Abstract:

People often make spending decisions (Saini and Monga, 2008). No matter on which phase of service buying process (search for information, purchase, after-sale service, resignation) consumers are obliged to spend some resources – their time, emotions, money or some mixture of these. As is stated in literature, cost reflects what is given up to acquire a service, both monetary and non-monetary sacrifices (Cronin et al., 2000). Costs issue is relevant due to the essence of customer perceived value that is the concept of give (e.g. payment, effort) and take (e.g. quality) aspects (Carlson et al., 2015). Fernández-Sabiote and Román (2012) claim that multichannel customers place special emphasis on price when assessing perceived value. In their research model, cost had a stronger impact on perceived service value than service quality (in both offline and online channel). For this reason, in multi- or even omnichannel environment it is worth taking closer look at a typical classification of purchase costs. Konus, Neslin, & Verhoef (2014) and Verhoef, Neslin, & Vroomen (2007) pay attention to such shopping costs as risk, emotion, adjustment, effort. The main question that author dares to ask is whether each of these costs is treated by buyers separately? Due to characteristics and competitive advantage of online (price) and offline (time) marketing channel author’s biggest curiosity refers to potential link between price and waiting time.