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Customer reciprocity in greening: the role of service quality

Debarati Basu (Department of Finance, XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, India)
Kamalika Chakraborty (Department of Marketing, Jagdish Sheth School of Management, Bangalore, India)
Shabana Mitra (Department of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, India)
Nishant Kumar Verma (Production and Operations Management, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bangalore, India)

International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences

ISSN: 1756-669X

Article publication date: 14 December 2021

Issue publication date: 3 May 2022

415

Abstract

Purpose

Firms are increasingly making customers key stakeholders in their greening processes, requiring them to voluntarily use their resources to benefit the firm. In this context, this paper develops a new construct – tangible customer citizenship behaviour (CCB), i.e. voluntary participation of customer in operational processes of the company beyond normal requirements of exchange. This requires more involvement than the already documented intangible CCB. The purpose of the paper is to then explore whether service quality (SQ) (online and offline) influences such voluntary customer reciprocity in greening.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used a virtual survey among 400 customers of e-commerce firms that have adopted greening practices requiring customer engagement and regressions were used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The authors find that both online and offline SQ positively impact intangible CCB but have no impact on customer greening reciprocity (tangible CCB). Additionally, the authors find that offline SQ positively impacts customer greening awareness. However, in spite of the presence of greening awareness and display of intangible CCB, SQ does not have any impact on greening reciprocity.

Originality/value

This study introduces to literature a more tangible form of voluntary behaviour on the part of the customer, i.e. tangible CCB or reciprocity. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also one of the first to study the customer as an important stakeholder and participant in a business-to-consumer firm’s operating processes, particularly in greening which has no direct impact on the firm’s core offering. The focus on greening in the Indian context is also novel given the greening costs and requirements and the price competition are very different in emerging market contexts where e-commerce firms are experiencing the maximum growth.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The Authors are grateful to A Parasuraman, Jay Kandampully, Nirali Shah, and participants of Convergence 2020 (where it won an honourable mention) for helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are solely ours.

Citation

Basu, D., Chakraborty, K., Mitra, S. and Verma, N.K. (2022), "Customer reciprocity in greening: the role of service quality", International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 238-257. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQSS-08-2021-0116

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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