Developing Customers as Partial Employees: Predictors and Outcomes of Customer Performance in a Services Context

• Date: 01 September 2013
• Author: Oliver K. Stoutner,Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben
• Published date: 01 September 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21167

Developing Customers as Partial

Employees: Predictors and

Outcomes of Customer

Performance in a Services Context

Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben, Oliver K. Stoutner

Scholars within the fi eld of HRD have acknowledged the need for more

research in services contexts, particularly a consideration of how customers

might be developed as human resources in service exchanges. To that end,

this research investigates the antecedents and consequences of customer

performance within the context of service exchanges. With a matched

sample of service providers and customers (n = 164 pairs, 328 total

participants), we found that customer–service provider fi t was related

to customer performance, which was associated with outcomes for the

customer (satisfaction and loyalty) and the service provider (greater

satisfaction and commitment). We offer a discussion of the implications of

this research for human resource strategies aimed at developing customers

in service fi rms.

The notion that services are important has not waned over the past three

decades (Albrect & Zemke, 1985; Bowen & Hallowell, 2002). The service

sector continues to dominate the worldwide economy and has shown sustained

growth, particularly as emerging economies have developed. Despite the critical

importance of the services economy, there has been relatively little attention

paid to this sector in the HRD literature, particularly among frontline service

employees in small businesses (Birdthistle, 2006; Ellinger, Elmadag˘, &

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 24, no. 3, Fall 2013 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21167 313

The authors would like to acknowledge Peter Mills, Stephanie Payne, Mike Buckley, and Jenn Becker

for their support of this research and their comments on earlier drafts. The authors would also like to

thank Danielle Rush and Kay Bewley for their assistance with data collection and entry. This research

was supported by a grant from the University of Oklahoma Graduate Student Senate. A previous ver-

sion of this article was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Southern Management Associa-

tion, Savannah, Georgia.

314 Halbesleben, Stoutner

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq

Ellinger, 2007; Hill & Stewart, 1999). We extend this literature by focusing on

frontline service employees who are underexamined—hairstylists (Gold &

Thorpe, 2008)—and by further extending HRD concepts to customers in

services contexts.

There are still numerous gaps in the literature on this topic, particularly

as they relate to the enhancement and infl uence of relationships between cus-

tomers and service providers to develop the performance of customers in ser-

vice exchanges (Bendapudi & Leone, 2003; Wu, 2011). As noted by Bowen

and Hallowell (2002), management researchers have had a diffi cult time pro-

viding a meaningful understanding of services both in terms of research and

practice. We hope to fi ll that gap, in part, by suggesting that customer perfor-

mance can be developed through the development of service competencies

(Russ-Eft, 2004) and that performance leads to better outcomes both for the

customer and the employee.

To that end, we review the literature on customer labor contributions

(e.g., Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004) and partial employees (e.g., Bowen,

1986; Mills & Morris, 1986). We develop a model of the antecedent and

consequent processes underlying the performance of customers in service con-

texts. We test that model with a matched sample of customers and their

hairstylists. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our model

for service organizations.

Customer Labor Contributions

Customer performance has become increasingly important to services

organizations as they recognize that the value of cocreation of service

experiences depends, in part, on the contributions to the service exchange

by customers and the quality of the performance of the customer (Prahalad

& Ramaswamy, 2004; Yi & Gong, 2013). In that context, Halbesleben and

Buckley (2004) defi ned customer labor contributions as “the process by

which a customer provides labor and resources” (p. 353) in the context of

a service exchange. The underlying principle behind customer labor

contributions is that in the course of the delivery of services, there are

numerous instances where the customer is responsible for the delivery of at

least part of his or her own service (Bowen & Schneider, 1988; Lengnick-

Hall, 1996; Lovelock, 1984; Lovelock & Young, 1979; Mills, 1986). The

literature on customer labor contributions suggests that the utilization of

customers to contribute to the delivery of their service can be a mutually

benefi cial venture (Bowen & Jones, 1986; Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004;

Kelley, Donnelly, & Skinner, 1990; Mills, Chase, & Margulies, 1983;

Schneider & Bowen, 1995). When customers engage in labor toward the

production of their service, the service can be completed faster, cheaper,

and with a greater level of customization, thus creating more value to the

customer (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004).