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CREATING CUSTOMER VALUE IN THE CONTEXT OF SERVICE BUNDLES ABSTRACT Work In Progress Following Holbrook’s axiological typology of customer value service quality is supposed to contribute to the formation of customer value. Yet, to better understand the antecedents of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty it is claimed to make major refinements of traditional and classical consumer behaviour models. A revised preference model for complex services is proposed and illustrated by the example of a holiday trip. Revisions and adaptations are suggested in order to integrate already known but so far disconnected issues. The marketing and research perspective has to turn its focus from attribute or benefit bundles to the consumption experience. This issue emphasises the means-end relationship inherent in any consumption activity. Buying and consumption processes are always accompanied by trade-off evaluations between benefits sought and disadvantages avoided. Neither service quality models nor perceived risk models capture this aspect adequately. Finally, it is argued that the product conceptualisation is to be extended by situational factors and the customer participation which both are constitutional elements in the process of service production/consumption. Keywords: service bundles, customer participation, service quality, customer value, tourism products. 2885
INTRODUCTION Whether services are rendered in the presence or the absence of an object or subject, they offer a bundle of benefits to the customer like products do (Enis and Roering 1981; Lovelock 1981). The distinction between goods and services has been discussed for decades (Judd 1968; Blois 1974; Bateson 1977; Shostack 1979), though the key criteria intangibility, inseparability, and variability (Kotler 1980) have not entered the grand consumer behaviour models (e.g. Howard and Sheth 1969; Engel, Kollat and Miniard 1993) appropriately. Hence, it is claimed that consumer behaviour models focusing on the evaluation of alternatives and on post-choice evaluation have to be adapted whenever service components do not play but a negligible role. This will be illustrated by an example of the tourism industry where often bundles of tangible and intangible products are marketed and consumed simultaneously. Holiday or business trips similar to e.g. car maintenance services, financial services or dental services represent service bundles which vary in their degree of complexity. Various dimensions of product complexity can be differentiated (Güthoff 1995) and are influential in pre- and post-choice evaluation processes. The holiday preference (and satisfaction) model proposed in this paper tries to integrate three issues that have been considered separately in the literature so far. 1. Products and services “potentially provide value-creating consumption experiences.” (Holbrook 1994, p. 21). Quality concepts based on expected and delivered attribute levels are only one dimension of the value realm. This perspective is supported by the means-end chain theory (Gutman 1982). 2. The buying and consumption decisions are always trade-offs between benefits and disadvantages (Gutman and Reynolds 1983, p. 40). This claim is based on the underlying exchange process between two agents who both, give up something of value for obtaining something else of value (Kotler 1991). 3. The social and physical context of this exchange process shall be incorporated in the conceptualisation of products and services (Berry 1981; Lovelock 1981; Grove and Fisk 1983). According to the experiential nature of services it is important to marketing managers how customer participation (Kellogg et al. 1997; Bitner et al. 1997) and atmospherics (Kotler 1973; Bitner 1992) impact customer satisfaction. These issues will be discussed in more detail before illustrating the proposed model. COMPLEX SERVICES AND CUSTOMER ROLES Tourism products are predominantly complex product (and service) bundles. Customers are forced sometimes to choose among a limited number of entirely pre-packaged tourism products and are sometimes completely free to make individual arrangements. In some instances they will decide upon product details far in advance, in other situations they postpone the final decision making until the immediate consumption. In general, various aspects of the degree and 2886
Page 1: Theme: Theory & Practice CREATING C
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Page 13 and 14: Kotler, P. (1973), Atmospherics as

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