Implications of applying pragmatism to inform a holistic account of customers’ in everyday life
| Pragmatism | Pragmatism for service management | Implications for service research and practice | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Researchers should pay attention to: | Practitioners should pay attention to: | ||
| Focus on the connection between knowledge and action in context | The customer’s everyday life represents a holistic gestalt—a triadic constellation of experiencing, knowing, and acting in everyday life. Customers are different and holistically unique. Subjective time plays a role: past, present, and future are omnipresent | Customers as holistic entities and how they orchestrate their life and service use The complexities of service use, and its value as determined by customers’ holistic contexts Service as a practical support for and resource in everyday life Diversity, not commonality Change and dynamics in customers’ experiencing, knowing, and acting | Customer relevance: Any service is always related to elements in customers’ lives, and these elements are not necessarily evident nor visible but may be significant Customer differences: Customers are fundamentally different from one another and do not live only in the present but also in their subjective past and future |
| Core processes of pragmatism | |||
| Experiencing: Experiencing accumulates continuously from internal conditions and external sources of the environment. | Experiencing connects customers’ knowing and acting holistically and dynamically in their everyday life contexts in a continuous recursive process. The elements of the experiencing process should be identified, including triggers and modes of sensemaking | Contextual factors influencing customers, e.g., loneliness, illness, unemployment, economic problems, love, hobbies, and political and religious convictions Customers’ sensemaking processes | Understanding customers’ sensemaking process – as it relates to what services are relevant and how service providers are selected – as the result of customers’ consideration of beliefs and outcomes of actions |
| Knowing: Customers’ beliefs and how and why these beliefs are changing are based on ongoing actions. | Meaning emerges from the practical interpretation and reinterpretation of experiences and actions Customers are subjectively rational; that is, they follow their own reasoning | The relevance and meaning of service offerings, brands, experiences, and value-in-use for customers | Exploring customers’ meaning formation and what is relevant and meaningful for the customer |
| Acting: Actions have problem-solving capacity and are future-oriented. | Customers’ activities become idiosyncratic patterns adapted to their lives and contexts. These activities may change due to external disruptions in the environment or internal changes | Everyday life as dependent on past action and indication of future action Behaviors and value-in-use do not occur in a vacuum but are guided by what customers want to achieve in life | Exploring how the service provider may become selected by customers as a resource and actor in their lives |
| Permeative principles of pragmatism | |||
| Actionability: Capable of being put to use | Customers envision the consequences of acting in a certain way and under the given observed conditions. Their aspirations, resources, and contexts drive their behaviors and choices | Future consequences and what customers want to achieve, rather than their perceptions, experiences, and actions in relation to offerings, companies, or brands | Supporting customers’ aspirations beyond use of specific offerings and brands |
| Recursiveness: Continuously adapting, enacting, and reconstructing everyday life | Everyday life and, consequently, the rest of society are changing as a function of accumulated and prospective actions, reflexivity, and sensemaking | Dynamism and change in customers and everyday life | The ability to respond to emergent and changing behavior and demands |
| Duality: Interdependence of means and ends | Everyday life is diverse and complex, and customers use subjective reference points that guide their behaviors | Customers’ lens of their own subjective reasoning: they cannot be studied based on theoretical or provider’s logic | The diversity among customers that is related to their holistic identity and aspirations |
| Pragmatism | Pragmatism for service management | Implications for service research and practice | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Researchers should pay attention to: | Practitioners should pay attention to: | ||
| Focus on the connection between knowledge and action in context | The customer’s everyday life represents a holistic gestalt—a triadic constellation of experiencing, knowing, and acting in everyday life. | Customers as holistic entities and how they orchestrate their life and service use | |
| Experiencing connects customers’ knowing and acting holistically and dynamically in their everyday life contexts in a continuous recursive process. The elements of the experiencing process should be identified, including triggers and modes of sensemaking | Contextual factors influencing customers, e.g., loneliness, illness, unemployment, economic problems, love, hobbies, and political and religious convictions | Understanding customers’ sensemaking process – as it relates to what services are relevant and how service providers are selected – as the result of customers’ consideration of beliefs and outcomes of actions | |
| Meaning emerges from the practical interpretation and reinterpretation of experiences and actions | The relevance and meaning of service offerings, brands, experiences, and value-in-use for customers | Exploring customers’ meaning formation and what is relevant and meaningful for the customer | |
| Customers’ activities become idiosyncratic patterns adapted to their lives and contexts. These activities may change due to external disruptions in the environment or internal changes | Everyday life as dependent on past action and indication of future action | Exploring how the service provider may become selected by customers as a resource and actor in their lives | |
| Customers envision the consequences of acting in a certain way and under the given observed conditions. Their aspirations, resources, and contexts drive their behaviors and choices | Future consequences and what customers want to achieve, rather than their perceptions, experiences, and actions in relation to offerings, companies, or brands | Supporting customers’ aspirations beyond use of specific offerings and brands | |
| Everyday life and, consequently, the rest of society are changing as a function of accumulated and prospective actions, reflexivity, and sensemaking | Dynamism and change in customers and everyday life | The ability to respond to emergent and changing behavior and demands | |
| Everyday life is diverse and complex, and customers use subjective reference points that guide their behaviors | Customers’ lens of their own subjective reasoning: they cannot be studied based on theoretical or provider’s logic | The diversity among customers that is related to their holistic identity and aspirations | |