Customer Support, Motivation to participate and participation in services : a first step.

International audience

Participation has become a main issue in services with the development of customer's roles in services and the rise of self services technologies. Nowadays, customer is not only a service co-producer and a beneficiary, but he is also a quality contributor, a support for the other customers, and he substitutes himself to employees in Self-Service Technologies (SST). Consequently, two questions have emerged as crucial topics. First, we should understand the motivations to participate. Founding on rational stream, authors only identified rational motivations whereas emotional theories were growing up in psychology and should be considered. Secondly, we should study how to support customer in the service process and how it influences motivations. So this study has two goals: we want to explore a new issue in services: the customer support, and we want to understand the impact of this concept on motivations to participate, founded on reason and emotions, and on participation. This study is the first step in a broader research.