ABSTRACT
The ever-increasing sophistication of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has transformed service interactions since the late 1990s (Davis, Spohrer, and Maglio, 2011). Today, ICTs, such as video or teleconferencing, can replace face-to-face (F2F) service exchanges in contexts ranging from consulting to telemedicine, which has led to technology-enabled value co-creation processes (Breidbach, Kolb, and Srinivasan, 2013). Other service contexts, such as retail banks, equally expanded their customer-facing interactions from physical, into virtual realms. For example, a decade and a half ago, Wells Fargo’s traditional bricks-and-mortar retail banks were supplemented with an online banking platform, thus generating self-service environments (Bitner, Ostrom, and Meuter, 2002). Online platforms based on self-service are now pervasive in retailing and other contexts, including business-to-customer, business-to-business, and customer-to-customer interfaces.
