The dark side of customer participation: The antecedents of customer participation stress

Publication Type

Contribution to conference

Authors

Treger, S., Büttgen, M., Schumann, J.H., & Ates, Z.

Year of publication

2016

Published in

Marketing in the age of data. Proceedings of the EMAC conference 2016

Page (from - to)

102

Conference name

EMAC conference

Conference location

Oslo, Norway

Conference date

May 24-27, 2016

While literature often points out the positive effects of customer participation, we shed light on the negative side of customer participation by introducing customer participation stress (CPS) as a new construct to literature. Therefore, we examine the factors determining the perception of stress by applying the job demands-resources model to the customer context. With regard to customers as partial employees we both adopt variables from the original model and introduce new customer specific variables. Additionally we consider potential negative outcomes of CPS and therefore examine its influence on customer participation behavior. Our results show that CPS is positively affected by cognitive demands and can be reduced by social factors. We also found that CPS negatively affects customer participation behavior. We conclude, that managers should focus on positive social aspects of the employee-customer relationship to avoid negative outcomes of customer participation.