The Effect Of Customer Participation On Consumer Well-being

In the report of the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed to continuously enhance the feelings of gain,well-being and security of the people,and to make the people's feelings of gain,well-being and security more fulfilling,more secure and more continued.The juxtaposition of feelings of gain,well-being and security reflects the party's deep-rooted understanding of the real needs of the Chinese people,the purpose of reform and development,and the destination in the great practice of building socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.The purpose of the promotion of feelings of gain and security is to enhance the well-being of the broad masses of the Chinese people.Nowadays,in the current economic structure of countries around the world,the dominant position of the service economy has become more and more obvious.As an important part of the daily life of the masses,service consumption behavior occupies a very important position in the process of the formation and promotion of individual well-being.According to the 2018 National Social and Economic Development Report,the proportion of China's service industry has reached a new high record(52.2%).This trend shows that the influence of service organizations and service companies on consumers' daily lives is gradually increasing.In the current process of service industry development,more and more companies have adopted customer participation strategies.Customer participation refers to the level of customer involvement in the process of service production and service delivery,such as customer self-service,customer participation in service design and production.It is not only widely implemented in industry practice,but also attracts a lot of research attention in the academic community at home and abroad.Extant research shows that customer participation can not only bring positive service outcomes(better customer relationship,higher production efficiency,lower production cost,etc.)but also bring positive psychological gains(pleasure,the feeling of control and accomplishment,etc.)to customers.Based on the literature review and industry observations,this paper found that the research attention focusing on the effects of customer participation on positive psychological benefits from the academic community is very limited.Especially,research focusing on consumer well-being and quality of life is even scarcer.The purpose of this paper is to fill in the existing research gaps and theoretical deficiencies in this research field and to enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanism between customer participation and consumer well-being.Through the theoretical perspectives of service-dominant logic,value co-creation framework,and self-determination theory,this paper developed a research model on customer participation and consumer well-being by integrating theoretical insights in the fields of personality psychology,social psychology and consumer behavior.In this research model,customer participation is set as the independent variable,consumer well-being is set as the dependent variable,and service quality,customer satisfaction,and psychological ownership are set as mediator variables.In addition,the research model also assumes the moderating role of service locus of control(internal,powerful others and luck service locus of control)and consumer involvement.Overall,the research model contains 15 hypotheses,of which 4 are direct effects(main effects),4 are mediating effects,and 7 are moderating mediating effects.Using a mixed research design,two studies were conducted in this paper: an exploratory study(Study 1)and the main experimental study(Study 2).The travel agency service was selected as the research context for the current study.Study 1 conducted qualitative research(focus-group discussion,in-depth interview,etc.),preliminary experiment and pre-test.Through in-depth interviews with tourists and in-depth interviews with travel agency staff,the results of qualitative research indicate that customer participation has a positive impact on service quality,customer satisfaction,psychological ownership and consumer well-being.Moreover,service quality,customer satisfaction and psychological ownership have positive effects on consumer well-being in varying degrees.In addition,the results of qualitative research indicate that service locus of control and consumer involvement may have varying degrees of moderating effects on the above relationships.On the basis of qualitative research,Study 1 also developed the experimental scenarios for Study 2 and conducted a preliminary experiment.The preliminary experiment is mainly used to test the realism of the experimental scenarios and the manipulation of the experimental variable.In addition,the measurements used in the main experiment were pre-tested to ensure their reliability and validity.Study 1 verified some of the hypotheses of this paper to a certain extent and laid the foundation for further research.Study 2 is a scenario-based between-group experiment.Actual tourists from the Chinese tourism market were selected as the participants.This paper used the online survey experiment to complete the collection of research data.A total of 322 tourists participated in the experiment.During the course of the experiment,subjects were randomly assigned to two experimental groups(high-level customer participation and low-level customer participation)to complete the experimental stimulus and answer questions such as manipulation check,measurements and demographic characteristics.After that,this paper uses the confirmatory factor analysis to test the measurement model of the main experiment.The results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicate that the measurements used in Study 2 have satisfactory reliability and validity.The results of the hypothesis testing indicate that customer participation has significant positive effects on service quality,customer satisfaction,psychological ownership,and consumer well-being.Customer satisfaction mediates the relationship between customer participation and consumer well-being;service quality does not directly delivery the positive impact of customer participation to consumer well-being but via customer satisfaction;psychological ownership is not a significant mediating variable.In terms of moderating mediation effects,Study 2 found that internal service locus of control(positively),powerful others and luck service locus of control(negatively)moderate the indirect effects of customer participation on consumer well-being via customer satisfaction.Consumer involvement significantly moderates the indirect effect of customer participation on consumer well-being through psychological ownership.Further interpretation of the analysis results shows that the service locus of control moderates the indirect effect of customer participation on consumer well-being through service quality and customer satisfaction;consumer involvement is the theoretical boundary of the mediating role of psychological ownership.Therefore,Study 2 supports 10 hypotheses proposed in this paper,three hypotheses are partially supported and two are not supported.Through a qualitative study and an experimental study,this paper empirically tested the moderating mediation model of customer participation and consumer well-being.The research conclusions of this paper mainly have three aspects: With regard to the direct effects,this research finds that the higher the level of customer participation in the tourism service,the stronger the consumer well-being perception,the higher the evaluation of service quality and customer satisfaction,the more obvious psychological ownership perceptions they generate.Considering the indirect effects,as the level of customer participation increases,the customer's satisfaction with the travel service increases,this in turn enhance consumer well-being perceptions.However,service quality does not directly delivery the positive impact of customer participation on consumer well-being but via customer satisfaction.Considering the conditional indirect effects,this study finds that the more obvious the customer's internal service locus of control,the stronger the positive impact of customer participation on customer well-being through service quality and customer satisfaction;the more obvious the customer's powerful others service locus of control,the weaker positive impact of customer participation on customer well-being through service quality and customer satisfaction;the more obvious the customer's luck service locus of control,the weaker the positive impact of customer participation on customer well-being via customer satisfaction.In terms of the moderating role of consumer involvement,when consumers have high involvement in travel services,customer participation enhances consumer well-being perception by enhancing psychological ownership;but when consumer involvement is low,psychological ownership does not play a mediating role between customer participation and consumer well-being.The theoretical innovation and contribution of this paper can be summarized in the following four aspects.First of all,this paper explores the relationship between customer participation and consumer well-being in the context of travel agency services for the first time.Secondly,driven by multidisciplinary theories,this paper constructs a more comprehensive and systematic theoretical model of customer participation and consumer well-being,which enhances our understanding of the underlying mechanism and theoretical boundaries between them.Thirdly,this paper uses a mixed research design to empirically test our research model and obtained more detailed and specific research conclusions.For example,customer participation is an antecedent variable of consumer well-being.Customer satisfaction plays a robust mediating role between them,and the mediating role of psychological ownership depends on consumer involvement.Finally,the research conclusions of this paper promote the further integration of the customer participation literature and consumer well-being research field and provide more diversified research directions and research ideas for future service-oriented logic,value creation,social marketing,and macro-marketing research.The conclusions of this paper also provide marketing implications and practical guideline for the successful implementation of customer participation strategy in tourism enterprises and service enterprises in the future.First of all,focusing and investigating on consumer well-being in this paper will help service companies break through the traditional marketing insights and set consumer well-being enhancing as an important organizational goal to implement customer participation strategy and marketing practices in the future.In addition,appealing service companies to focus on positive social outcomes(such as consumer well-being,quality of life perception,etc.)in their marketing practice is not only beneficial to the development of the company itself,but also to the realization of the vision of a better life through enhancing the well-being of Chinese people proposed by General Secretary Xi Jinping.Secondly,the research conclusions of this paper once again emphasize the importance of service quality and customer satisfaction in the service marketing practice.As an important indicator of service operation and service marketing,service quality and customer satisfaction also play an important role in the successful implementation of customer participation strategies and consumer well-being.Thirdly,the moderating role of the service locus of control and consumer involvement also provides a theoretical basis for service companies to ensure the successful implementation of the customer participation strategy through the market segmentation strategy in the future.