Effect Of Customer Participation, Customer Empowerment And Consumer-Company Identification On Customer Extra-role Behavior

With the strengthening of the globalization tendancy and the intensifying ofcompetition in the service industry, customer and customer behavior have become thefocus concern of service enterprises. The service enterprises not only pay attention tocustomer participation behavior, but also show great interest to customer extra-rolebehavior. These two types of customer behavior are the key factors which can helpservice enterprises win competitive advantage. Excellent service enterprises alwaysmake good use of customer participation behavior, inspire continuously customerextra-role behavior and guide the customers to behave beneficially to the enterprises,so they can obtain a strong advantage in the fierce competition. This research is basedon the real situation of Chinese service enterprises, applies the role theory of usingcustomers as part-time employees, introduces the theories of customer empowermentand consumer-company identification, and discusses how to turn customer particationbehavior into customer extra-role behavior.Through the collection, induction and generalization of related documents, theresearch first defines the concepts of customer extra-role behavior, customerparticipation, customer empowerment and consumer-company identification. Itemphatically introduces the concept of customer extra-role behavior and other similarconcepts, points out the differences between customer extra-role behavior andcustomer citizenship behavior, puts forward the conceptual model of how customerparticipation, customer empowerment and consumer-company identification influencecustomer extra-role behavior. On basis of this, the research analyzes and reviewsrelated documents, conducts a qualitative study on the correlation between customerparticipation, customer empowerment, consumer-company identification andcustomer extra-role behavior, proposes a research hypothesis. Furthermore, theresearch, through depth interview and questionnaire survey, develops a measuringscale to evaluate customer extra-role behavior in Chinese service environment anddetermines the measurement dimensions for customer extra-role behavior.Then, itacquires research data through questionnaire survey, applies exploratory factoranalysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation analysis in the empiricalstudy of hypothesis relationship in order to verify research hypothesis. Finally, it draws a conclusion according to the research results and gives some practical advicesfor service enterprises on the basis of the real situation of service industry in China.According to the findings of the research, the paper combines theoretical analysiswith empirical study, analyses the data obtained through questionnaire survey byusing SPSS and AMOS statistical software, and verifies the proposed theoreticalmodel and related hypothesis. The conclusions are as follows: customer extra-rolebehavior is made up of customer helping, customer voice and customerrecommendations; customer participation and customer empowerment produce directpositive influence; customer participation affects consumer-company identificationpositively; customer empowerment has significant positive effect on the threeelements of customer extra-role behavior; cuonsumer-company identificationinfluences customer extra-role behavior greatly; customer participation affectscustomer extra-role behavior through customer-company identification and customerempowerment and is an important driving force for customer extra-role behavior.According to the results of the empirical study, the research puts forward severalsuggestions for service enterprises, which can be described as follows: subdividingcustomer role behavior; defining role expectation for customers; strengtheningpersonal interaction with customers; giving customers full and providing reward forcustomer exta-role behavior.The research adopts the method of combining standardized research andempirical research. By taking customer extra-role behavior as the core researchconstruct, the research reveals the transformation mechanism of turning customerparticipation into customer extra-role behavior. The research not only enriches anddeepens the theory of customer participation and customer extra-role behavior, butalso provides practical and theoretical reference for Chinese service enterprises tomake full use of customer resources and enhance competitive advantage.