None of the Glory: The Implications of Customer Attributions of Credit in Successful Co-Productive Service Experiences

Abstract

Up to sixty-five percent of satisfied customers have been found to abandon their current service provider and switch to a competing service provider (Reichheld 1996). This finding is troubling considering the widely held belief that satisfied customers are inclined to be loyal customers (Fornell 1992), where they are more likely to make purchases from, spread positive word of mouth about, and have difficulty leaving their service provider (Reichheld and Sasser, Jr. 1990). One possible explanation for this change in the behavior of satisfied customers is the change in the nature of the relationship between customers and their service providers. Traditionally, the relationship between a service provider and their customers was one where the service provider was viewed as responsible for producing the service and the customer was viewed as responsible for simply consuming the service (Vargo and Lusch 2004).