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Top1. Introduction
The importance of service has recently been recognized in various business areas (Kameoka, 2010). Because the ratio of service industries in the gross domestic product (GDP) has been increasing due to the expansion of new business such as information industry or knowledge industry (Kosaka & Shirahada, 2014), (Fisk, Grove & John, 2008), (Stauss, Engelmann, Kremer & Luhn, 2008). Therefore, new service science such as Service system (Shimomura, Watanabe, Arai, Sakao, & Tomiyama, 2003) or Service Dominant Logic (SD-logic) (Vargo & Lusch, 2004), (Lusch & Vargo, 2006) has been proposed under such circumstances. The concept of “value in use” is essential in such new science, i.e., how receivers of services feel satisfactions about provided services and evaluate their values in given situations, and is a crucial issue. This is a service value creation problem which is an important issue for all service businesses, and must be investigated more thoroughly.
Previous research related to evaluating service value has assessed service quality as a measure of such evaluation. Lovelock and Wirtz (2007) explained that service quality was determined based on the pre-expectation of a service and the subsequent- evaluation of the given service. In the case that the subsequent-evaluation was better than the pre-expectation, the user felt satisfaction because the quality of service was desirable (Hatakeyama, 2004). But, it was difficult to mathematically formulate this relationship, because the pre-expectation or the subsequent- evaluation depended on people’s feelings. Also, there were many methodologies of evaluating provided services by using a hierarchical analysis method. For example, Kinosita and Sugiura (2012) evaluated service values in sightseeing by using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). Huynh provided an evidence reasoning–based model for evaluation of services by a hierarchy model (Huynh, Nakamori, Ho, & Murai, 2006), (Huynh, Kosaka, Doan, & Nakamori, 2014). In such evaluations, services were provided from providers to customers in one way and customers evaluated them as same as products evaluation in Good Dominant Logic (Lusch & Vargo, 2006).
On the other hand, context-aware services (Matthias, Schahram and Florian, 2007), (Koral, et al., 2004) were services that were aimed at providing qualified services by taking the situation (time, place, people, and cost,) into account. In such services, service values were deeply dependent on the context or the situation. This was similar to the “value in use” concept in SD-logic. Also, Lusch and Vargo (2006) described “A service-centered dominant logic implied that value is defined by and co-created with the customer rather than embedded in output.” Moreover, Ueda, Takenaka, Vancza and Monostori (2009) discussed the importance of co-creation in services for generating large service values. We should take these previous researches into consideration for developing a service value evaluation methodology.