The rise of smart consumers: role of smart servicescape and smart consumer experience co-creation

ABSTRACT

Rapid technological advancements have led to the emergence of smart services and smart consumers. This study focuses on smart consumers who voluntarily engage in value creation activities, in order to conceptualise smart experience co-creation (SEC) and the smart servicescape. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, a model is proposed and tested around the impacts of smart servicescape dimensions (aesthetics, superior functionality, social presence, perceived interactivity and perceived personalisation) on smart consumer experience co-creation. SEC is conceptualised as a second-order construct consisting of cognitive, hedonic, social/personal, and pragmatic/economic first-order dimensions. Results show that the technological environmental cues of the smart servicescape (S) collectively influence smart experience co-creation (O), and this co-created experience eventually influences consumers’ service brand equity and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions (R). A major novelty of this study lies in uncovering the relationship between experience co-creation and service brand equity. Findings have theoretical and managerial implications for smart services.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart services
• Internet of things
• servicescape
• experience
• co-creation
• brand equity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanjit K. Roy

Sanjit K. Roy is Associate Professor of Marketing at UWA Business School. He is a certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitator. He is an Associate Editor at European Journal of Marketing. His research interests include Marketing of Services, Impact of Technology on Marketing, and Transformative Service Research. He has published in journals including European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Management, Internet Research, Information Systems Frontiers, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Service Theory & Practice, and Computers in Human Behaviour among others. He also co-edited three case books published by Springer (1) Marketing Cases for Emerging Markets; (2) Services Marketing Cases in Emerging Markets – An Asian Perspective; and (3) Strategic Marketing Cases in Emerging Markets. He was awarded UWA’s Vice Chancellor’s Early Career Investigators Award 2015 and selected in UWA’s Emerging Research Leader programme in 2018.

Gaganpreet Singh

Gaganpreet Singh is Assistant Professor of Marketing at OP Jindal Global University, India. His research has featured/accepted in acknowledged marketing journals namely; Journal of Marketing Management, Australasian Marketing Journal, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, and Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management. He has extensively published case studies with Ivey Publishing and Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies. He has co-authored a book on primary case studies published by Pearson Education

Megan Hope

Megan Hope is an Analyst (Group Strategy and Development) at National Australia Bank. She has completed an Honours degree in Marketing. In her Honours thesis she investigated customer experience co-creation and its nomological network.

Bang Nguyen

Dr. Bang Nguyen, PhD, is Professor of Marketing at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management, University of Southern Denmark, Kolding, Denmark, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Shanghai University, in Shanghai, China. He is the Editor of The Bottom Line, a journal on the economics of information, and on the Editorial Board of Journal of Marketing Management. His research interests include customer relationship management (CRM), branding, entrepreneurship, BtB marketing, and innovation management.

Paul Harrigan

Paul Harrigan is an Associate Professor of Marketing at The University of Western Australia. Paul’s research in social media marketing has been published in over 30 international journal articles and presented at over 30 international conferences. His work has appeared in leadings journals like Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Tourism Management, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, and Marketing Intelligence and Planning, among others.