Consumer-to-Consumer Conversations in Service Settings

This article contributes, in two ways, to our understanding of the nature, scope, and significance of conversations between strangers in service environments. First, a framework is introduced that provides both academics and practitioners with a summary of the key issues associated with the stimuli, manifestations, and consequences of such conversations. Second, the article reports a market-oriented ethnography of a specific service—rail travel—that locates stranger conversations within a broader categori-zation of consumer travel behaviors. This has resulted in the identification of a stabilizing effect of conversations between strangers through consumer anxiety reduction, the enactment of the partial employee role, and the supply of social interaction. The stabilizing effect can act as a " defuser " of dissatisfaction in services where consumers are in close proximity for prolonged periods in the service setting and regularly express dissatisfaction with service provision. Service consumption in many on-site settings takes place in the presence of other consumers, so consumer-to-consumer (C-to-C) conversations frequently occurical evidence suggests that the frequency and impact of oral interactions between consumers (who were strangers prior to entering the service delivery system) is underestimated by academics and practitioners (Harris, Baron, and Parker 2000; Martin 1999; Rodie and Kleine 2000). Attention has also been drawn to the differences between conversations that occur between strangers in service settings, compared with those that occur between employees and consumers, and with those that occur between friends or " purchase pals " (Baron, Harris, and Davies 1996). Whereas conversations between friends are likely to be in the private domain, consumers are generally willing to relate their conversations with employees and with strangers. Such oral participation has been labeled observable, with observable oral participation between employees and consumers abbreviated as OOP1 and observable oral participation between consumers who were strangers as OOP2 (Harris, Baron, and Ratcliffe 1995). Different consumer segments have been identified that vary in both their willingness and ability to engage in OOP2, on-site conversations with strangers Most significantly for service providers, all the studies have been able to identify a range of operational and social benefits that can result from conversa-through their conversations, that they can make a unique contribution as an additional human resource for the organization. " Consumers appear to add value to the service experience of other consumers through oral contributions (for example offering honest opinions, independent product knowledge, and reassurance about purchase decisions) that contact personnel cannot provide " (Davies, Baron, …