More Isn't Always Better – Measuring Customers' Preferences for Digital Process Transparency

Abstract

Digital technologies have made the line of visibility more transparent, enabling customers to get deeper insights into an organization's core operations than ever before. This creates new challenges for organizations trying to consistently deliver high-quality customer experiences. In this paper we conduct an empirical analysis of customers’ preferences and their willingness-to-pay for different degrees of process transparency, using the example of digitally-enabled business-to-customer delivery services. Applying conjoint analysis, we quantify customers' preferences and willingness-to-pay for different service attributes and levels. Our contributions are two-fold: For research, we provide empirical measurements of customers’ preferences and their willingness-to-pay for process transparency, suggesting that more is not always better. Additionally, we provide a blueprint of how conjoint analysis can be applied to study design decisions regarding changing an organization's digital line of visibility. For practice, our findings enable service managers to make decisions about process transparency and establishing different levels of service quality.