TY - JOUR
T1 - Communal Service Delivery: How Customers Benefit From Participation in Firm-Hosted Virtual P3 Communities
AU - Dholakia, P.
AU - Blazevic, V.
AU - Wiertz, C.
AU - Algesheimer, R.
PY - 2009/1/1
Y1 - 2009/1/1
N2 - Firm-hosted virtual peer-to-peer problem solving (p3) communities offer a low-cost, credible, and effective means of delivering education and ongoing assistance services to customers of complex, frequently evolving products. Building upon the social constructivist view on learning and drawing from literature on the firm-customer relationship in services marketing, we distinguish between functional and social benefits received by p3 community participants and study the central role of learning in influencing these benefit perceptions. The proposed model is tested on data gathered from 2,299 active members of a p3 community hosted by a global online auction firm, and the framework’s generalizability is demonstrated using a sample of 204 members of a global business-to-business (b2b) software firm’s p3 community. Based on the results, specific recommendations are provided to marketers interested in implementing service support programs via customer communities, and future research opportunities are explored.
AB - Firm-hosted virtual peer-to-peer problem solving (p3) communities offer a low-cost, credible, and effective means of delivering education and ongoing assistance services to customers of complex, frequently evolving products. Building upon the social constructivist view on learning and drawing from literature on the firm-customer relationship in services marketing, we distinguish between functional and social benefits received by p3 community participants and study the central role of learning in influencing these benefit perceptions. The proposed model is tested on data gathered from 2,299 active members of a p3 community hosted by a global online auction firm, and the framework’s generalizability is demonstrated using a sample of 204 members of a global business-to-business (b2b) software firm’s p3 community. Based on the results, specific recommendations are provided to marketers interested in implementing service support programs via customer communities, and future research opportunities are explored.
U2 - 10.1177/1094670509338618
DO - 10.1177/1094670509338618
M3 - Article
SN - 1094-6705
VL - 12
SP - 208
EP - 226
JO - Journal of Service Research
JF - Journal of Service Research
IS - 2
ER -