employee is late for a meeting, if that employee has high cognitive motivation, they often pay close attention to the chairman's attitude, gestures, and behavior in order to have a plan to handle the situation Epistemic motivation is important to understand what personal aspects of customers that influence their responses toward companies’ offerings and touch points (Heninonen, et al., 2010; Heinonen and Strandvik, 2015) Early studies have proved the role of personal factors such as extraversion personality, conscientiousness and openness on customer experience (Marbach, et al., 2016; Mann and Rawat, 2016) Individual aspect related to individual cognitive framework was considered as motivation (Singer and Salovey, 1991; D'Andrade, 1992) Together with individual’s motivation, customer epistemic motivation was also mentioned when examinning one’s current situation (Cote and Hideg, 2011; Wang Ze, et al., 2017) Early studies have found the moderating influence of 57 individual’s epistemic motivation on the way they respond toward a specific social cue (Van Kleef, et al., 2009; Wang Ze, et al., 2017) Further, as customer experience is subjective, previous studies have revealed the role of personal factors on customer experience (Marbach, et al., 2016; Mann and Rawat, 2016) For example, a study by Mann and Rawat (2016) demonstrates that extraversion personality, conscientiousness and openness influence how customers develop their customer experiences In addition, as customer experience is not produced by the companies but is formed, it is important to understand what personal aspects of customers that influence their responses toward companies’ offerings and touch points (Heinonen and Strandvik, 2015; Heninonen, et al., 2010) Built upon Customer Dominant Logic, this study will focus an individual aspect that is related to individual cognitive framework, that is motivation (D'Andrade, 1992; Singer and Salovey, 1996) Specifically, this study will focus on customer epistemic motivation, individual’s motivation to develop a rich and accurate understanding of one’s current situation (Wang Ze, et al., 2017; Cote and Hideg, 2011) Previous studies have found the moderating influence of individual’s epistemic motivation on the way they respond toward a specific social cue (Wang Ze, et al., 2017; Van Kleef, et al., 2009) Specifically, individuals with high epistemic motivation are more likely to use and rely on their cognitive appraisal and discount the affective reactions as irrelevant (Wang Ze, et al., 2017; Greifeneder, et al., 2011) Van Kleef, et al., (2009) found that a person with high epistemic motivation is strongly influenced by inference from their perceptions, while a person with low epistemic motivation is more affected by their feelings, in other words, low epistemic motivation lead to their behavior based on emotions, whereas high epistemic motivation individuals have less faith in their emotional state, but instead rely on other sources to guide their behavior, which is provided by expression of the person they are interacting with As customer experience comprises of multisensory responses such as spiritual, sensorial, physical, rational and emotional evaluations of the service touch points (Gentile, et al., 2007; Klaus and Maklan, 2012; Wang Ze, et al., 2017), it is 58 assumed that customer epistemic motivation moderate the relationship between customer experience and customer engagemant behavior In other words, individual’s tendency to use only cognitive assessment will provide incomplete response to form customer experience toward service offerings This article will focus on customers’ personal-characteristic, that is their motivation to process cues related to the services (Wang Ze, et al., 2017; Van Kleef, et al., 2009) Literature suggests that people have different motivation in processing information that influence their information processing types that they use: such as quick and effortless or deliberate and effortful (Kleef De Dreu and Manstead, 2004) Individual’s motivation to develop a rich and accurate understanding of one’s current situation is often termed as individuals’ epistemic motivation (Wang Ze, et al., 2017; Cote and Hideg, 2011) When customers’ epistemic motivation is high, customers are more likely to process information related to their experience with the service deliberately, focus on diagnostic information, and use systematic information processing (De Dreu and Carnevale, 2003) Consequently, previous studies found that people who are high in epistemic motivation tend to accentuate the importance of cognitive appraisals and subsequently discount the influence of affective reactions (Van Kleef, et al., 2009; Wang Ze, et al., 2017) Besides, a study by Van Kleef and colleagues (2004) reveals that individuals with high epistemic motivation tend to focus and process task-related information and discount the irrelevant information As emotion is an essential element for customer-experience, identification with the company as well as with employees, the study propose that customer epistemic motivation will negatively moderate the relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behavior (Rose, et al., 2012; Wolter and Cronin, 2016) Such that, customer experience comprises of multisensory responses - such as spiritual, sensorial, physical, rational and emotional evaluations of the service touchpoints - discounting the affective response on customer experience evaluation might attenuate the effect of customer experience on customer engagement behavior (Gentile, Spiller and Noci, 2007; Klaus and Maklan, 2012; Wang Ze, et al., 2017) Similarly, customers’ identification with the companies is 59 also affected by the positive emotion of the customers toward the companies, hence the likelihood for identifying themselves with the company and the employees will reduce when the affective evaluation is discounted (Wolter and Cronin, 2016) In other words, individual’s tendency to use only cognitive assessment will provide incomplete response to form customer experience toward service offerings According to Kruglanski, (2012) and Nijstad and De Dreu (2012), epistemic motivation occurs only in information processing, and it is an important antecedence in information sharing Thus, in the context of this research, during service experience, if customers have high epistemic motivation, their behavior is based on their perception, they care deeply about the touch points in the service experience Formally, a set of hypotheses were proposed as follow: H4 - Customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the direct effects of customer experience on customer engagement behavior H4a – Customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the direct effects of customer experience on Customer- emplyee identification H4b– Customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the indirect effects of customer experience on customer-engagement behavior, such that the effect of customer experience on Customer- employee identification and decreases when the customer epistemic motivation increases and subsequently decreases the customer engagement behavior H4c - Customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the indirect effects of customer experience on Customer-firm identification H4d - Customer epistemic motivation negatively moderates the indirect effects of customer experience on customer-engagement behavior, such that the effect of customer experience on Customer-firm identification and decreases when the customer epistemic motivation increases and subsequently decreases the customer engagement behavior 2.5.6 Controlled variables According to Martyn Shuttleworth (2008), controlled variables are usually far more important than the dependent or independent variables, but sometimes researchers 60 overlook them ‘‘Control’’ means to hold constant, and a variable is controlled when its influence on the other variables in the model is held constant (Klass, McClendon, and Gainey, 2002) The control variables show how well they explain the variation of the dependent variable The control variable can be qualitative or quantitative, but is usually qualitative Common controlled variables are variables about demographic variables such as race, education, age, and income (Deshwal, 2016) The research further included three items of controlled variables to capture the impact of gender, age, education To examine whether these control variables determined the customer engagement behavior, three of hypotheses were proposed as follow: H5 – Customer engagement behavior is controlled by demographic variables H5a - Customer-engagement behavior is controlled by age H5b - Customer-engagement behavior is controlled by education level H5c - Customer-engagement behavior is controlled by income 61 CHAPTER - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Based on literature review are presented in the previous chapter, this chapter will continue to present the research framework and research design It focuses on research process with two methods of quantitative research and qualitative research and develops the measurement scale It describes the way how to test the hypotheses of research model and analyze data collected from the survey 3.1 Research framework and hypotheses The research framework has been built upon the Social identity theory, Customer-Dominant Logic and Need for cognition This research proposes that customer experience will produce identification with the company and service employees that lead to customer engagement behavior Besides, this research proposes that this mediated relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behavior is moderated by customer epistemic motivation There are determinants, of which determinants are second-order constructs (customer experience and customer engagement behavior), and main points in proposing relationships in the research model are presented in detail as follows (1) Direct relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behavior (2) Indirect relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behavior through customer-firm identification (3) Indirect relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behavior through customer-firm identification with moderating role of customer epistemic motivation (4) Indirect relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behavior through customer-employee identification (5) Indirect relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behavior through customer-employee identification with moderating role of customer epistemic motivation And the proposed research model is shown in Figure 3.1