Doctoral thesis: Better services through insight into customer activity

What is the role of a service in different customers' lives? Jacob Mickelsson's doctoral thesis shows how a service can have many functions depending on the customer's own activities. In wine consumption, for example, customers use wine suppliers' services in many different ways. Some customers maintain a complex network of activities; they travel, participate in courses, plan dinners and spend time with other people who are interested in wine. Other customers are less involved and so have fewer requirements on the wine supplier's services.

"From the customer's perspective, the use of a service is merely a way to achieve something. The customer attempts to integrate the service into a network of other activities that support the same outcomes," says Mickelsson.

The thesis presents networks of customer activity as a new way for companies to gain customer insight. Beyond the use of a service, customers themselves perform a range of different activities. Thus, a service is merely one element among others in the customers' lives. Services are given context and purpose by belonging to interlinked networks of recurring customer activity.

According to Mickelsson, earlier research has mainly viewed customer activity as passive responses to the company's inputs (so that advertising leads to a purchase, for example). Customer activity has also been seen as inputs into a service process. Instead of this traditional approach, i.e. how customers' activities contribute to the company's operations, Mickelsson's thesis emphasises how companies' services contribute to the customer's operations.

Through studies of gambling and wine consumption the thesis shows how different customer groups maintain their own characteristic networks of linked activities. Understanding customers' activity networks allows companies to plan their services more effectively and adapt their communication.

"Insight into customer activity can ultimately help raise ideas for innovations," says Mickelsson.

M.Sc. (Econ) Jacob Mickelsson defends his doctoral thesis in marketing: "Customer Activity: A Perspective on Service Use" on 16 May 2014.

Time: 16 May 2014 at 12
Place: Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki
Opponent: Docent, senior lecturer Fredrik Nordin, Stockholm University, Sweden
Custos: Professor Tore Strandvik, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki

For more information, please contact:
Jacob Mickelsson
+358 50 58 50 880
karl-jacob.mickelsson@hanken.fi

A copy of the thesis can be downloaded here: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/45016