The consumer as “transient employee”

Abstract

This paper responds to the call for increased attention to the consumer's point of view in modeling the service exchange. A novel conceptualization of a service product is presented. Further, extending extant research that conceptualizes consumers as “partial employees”, this paper treats consumers as “transient” employees. Next, drawing on the literatures in human resources, specifically Karasek's job demand‐control model, a theoretical model of consumer satisfaction is developed and presented. Attention is also drawn to a typology of services based on the level of consumer participation. Managerial recommendations are developed and presented on the basis of these arguments.