New Perspectives on Justifying Customer Citizenship: An Abstract

This study aims to provide a new perspective to the 20-year-old question on why consumers engage in customer citizenship behaviour. Customer citizenship behaviour concerns the voluntary helpful behaviours performed by customers to the benefit of the firm and may include advocacy and helping fellow customers in using the service. Grounded in the social exchange theory, it is presumed that customers perform these behaviours in appreciation of the benefits they believe they have received from the firm. Despite the proliferation of studies on citizenship behaviour, the link between technology acceptance and customer citizenship is not well understood. Most studies examining technology acceptance theory are concerned about consumer perceptions and behaviour prior to service trial, with many professing that customers’ beliefs of the benefits of the technology may impact their attitudes, intentions, and adoption behaviour. Some studies have also focused on customer behaviour in the post-consumption stage, where continuous intention of the technological service is often examined as the dependent variable. In the modern consumer marketplace, characterised by self-service technologies, however, it is also important to further understand the social interactions among consumers, where customers assist one another in using the self-service in the absence of direct interactions with employees. Thus, it has become necessary to broaden the thinking about technology acceptance models and behaviour in the post-consumption stage, beyond continuous intention, and to understand how beliefs and attitudes after consumption may impact on other types of behaviours, such as customer citizenship behaviour.