Die im Januar 2018 bereits online publizierten Paper des Lehrstuhls für Marketing und Innovation "How Consumers Assess Free E-Services: The Role of Benefit-Inflation and Cost-Deflation Effects." sowie "The Effect of A Service Provider's Competetive Market Position on Churn Among Flat-Rate Customers." werden im August in Band 21, Ausgabe 3 des Journal of Service Research (JSR) veröffentlicht. Das Journal of Service Research ist ein weltweit führendes Journal im Bereich Dienstleistungsmarketing und ist im VHB-Ranking als A-Journal eingestuft.
Die Beiträge im Einzelnen:
Hüttel, B., Schumann, J. H., Mende, M., Scott, M., & Wagner, C. (2018). How Consumers Assess Free E-Services: The Role of Benefit-Inflation and Cost-Deflation Effects. Journal of Service Research, 21 (3), 267-283. (VHB3: A)
Moser, S., Schumann, J. H., Von Wangenheim, F., Uhrich, F., & Frank, F. (2018). The Effect of a Service Provider’s Competitive Market Position on Churn Among Flat-Rate Customers. Journal of Service Research, 21 (3), 319-335. (VHB3: A)
Abstracts der Beiträge
"How Consumers Assess Free E-Services: The Role of Benefit-Inflation and Cost-Deflation Effects."
Despite the ubiquity of free e-services (e.g., free music/video streaming services), little empirical research has examined how consumers assess such service offerings. This research reveals the crucial role of consumer-perceived nonmonetary costs (NMCs; e.g., related to advertising intrusiveness) to better explain the zero-price effect (ZPE). Four experiments show that free e-services elicit positive affect in consumers, which leads to two distinct effects that drive the ZPE: a benefit-inflation effect, such that consumers overemphasize the benefits of free e-services, and a cost-deflation effect, such that they also judge the corresponding NMCs as lower. Furthermore, the authors find that the social norm of reciprocity increases consumers’ acceptance of NMCs. This research provides managerial guidance on how to better market free service offerings. Companies that consider providing basic and premium offerings should include a free basic option, which increases consumers’ benefit perceptions, lowers their perceptions of NMCs, and consequently increases demand for this service option. Finally, the findings help managers model the trade-off between immediate additional revenue generated by the fees consumers pay for a premium option and the revenue stream that a free basic option generates (e.g., through higher advertising revenues).
"The Effect of a Service Provider’s Competitive Market Position on Churn Among Flat-Rate Customers."
Flat-rate pricing, as opposed to charging customers for actual usage, dominates many serviceindustries (e.g., telecommunications, health clubs, and music streaming), and customers often express a flat-rate bias and choose flat rates even if a pay-per-use tariff would be less expensive for them. However, evidence of the effect of this bias on churn is mixed. The competitive market position of a service provider may represent a relevant contingency factor related to this effect; building on attribution theory, the current study predicts that customers attribute their flat-rate bias differently, depending on service providers’ strategic positioning, which leads to varying churn behavior. A survival analysis of approximately 2 years’ transactional data gathered from 21,490 customers of a premium Internet service provider affirms that a flat-rate bias leads to churn in the premium segment. Two experimental studies show that customers of premium service providers attribute their flat-rate bias more externally and exhibit lower fairness perceptions but increased churn intentions compared to low-cost customers who make internal attributions and who thus have less negative perceptions and lower churn intentions. Therefore, premium service managers must proactively manage customers who exhibit flat-rate biases to prevent their negative reactions. Low-cost providers generally have less need for such action and can benefit from flat rates without risking increased churn, despite higher price sensitivity of their customers.