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The Effect of Customer Participation Behavior and Citizenship Behavior on Service Quality Perception and Repurchase Intention

Han, Sangrin, Yoo, Jaewon, Kong, Taesik

Hanyang University
Hanyang University
Hanyang University

Published: January 2004 · Vol. 33, No. 2 · pp. 473-502
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Abstract

There is a growing concern about the performance of organization and the ways to increase its productivity (Mills and Morris, 1986). As a way of improving competitiveness of service organization, researchers have been increasingly interested in the customer behavior. Furthermore, recent researches on viewing service customers as partial  employees have enabled marketing area to adopt human resource management and organizational behavior principle into service customer study through interdisciplinary approach (Rodie and Kleine, 2000). Relevant service marketing researches have been conducted with two directions. One is customer participation research which applied employee in-role behavior into customer viewpoint (Cermak et al., 1994; Kellogg and Youngdahl, and Bowen, 1997; Ennew and Binks, 1999), the other is customer citizenship behavior research which adopt employee extra-role or organization citizenship behavior (OCB) in view of service customer (Bettencourt, 1997; Groth, 2001; Yoon and Suh, 2003). However, despite conceptual awareness of the role of customer behavior in contributing to service quality perception and repurchasing intention, there has been little empirical research on the antecedents of key customer behaviors. A few investigations examined distinctiveness of customer participation behavior(CPB) and citizenship behavior by suggesting different antecedents of customer behavior empirically. 2. Research Hypotheses Nine research hypotheses were dereloped as follows. Hypothesis 1: Self-efficacy is positively related to CPB. Hypothesis 2: Customer socialization is positively related to CPB. Hypothesis 3: Justice perception is positively related to CCB. Hypothesis 4: Customer commitment is positively related to CCB. Hypothesis 5: CPB is positively related to perceived service quality. Hypothesis 6: CCB is positively related to perceived service quality. Hypothesis 7: CPB is positively related to repurchasing intentions. Hypothesis 8: CCB is positively related to repurchasing intentions. Hypothesis 9: Perceived service quality is positively related to repurchasing intention. 3. Results and Discussion Our study provided the evidence of the distinctiveness of customer participation and citizenship behavior, as the prior research (Motowidlo and Van Scotter, 1994; Groth, 2001) did. Especially, CCB appears to have a stronger effect on perceived service quality (parameter estimate: .540, t-value: 2.901) and repurchasing intention (parameter estimate: .485, t-value: 3.071), indicating that CCB plays a key role in affecting service organization performance. This pattern of results implies that service organization should distinguish between CPB and citizenship behavior, and focus more on CCB. In terms of the antecedents of CPB, self-efficacy and customer socialization were significantly related to CPB. Two potential antecedents of CCB were explored in this study: justice perception, and customer commitment. Consistent with the prior research (e.g., Moorman, 1991; Organ, 1990; O'Reilly and Chatman, 1986), affect was related to CCB. Finally, as we hypothesized, the relationship between perceived service quality and repurchasing intention was statistically significant. This study contributes to the marketing literature in several ways. First, the pattern of antecedents and consequences provides robust support for the distinctiveness of customer participation and citizenship behavior. This pattern also suggests service organizations should manage customer behavior differently. Second, our results provide strong theoretical and empirical support for the conceptualization of service customer by adopting human resource study, for example, organization citizenship behavior, organization commitment, organization socialization. Third, the findings suggest customer behavior has positive effect on service quality perception and repurchasing intention which means organizational performance. Understanding how customer perceived service quality and repurchasing intention relate to these types of consumer behaviors would be a valuable contribution to the literature. Furthermore, the results also suggest that CCB may be a better predictor of consumer perceived service quality and repurchasing intention than CPB.
Keywords: customer citizenship behaviorcustomer participationperceived service qualityrepurchasing intention