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Abstract
This study aims to identify the factors that contribute to customer expertise, affective commitment, customer participation, and loyalty in B & B tourism. The author proposes a model, in which customer expertise and affective commitment are assumed to increase the extent to which customer participation in the service delivery. Furthermore, customer participation may increase loyalty. From the results, the major findings of this study are as the following: Firstly, customer expertise and affective commitment, relate positively to customer participation. Secondly, customer participation enhances loyalty. Thus, the findings provide managers in the B & B services with valuable insights that firms can increase their competitive advantage through enhancing customer participation.
Keywords: customer expertise, affective commitment, customer participation, loyalty.
Introduction
With regard to tourism, in order to make travel-related decisions, customers make use of travel sites and on-line communities to obtain practical information. Through knowledge from themselves and from social communities, customers are taking an initiative to communicate with service providers. These changes correspond to what Prahalad and Ramaswamy stated (2000) "the market has become a platform where consumers actively participate in value creation". In other words, the marketing philosophy is transformed from "market to" to "market with" (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Under the concept of "market to", consumers are passive receivers of value. They are segmented and then enticed to purchase the products that producers design for them. In this case, the roles of buyers and sellers are clear-cut. In contrast, the notion of "market with" means that consumers go along with the firms to create value (Lusch, Vargo, & O'Brien, 2007).
Customers are more capable, willing and motivated to exercise power to get involved in the service. In contrast, firms play the role as facilitators of value creation, rather than producers of standardized value (Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008). Some empirical researches have identified the benefits that customer participation bring about for consumers and firms. When customers take part in the process of decision-making, they gain more control of the service creation and delivery. Hence, the service quality is better and customers obtain more customized service (Xie, Bagozzi, & Troye, 2008). For the firms, their productivity increases and their customers prone to be more satisfied, when they perceive more value from their service...