دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله مطالعه مدیریت ارزش آفرینی در شرکت های خدمات گردشگری (نشریه الزویر ۲۰۱۵)

یک مطالعه اکتشافی برای مدیریت ارزش آفرینی در شرکت های خدمات گردشگری: درک مراحل خلق ارزش در فصل مشترک شرکت خدمات گردشگری و مشتریان آن

An exploratory study into managing value creation in tourism service firms: Understanding value creation phases at the intersection of the tourism service firm and their customers

Abstract

To satisfy customers, managers of tourism services need to understand their customers’ value requirements and then develop a unique service value offering based on those requirements. This understanding underpins their effort to provide superior value to customers and deliver the proposed services through employees. Problematically, previous work on value creation (i.e. customer value) has focused separately on either the firm or customer. This theoretical separation does not allow investigation of whether there may be discrepancies between what value firms offer and what value customers perceive they have received. We bring tourism service firms (manager and employee) and customers together and examine the nature of a tourism service provider’s value proposition, its contribution to the value offering, and subsequent impact on customers’ perceived-value-in-use. We focus on the important role that employees play as boundary spanning workers in the value creation phases, linking the tourism service provider and customer.

۱ Introduction

Delivering superior value to customers is a critical task for service firms in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Managers and academics place a high priority on how firms create and deliver value and how customers evaluate the value embedded within a service (Bowman & Ambrosini, 2000; Lepak, Smith, & Taylor, 2007; O’Cass & Ngo, 2011; Priem, Li, & Carr, 2012; Sparks, Bradley, & Jennings, 2011; Ulaga & Eggert, 2006). Value creation and delivery are especially important for tourism service providers (e.g., hotels, airlines, travel agents, theme parks), because many tourism market segments have reached saturation (Avci, Madanoglu, & Okumus, 2011; FitzPatrick, Davey, Muller, & Davey, 2013; Grissemann & Stokburger-Sauer, 2012) and tourists (here after we use the term customer to imply tourist) are becoming more demanding (Sanchez, Callarisa, Rodriguez, & Moliner, 2006).

Given the demonstrable need for firms to understand their customers’ value expectations, and manage the complexity of value creation as a multi-phase and multi-party concept, it is puzzling that the vast majority of research to-date in the broader management and marketing domain is either conceptual or possesses a single phase, single party perspective (i.e., the customer’s perspective or firm’s perspective in isolation) (e.g., DeSarbo, Jedidi, & Sinha, 2001; Helkkula, Kelleher, & Pihlstrom, 2012; Priem, 2007; € Sirmon, Hitt, & Ireland, 2007; Ulaga & Eggert, 2006). Particularly, in tourism research settings, scholarly attention given to value creation has focused heavily on the customers’ perspective (i.e., Dong & Siu, 2013; Gallarza & Saura, 2006; Sanchez et al., 2006; Siu, Zhang, Dong, & Kwan, 2013) which has resulted in a distinct lack of attention being given to the core theoretical development of ‘value creation’ set within the context of multi-phase and multi-party theory (c.f. comments by Bowman & Ambrosini, 2000; Lepak et al., 2007; Sok & O’Cass, 2011).

The singular focus on the customer side in tourism scholarship can lead to one-sided view about value creation. In many respects there may be discrepancies between the value tourism service providers propose (to offer their market) and believe they have offered, and what value customers perceive they receive. As such, we integrate the firm’s and customer’s perspectives to advance value creation theory in tourism settings (c.f. Sok & O’Cass, 2011). Drawing from Service Profit Chain Theory (Heskett, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1997), this study takes into account the role of employees in tourism service delivery, as well as their level of customer orientation within value creation settings.

Service Profit Chain research suggests that there are direct relationships between the firm’s profit, employee capability and customer satisfaction (Heskett et al., 1997). Service Profit Chain indicates that employee capability (i.e. to enact the firm’s value proposition) will generate customer satisfaction (i.e. customers’ perceived-value-in-use), which is a driver of the firm profitability. This view is consistent with the argument that in a competitive market, tourism service providers must demonstrate that they can translate strategy (i.e. their value proposition) into results (i.e. customers’ perceived-value-in-use). While the successful translation of strategy into results in services depends on a range of factors, Cadwallader, Jarvis, Bitner, and Ostrom (2010) argue that in services, it is contingent on the actions of frontline service employees (hereafter employees) as employees often are the service. In tourism (which is largely a service based sector), Tajeddini (2010) argues that because of tourism’s inherent intangibility and heterogeneity, tourists often judge services based on the behavior/ capability of employees.