Abstract
Past research focuses on the location effects in explaining consumers’ responses to service offshoring while the role of service offshoring partners (OSPs)’ characteristics has not yet been addressed. Adapting from information integration and inference theories, this paper develops “service offshoring fit” which is influenced by OSPs’ characteristics and explains the differential responses to service offshoring. Both qualitative and quantitative studies explore the concept of fit and the characteristics of OSPs. The results confirm that corporate reputation of the OSPs and advanced technology owned by the OSPs are the important characteristics that influence service offshoring fit, which in turn affects consumers’ responses to service offshoring. Results also indicate not all the OSPs’ characteristics equally contribute to service offshoring fit but rather be contingent on service types. This study contributes to the current literature as it looks beyond the location effect and explains the differential responses by introducing the concept of fit.
Chinese Abstract
对于解释消费者对于服务外包的反应, 过去的研究通常关注在外包地区效应上, 而服务外包伙伴 (OSPs) 的角色特征在此发挥的作用尚未得到解决. 本文从信息集成和推理理论出发, 提出了受 OSPs 特征影响的 “服务外包契合度”, 解释了消费者服务外包的不同反应. 通过定性与定量分析, 本文探索了契合度的概念和OSPs的特征. OSPs 的企业声誉和 OSPs 所拥有的先进技术是影响服务外包契合度的重要因素, 而服务外包契合度又继续影响消费者对服务外包的反应. 结果还表明, 并非所有的 OSPs 特征都对服务外包契合度有同等贡献; 贡献的大小取决于服务类型. 本研究对当前的文献做出了贡献, 因为它超越了外包地区效应, 并通过引入契合度的概念来解释消费者对于服务外包的差异反应.
