Longer at home? Exploring home-delivered meal service from the older people’s perspectives
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2017
Department
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Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
123
Series
Abstract
The objective of this research is to gain a better understanding of the service experience of the older customers of home-delivered meal service in Finland, as well as to understand the value creation that takes place in the experience. The meal service represents a utilitarian-natured service, which have been less studied by academics addressing the field of customer experiences. Additionally, meal service and home care-related services in general have been more extensively researched in the fields of nutrition and health care, as well from cost-efficiency aspects. The studies from service science field focus more on an operational perspective. The older people’s experiences have been more scantly contemplated. The study is qualitative in nature, following the phenomenological research paradigm. The research data was constructed in dialogue with the interviewees by the means of semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted with six representatives from service provision and five representing the customer point of view. The objectives and most important know-how of the providers were extracted and the service delivery process was constructed in outline as a simplified service blueprint. The most prevalent themes from the customer interviews were extracted thus representing an interpretation of how the service experience formed. Furthermore, the themes of service experience were summarized into perceptions of value. Compiled from literature and the empiric research, a new framework of the formation of service experience was developed. The framework is proposed to serve in clarifying and analyzing how customers’ experiences of services form and translate into value. The findings of the case study suggest that the providers of home-delivered meal service should offer value propositions with higher hedonic/emotional value. Now, the meal service appears to answer well to the older people’s utilitarian needs, but their more implicit emotional needs are not satisfied. In this study, it is proposed that firstly improving the appeal and tastiness of the meals and secondly increasing the feeling of control through freedom of choice could prove to be worthwhile measures in the pursuit of increasing the value of the entire service-value network.Description
Thesis advisor
Bask, AnuKeywords
service experience, older people, home care, meal service, utilitarian value, functional value, hedonic value, emotional value