Research on Customer Citizenship Behaviour

Husian Salilul AkareemLecturer of BRAC University

Submitted by

Group I: Signature

Anika Tahsin-11104061(#23)Maria Islam-11104085 (#27)

Fatima Momin-11104132 (#35)Mehbuba Yasmin Tamanna-11104108 (#32)

Tabassum Anwar Subha-11104116 (#33)Samiya Yesmin 11304043 (#37)

Date of submission: August 7, 2012

Summary

This paper presents the importance of Customer Citizenship Behaviour (CCB) which is reflected in both the customers and the marketers, both of which creates value for each other in a lot of ways. Also, we have included the findings of other people about CCB such as customer citizenship behaviourur directed at service personnel, the role of service worker in encouraging CCB, the impact of customer-company identification and customer perception of employee identification, the antecedents and consequences of service customer citizenship, loyalty ripple effect, factors of CCB. For conducting this research, we have used descriptive method with the help of a particular sample size. A questionnaire has been designed with a good number of variables to get satisfactory response from the respondents’. We collected the data and analyzed to show changes in CCB with regards to our variables to find how consumer preferences change as conditions applicable to them changes. Finally, we have also mentioned about the managerial obligations which highlights how managers may influence CCB in an organization for its profitability and success.

Customer Citizenship Behaviour and Importance

Customer citizenship behavior is defined as voluntary and discretionary behaviour of individual customers which an important factor for contributing to the overall success of the service organization. Service organizations must understand how they can get the maximum potential of their customers contributing to the service delivery. As a result, loyal customer may perform extra-role behavior such as word of mouth, product improvement suggestions and proactive communication of anticipated problems. Groth (2005) introduced customer citizenship behavior (CCB) among customers based on face to face interaction towards the internet business. CCB is defined as “voluntary and discretionary behaviors that are not required for the successful production and/or delivery of the service but that, in the aggregate, help the service organization overall” (Groth, 2005, p. 11).

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on customer citizenship behaviour in the managerial and marketing literature. Like organizational employees, customer may engage in a variety of citizenship behaviour directed toward a specific organization. (Yi &Gong) argues that “a central difference between service and manufacturing firms is that customers are often physically present when the service is provided, quite unlike manufacturing firms where customers are only rarely present during production.” Therefore, both customers and employees constitute the human resource of the service organization. Customers often perform the work that employees might otherwise perform, so that customers may even replace employees in service based organizations (Yi & Gong)

Many terms have been used to describe customer citizenship behaviour, including customer discretionary behaviour (Yi & Gong) customer voluntary performance.

The service literatures suggest various forms of customer citizenship behaviour. Growth identified three dimensions of customer citizenship behaviour

1. Feedback: Providing feedback to the organization, which means providing solicited information to organizations that helps them improve their service delivery process.

2. Helping other customers, this closely parallels to altruism dimension found in organizational citizenship behaviour.

3. Word-of-mouth: refers to the recommendations that customers give to their friends and relatives after they are satisfied with the services provided by the firms.

(Yi & Gong) also suggested that customers who exhibit citizenship behaviour may demonstrate commitment to the service organization and report potential safety problems to employee. Customer tolerance of service failures is another dimension of customer citizenship behaviour. It is defined as customer willingness to put up with or to be patient about service on counters that are not performed as expect. This acquiescent attitude results in continued patronage of the store and not spreading negative that common features of CCB include voluntary feedback discretionary behaviour and helping organization.

IMPORTANCE OF CCB:

Toward marketers: Customer citizenship behaviours (CCB) are highly valued by firms, particularly in the present environment where there is a push to encourage greater customer participation in service delivery to decrease organizational labour costs and increase productivity. Also, CCB helps us to get ideas about the changing wants, needs and demands of the market as time changes. This helps companies decide on product changes as well as qualities of the products to keep up with the market and competition demands. Building customer loyalty can lead to an increase in the company’s profitable sales and will also enhance their long-term growth.

Toward customers: Customer Citizenship Behaviour includes feedback from the customers after they use a service or purchase a product. This helps the customer to get desired and improved services. Through word-of-mouth, existing customers can influence other customers to use a product or service. This in turn helps new customers to gain knowledge about a product and also influence them to purchase. This therefore increases the value of the companies.

Literature Review

Bove & Garma(2009) researched about the customer citizenship behaviour (CCB) which was directed at service personnel (CCB-SP) based on the theory of social exchange. They introduced that these CCB-SP or helpful voluntarily acts performed by customers benefit service personnel by many ways. They provided evidence that CCB-SP consists five dimensions such as assuming employee role, advocacy, sportsmanship, consultancy and social support. They used 69 behaviors whereas expert group identified 31 of the 69 items clearly belonged to one of the five dimensions. Overall the result about CCB-SP was satisfactory and complementary as the suvey was performed both by the academics and service personnel .

Bove, Pervan, Beatty, & Shiu(2008) introduced the role of the individual service worker in encouraging customer organizational citizenship behaviours.They separeted the differences between the customer in-role and extra role behaviours. Customer in-role behaviours include performing the service delivery such as arriving on time for an appointment, providing a description of needs, even paying for the service. In contrast, extra-role behaviours are voluntary, helpful behaviours enacted towards the firm, service worker, or other customers which provide assistance to effective organizational functioning. These behaviours can positively affect the performance of service workers and the organization. They also said that customer’s commitment to service worker, customers’ perception about service worker’s creditability and benevolence and finally customers’ personal loyalty to service worker are the strongest predictor of customer OCBs.

Devrani & Tuzun(2010) have presented their research on the impact of customer-company identification and customer perception of employee identification on the customer citizenship behaviour. Customer identification towards employee and organization allows them to become psychologically attached to and care about the organization by commititing to the achivements of goals, interacting positiviely and cooperatively with the organizational members. For this reason, customer perception of employee identification is significantly and positively correlated with CCB and it moderates the relationship between customer identification and customer citizenship behaviour.

(Yi & Gong, 2006) have researched about the background and consequences of service customer citizenship and badness behaviour. Customer badness behaviour refers to dysfunctional customers who damage the company in some way. Negative effect, perceived justice, and commitment are considered as the antecedents and perceived service quality as the consequence. Perceive justice and commitment exert a positive influence on customer citizenship behaviour. On the other hand, negative affect will increase customer badness behaviour.

According to Wingwon, B, & Piriyakul, M. (2010) the factors that affect customer citizenship behaviour are customer satisfaction and the corporate affection. The customer satisfaction was the emotional reaction of consumers toward the product usage and the corporate affection was the positive attitude of them toward the corporate. They said that the customer satisfaction has direct effect but the corporate affection has indirect effect because of the mediator.

Customer behaviour exhibits “loyalty ripple effect” which can add value to a firm’s service quality. This effect at first initiates service loyalty which may be defined as "the degree to which a customer exhibits repeat purchasing behaviour towards service provider, possesses a positive attitudinal disposition toward the provider, and considers using only this provider when a need for this service arises" (Brown & Gremler)This effect includes the following phase:

Word-of-mouth communication: When satisfied with a service provided by a firm, customers would be encouraged to talk about that service.

Customer citizenship behaviour: When loyal customers give advice regarding the service of a firm, it shows that they are exhibiting behaviours that add value to the firm.

Co-production: Loyal customers may, because of their experience with and knowledge of the provider, contribute to the co-production of the service (Bowen 1986; Lengnick-Hall 1996) by assisting in service delivery.

Social relationships: For some services, loyal customers may provide social benefits to other customers in the form of friendships (Goodwin 1994; Goodwin and Gremler 1996; Grove and Fisk 1997).

Mentoring of other customers: Finally, loyal customers may serve as mentors to other less experienced customers (Zeithaml and Bitner 1996) thereby making the service delivery process easier for all parties involved.

MethodologyResearch Type:

Descriptive research have been used which describes data and characteristics about the population or phenomenon being studied. Descriptive research methodology describes situations, they do not make accurate predictions, and they do not determine cause and effect relationships. There are three main types of descriptive methods: observational methods, case-study methods and survey methods.

In this research, we have used Survey method of Descriptive research methodology to conduct our research where we talked about customers’ perception on services provided by parlors or saloons and also tried to describe the extent of customer citizenship behavior in parlors and saloons. (Hale, 2011)

Sample size and survey:

A total of 407 people from four categories of age groups such as below 21, 21-30, 31-45 and above 45 were selected as our sample for research. All these people responded differently to the variables related to the service quality of parlors and also the extent of their customer citizenship behavior.

We included Convenience sampling (Castillo, 2009) which is a non-probability sampling technique for our research. This is because it is not possible to survey every individual among the age groups provided in our questionnaire. Therefore, non-probability sampling techniques were used that is not the representative of the target population because sample units were only selected if they could be accessed easily and conveniently

Questionnaire Design:

For the data collections purpose, a close ended questionnaire was designed. Appropriate numbers of research questions were arranged with numerous variables to get satisfactory response from the respondents. Also, the questions were designed according to the need of the research. This was done to overcome the respondents’ unwillingness to give a response.

The questionnaire began with questions reflecting their personal information and gradually started with questions related to the general perception on the subject of our research. The answers were marked on a particular scale called “Likert scale”. It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research. In the first section of the questionnaire, we asked about the monthly income, their monthly expenditure and educational qualification. In the second section we followed the Likert scale format in which responses are scored along a range. In that section, respondents were asked to give points on a five point scale, on questions related to their perception on service quality of parlors and their CCB.

Also, ‘Validity test’ was used while doing the survey ‘Validity’ refers to the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests. The questionnaires have questions to measure the reliability of the answers in an attempt to check whether the respondents answered the survey with full honesty or not.

Data collection:

Data was collected from both primary and secondary sources for conducting the research. The survey was used as the primary data source. Secondary sources included research papers.

Data Analysis:

We have used uni-variate method to analyze the survey results. This method includes tests that compare samples from different groups. Typically uni-variate methods are designed to evaluate one variable at a

time, although a second variable used to group or sort the variables may be implied. (http://www.epa.gov/bioindicators/statprimer/univariate.html,2010)

At first, the mean and standard deviation of each variable was calculated. Then, we have constructed pie-charts for variables such as age and number of family members. Next, we constructed bar-charts for analyzing variables such as educational qualification and three perception variables such as superior, excellent and standard quality. We also analyzed the mean and standard deviation to find the variables with high and low means.

Correlation and regression are more accurately called bi-variate methods because they involve the full range of both variables rather than just using one variable to categorize another. Regression is used to predict the values of one variable from another while correlation is used to test the strength of association between two variables.

Since we analyzed single variables independently, in our result analysis we used the uni-variate method. This method helped to give a satisfying estimation from the response of the sample provided.

Result analysis:

Analysis from the descriptive statistics

Descriptive Statistics

Mean Std. DeviationAge 2.47 1.116

Family members 3.99 1.067

Educational qualification 2.78 1.204

Service quality : Excellence 3.54 1.086

Service quality : Superior 3.43 1.127

Service quality : Standard 3.60 1.153

I suggest the parlour or saloon to customize their service 3.63 1.261

I recommend for the delivery time to the provider 3.32 1.290

I recommend in deciding the delivery place to the provider 2.82 1.344

I help other customers in comparing among parlours or saloons 3.27 1.252

I assist other customers by suggesting price 3.07 1.328

I assist other customers by telling the consequences of the service 3.33 1.283

I voluntarily help other customers whenever I see they need it 3.02 1.351

I teach other customers to use the service correctly 2.79 1.343

I discuss about advantages of the service with others 3.56 1.156

I say positive things about the parlour or saloon to others 3.67 1.062

I recommend service employee to others 3.51 1.157

I share useful ideas to improve the service after purchase 3.33 1.310

I inform the employees, if I experience any problem 4.15 1.037

I stay patience if I get poor service 2.47 1.309

I don’t recommend about the delivery place to the provider 3.08 1.440

I suggest the parlour or saloon to add supportive features 3.20 1.233

I suggest in choosing service employee to other consumers 3.03 1.262

I assist customers if they are in a problem choosing the right service 2.84 1.220

I help other customers by making them aware of optional features 2.62 1.214

I help other customers by suggesting delivery time 3.46 1.215

I assist other customers by suggesting location of the parlour or saloon 3.94 1.108

I help other customers if they ask for my help 3.94 .985

I recommend the service to others if I am satisfied with it 3.79 1.137

I encourage my friend and relatives to take this service 3.95 2.196

I encourage my family and friends about this parlour or saloon 3.59 1.132

I share my feelings to the provider after consuming the service 3.17 1.250

I fill customer satisfaction survey provided by the parlour or saloon 2.96 1.297

Descriptive statistics

The statistics are used to describe only the observe group or sample which they are derived. Summary statistics such as percent average and measure of variability that are computed on a particular group of individual. Measure of variability means the standard deviation.

Age

<2121-3031-45>45

The result of average age reflects that the age group of 21-30 are the ones who visit the parlour or saloon frequently. The reason behind this is that this group of people are mostly students or job seekers who are interested in fashion and beauty conscious. The value of the standard deviation is low which indicates that the data points tend to be very close the mean. So the result is satisfactory.

No. of Family Members

12345>5

The mean of family members is almost four. This represents the present situation of Dhaka city suitably as our research is based in this city. The value of the standard deviation is low which indicates that the data points are not scattered.

SSC HSC HONS OTHER.0

5.010.015.020.025.030.035.0

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION

The outcome of our mean and standard deviation indicates that the average educational qualification is above HSC which reflects the teenager and above age group who are more conscious about their appearance is more attracted to going to parlours.

The outcome of perception towards service quality of parlour or saloon (below) is neutral which shows that the customer’s perception towards the service quality is gradually improving. The respondents of this survey try to compare the service quality among the parlours they go to. The customers are becoming more satisfied with the provided service materials of parlours or saloon.

Variables with Low Means:

The variables “I stay patience if I get poor service” and “I fill customer satisfaction survey provided by the parlour or saloon” have low means indicating disagreement of due to the fact that it comes under a negative dimension with regards to the parlour services. And the low standard deviation indicates that most people do have this opinion.

Variable with High Means:

The variable “encouraging family and friends about the service” , “I assist other customers by suggesting location of the parlour or saloon” , “I help other customers if they ask for my help” and “I recommend the service (not any specific provider) to others if I am satisfied with it” are under the dimension of positive word of mouth which represents that the customers are satisfied with the service provided by the parlour and for this reason they are encouraged to talk about it to other customers. Also high traffic jams in Dhaka immobile people thus parlours are most likely to have maximum of their customers from its own locality. And as we all form a part of the polite society we are least likely to turn people down when asked for help directly. Most customers are also very likely to promote services due to the fact that positive action leads to positive results and parlour is such places that people do bond over personal conversations regarding their skin care and the parlour. Ultimately, it will create greater value for the parlour or saloon. On the other hand, the value of the standard deviation shows that the data points are scattered from the mean.

The variable “informing the employees if they experience any problem” is known as voice dimension of CCB which indicates the customers want to get proper satisfaction from the service. They want to make the best worth out of the money they are paying that’s why their patience against the poor service is very low.

Analysis from frequency table:

Frequency Table

   Percent

Cumulative Percent  

 Percent

Cumulative Percent

GENDER

Female 48.4 48.4

MONTHLY EXPENDETUR

E

1 27.0 27.0

Male 51.6 100.0 2 24.8 51.8

Total 100.0   3 24.6 76.4

AGE

<21 25.8 25.8 4 15.7 92.1

21-30 25.6 51.4 5 4.4 96.6

31-45 24.8 76.2 6 2.2 98.8

45< 23.8 100.0 7 1.2 100.0

Total 100.0   Total 100.0  

OCCUPATION

Business 11.1 11.1

EXCELENCE

1 6.9 6.9

Others 20.4 31.7 2 6.4 13.3

Service 19.9 51.6 3 31.9 45.2

Student 48.4 100.0 4 35.4 80.6

Total 100.0   5 19.4 100.0

FAMILY MEMBERS

1 2.0 2.0 Total 100.0  

2 4.7 6.6

SUPERIOR

1 6.9 6.9

3 23.8 30.5 2 6.4 13.3

4 39.8 70.3 3 31.9 45.2

5 21.9 92.1 4 35.4 80.6

>5 7.9 100.0 5 19.4 100.0

Total 100.0   Total 100.0  

EDUCATION

<SSC 14.5 14.5

STANDARD

1 5.4 5.4

HSC 30.7 45.2 2 9.8 15.2

Hon’s 24.8 70.0 3 32.2 47.4

Masters 30.0 100.0 4 24.3 71.7

Total 100.0   5 28.3 100.0

MONTHLY INCOME

1 2.2 2.2 Total 100.0  

2 9.1 11.3

3 15.0 26.3

4 18.7 45.0

5 19.2 64.1

6 15.5 79.6

7 20.4 100.0

Total 100.0  

Frequency Statistics:

This table shows different demographics in percentages of total population that are found using frequency method.

Gender

FemaleMale

After doing the survey, we found that the practices of parlour or salon are almost equivalent by both men and women. It means both men and women are very conscious about their looks. Here the percentage of male who practices the saloon is 51.6% and the female who practices parlour is 48.4% which is shown by the pie chart.

b11%

o20%

sr20%

st48%

Occupation

The practices of parlour or salon can vary from profession to profession. In this survey, we found that the practices of this service are very high among the student. The most probable reason could be of high practices of this service is their early age and most of the time we see that at this age people are very beauty conscious. Another reason may be students are free from responsibility. So, they have enough time to practice this service easily. On the other hand this practice is very low among the business people and the

probable reason behind it may be that they are very busy with their works. So, they do not have enough time. The rest of the people who are service holder and from different occupation practice this service almost at the same rate. After doing this survey, we found that the percentage of visiting parlour or salon among the student is 48.4%, for business people it is 11.1%, for service holder it is 19.9% and the rest of the people is 20.4%. The graphical representation of this percentage is given above.

<tk 10,000 tk 10,001-25,000

tk 25,001-40,000

tk 40,001-65,000

tk 65,001-80,000

tk 80,001-100,000

above tk 100,000

.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

Monthly Income

Freq

uenc

y

As you can see from the above graph, the highest frequency of monthly income in our survey is of the last group of above tk 100000. This is due to the fact that we being private university students come from well off families most of whom have been used to amass data for this research.

<tk 10,000 tk 10,001-25,000

tk 25,001-40,000

tk 40,001-65,000

tk 65,001-80,000

tk 80,001-100,000

above tk 100,000

.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

Monthly Expenditure

Freq

uenc

y

As we have used almost equal number of people to conduct our survey, the first two age groups being students. That being the case, they are dependents who only have a very limited amount of allowance and thus a minimum expenditure of below tk 10,000 has the maximum frequency.

Conclusion

By studying the entire research results on CCB, we can recommend the following

Managers should view customers as a valuable resource for collecting information regarding their wants and needs

Management should devise strategies to increase employees’ skills by establishing deep and meaningful employee-company interactions.

Managers should be aware of the types of messages that employees send regarding the service process.

Management can increase “the word of mouth’’ practice by increasing enough space in parlour or saloon and parking facilities. These service facilities will encourage the customers to be committed and encourage new customers about the location about the parlour.

Management can also encourage CCB by establishing information desk at parlour to create direct relationship with customers where they can find information and get instant feedback.

Management can get performance review of parlour by introducing customer satisfaction survey.

Again management should provide proper training to the employees on their norms, behaviour so that they exhibit common courtesy and say greeting words towards the customers.

Bibliography

Bove, L. L., & Garma, R. (2009). Customer Citizenship Behaviours Directed at Service Personnel:.

Bove, L. L., Pervan, S. J., Beatty, S. E., & Shiu, E. (2008). Service worker role in encouraging customer organizational citizenship behaviors . Journal of Business Research .

Brown, S. W., & Gremler, D. D. (n.d.). Worth Beyond Revenue:The Full Value of a Loyal Customer. Arizona State University, USA .

Castillo, J. J. (2009). http://www.experiment-resources.com/convenience-sampling.html.

Hale, J. (2011, Aug 7). The 3 Basic Types of Descriptive Research Methods. Retrieved from http://www.experiment-resources.com/convenience-sampling.html

http://www.epa.gov/bioindicators/statprimer/univariate.html. (2010, Dec. 09).

Piriyakul, M., & Wingwon, B. (2010). Determinants of Perceived Performance Perceived CSR, Perceived Product and Service Quality, Customer Citizenship Behavior of Modern Trade in Northern Region THAILAND. (pp. 1-19). Yogyakarta: International College of Mekong Region.

Tuzun, I. K., & Devrani, T. K. (2011). The impact of perceived employee identification on the relationship between customer company-identification and customer citizenship behaviour: Practice from Turkish Hotels. African Journal of Business Management Vol. 5(5) , pp. 1781-1786.

Yi, Y., & Gong, T. (2006). The Antecedents and Consequences of Service Customer Citizenship and Badness Behavior. Seoul Journal of Business .