@article{Huffman_Skaggs_2010, place={Huntsville, Texas}, title={The Effects of Customer-Firm Interaction On Innovation and Performance In Service Firms}, volume={27}, url={https://jbs-ojs-shsu.tdl.org/jbs/article/view/107}, DOI={10.54155/jbs.27.2.151-175}, abstractNote={<p>Understanding innovation in services has always been complicated by the intangibility<br>of the underlying offering and hence the ease of imitation by rivals. This<br>study extends the transaction cost approach by investigating how the switching costs<br>created by the interaction between a service firm and its customers impact the level<br>of innovation activity by the organization. Using data obtained from a sample of<br>221 service firms, the findings suggest that when organizations structure their service<br>production processes in a manner that requires a high degree of direct face-to-face<br>interaction with the customer, the resulting impact is an increase in customer switching<br>costs. This, in turn, acts as competitive protection for these firms, inducing them<br>to pursue greater levels of innovation. In addition, we found that certain combinations<br>of customer-firm interaction and innovation activity led to superior performance.</p>}, number={2}, journal={Journal of Business Strategies}, author={Huffman, Tammy and Skaggs, Bruce}, year={2010}, month={Oct.}, pages={151–175} }