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Introduction
Various services, such as professional services and healthcare, are difficult to evaluate by customers before, during, or even after consumption ([28] Darby and Karni, 1973). These are known as services with high credence qualities or, in short, credence services ([2] Alford and Sherrell, 1996). As a consequence of the lack of evaluation in high credence services, long-term customer relationships are based on commitment, trust, and loyalty ([33] Eisingerich and Bell, 2007; [44] Gaur et al. , 2011). Outside of long-term relationships and in a first-time service encounter, customers of credence services rely on quality cues and heuristics, such as "experts are usually correct" ([39] Fragale and Heath, 2004). Accordingly, providers of credence services, in particular their front-line employees, exert the manners of experts and assume authority over the service process ([76] Rackham and DeVincentis, 1999). However, service providers acting authoritatively might fall short in gaining customer satisfaction and desirable service outcomes, especially when customer compliance or co-production is required ([37] Fitzsimons and Lehmann, 2004). In a consumer-driven economy, an increasing preference for autonomy among consumers is changing the veracity of expert-driven credence services ([49] Hickman, 2012). Today, customers also have more access to expert knowledge. Customers can acquire much more detailed information about the service context and often seek a second opinion in order to acquire greater independence from a single service provider ([64] Mitra et al. , 1999). The shift in the bearing of customers is especially significant in the healthcare sector (e.g. [10] Buntin et al. , 2006). Patients are more knowledgeable about their condition, disease, and treatment options due to the availability of medical information on the internet ([47] Hardey, 1999; [11] Calabretta, 2002).
These developments exacerbate the principal-agent problem that characterizes credence services. The basis of the principal-agent problem is that if services cannot be fully evaluated by their customers, service providers as agents have an incentive to act in their own interests instead of those of the customer, the principal ([34] Emons, 1997). Hightened customer attention and a desire for decision autonomy run counter to the role model of the rather passive and compliant customer in a service encounter with an authoritarian service provider, which can further raise customer suspicion about the motives of the service provider. Any authoritarian...