Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Value underlies the notion of marketing, yet it has not received as much attention in marketing literature as it demands. The importance of value co-creation and co-production has confirmed the importance of the active role customers play in value creation. Customers use functional and emotional benefits to guide their interactions with suppliers, which stem from value perceptions. To attract customers to engage in co-production, suppliers offer certain benefits via their value propositions, requiring suppliers to have a thorough understanding of these benefits to incorporate them into their co-production interactions. This study sets out to develop a scale to measure the benefits customers seek from their co-production interactions with suppliers in the travel planning context, because of the inherent nature of interaction, customisation and active customer participation in the ‘production’ of a trip. To develop a reliable and valid instrument to measure the benefits of co-production, Churchill’s (1979) scale development paradigm was followed in the present research design. Exploratory research in the form of a literature review, insight-stimulating examples, and in-depth interviews with tourism suppliers and travel customers were undertaken to specify the domain, define the construct, identify the dimensions, and generate a pool of 323 items, which was refined in two purification phases. Initially 10 benefit dimensions were proposed: customisation, convenience, confidence, expertise, enjoyment, exploration, financial, support, social and symbolic benefits. The pool of 323 items was subjected to expert judging, resulting in a 64-item scale measuring the 10 benefit dimensions. The questionnaire was formatted into an online survey to collect a convenience sample of 269 responses. The results of an exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach alpha estimates reduced this conceptualisation to 32 items measuring six dimensions: convenience, customisation, expertise, psychological, financial, and support benefits. The revised scale was used in a second purification phase to collect a judgement sample of 565 responses. A confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach alpha estimates were used to reduce the scale to 19 items, measuring three benefit dimensions: functional, financial, and psychological benefits. The final scale exhibited an acceptable model fit, and showed strong evidence of reliability and validity, therefore achieving the objective of the study. The study concludes with a reliable and valid instrument for academics and practitioners to measure the benefits of co-production in the tourism industry. The scale provides academics with empirical insight into the gap between conditions prior to customer participation and active customer participation in co-production. The scale enables travel agents to identify deficiencies in their co-production processes, and to evaluate the extent to which customer benefits are met. Once travel agents are aware of these benefits they can be integrated into their values propositions and co-production interactions.
Author: Aimee Taljaard
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2150520840