Abstract
Based on the Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) initiative, which aims to bring together work from different fields and to develop the competences required in this service-led economy, this doctoral thesis develops and empirically tests a conceptual framework that models consumer acceptance of technology-based services in retailing by conceptualizing and approaching technology acceptance at the service system level. The proposed conceptual model uses attitudinal measures as approximation of consumer acceptance and includes the notion of technology contact (TC) as a service design characteristic that classifies technology-based services according to the level of customer-technology interaction they require, as antecedent of consumer acceptance. Moreover, consumer attitude towards the retail service concept -the general service idea to be supported by technology- is hypothesized as the second main antecedent of consumer acceptance. Finally, perceived system characterist ...
Based on the Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) initiative, which aims to bring together work from different fields and to develop the competences required in this service-led economy, this doctoral thesis develops and empirically tests a conceptual framework that models consumer acceptance of technology-based services in retailing by conceptualizing and approaching technology acceptance at the service system level. The proposed conceptual model uses attitudinal measures as approximation of consumer acceptance and includes the notion of technology contact (TC) as a service design characteristic that classifies technology-based services according to the level of customer-technology interaction they require, as antecedent of consumer acceptance. Moreover, consumer attitude towards the retail service concept -the general service idea to be supported by technology- is hypothesized as the second main antecedent of consumer acceptance. Finally, perceived system characteristics, individual traits and situational factors as well as their interaction with the concept of service technology contact are hypothesized to affect consumer acceptance of technology-based services. This thesis is based on an initial exploratory study and three empirical studies. Firstly, the initial exploratory study was conducted in order to generate and evaluate innovative technology-based service scenarios that they would be examined later as exemplar focus applications in the empirical studies. The outcome of this process was the selection of six technology-based service concepts. The first empirical study is based on a survey with a sample of 603 consumers in order to develop and identify the effect of technology readiness -an individual trait- on consumer attitude towards technology-based retail services with low and high technology contact. The second empirical study was motivated by the previous study and, by using an experimental design with the participation of 402 supermarket shoppers, has the purpose to investigate the direct effect of service technology contact on consumer attitude, by taking into account the moderating effects of individual traits and situational factors as well as the mediating effects of two variables from the technology acceptance model - performance expectancy and effort expectancy. Finally, the third empirical study was a survey based on a sample of 575 shoppers and it tested the effect of the attitude towards the retail service concept -defined as the general idea of the service independently of the technology used- on consumer acceptance of technology-based retail services using a scenario of an RFID-enabled dynamic pricing information service. Based on the multidisciplinary nature of the phenomenon of technology infusion into the service encounter, results of this thesis contribute to the literature in several ways. Therefore, the notion of e-services and e-commerce is extended by including also in-store technologies. Secondly, by proposing the concept of technology contact, technology-based services are classified according to their service design characteristics. The concept of technology contact is shown to be an antecedent of consumer acceptance and thus it is important when designing and evaluating consumer services.
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