328 Int. J. Services, Economics and Management, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2013

Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Consumers purchasing new homes – trust and taste building through e-service and competence in the housing market

Minna Autio* Department of Economics and Management, Consumer Economics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27 00014, Finland E-mail: minna.autio@helsinki.fi *Corresponding author

Jaakko Autio Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 54 00014, Finland E-mail: jaakko.a.autio@helsinki.fi

Abstract: Our study examines the issues of how service company and customer experiences meet each other in service innovation, and how trust is negotiated in their interaction. We focus on a customer-oriented interior decorating e-service for clients developed by a construction company. Through qualitative material we analyse what constructs trust in the company service encounter. E-service is seen by the customers as a playful tool for visualisation and decision-making concerning their future homes, and by the company as a cost-effective and affordable tool for their clients. Consumer trust is built through company personnel competence, expertise and integrity, alongside with company brand, reputation and personified customer relations. However, trust in taste seems to be an integral part of home-related consumption. A consumer’s individual taste contests with the ‘average taste’ of companies and industry.

Keywords: trust; taste; average taste; customer; consumer; e-service innovation; competence; personal service; housing market; qualitative research.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Autio, M. and Autio, J. (2013) ‘Consumers purchasing new homes – trust and taste building through e-service and competence in the housing market’, Int. J. Services, Economics and Management, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp.328–340.

Biographical notes: Minna Autio works as a Senior Lecturer in Consumer Economics at the University of Helsinki, Department of Economics and Management. Her research interests include cultural practices of consumer society, service innovations and consumer policy issues. She has specialised in qualitative research methods and methodology. She has recently studied consumers’ end-user experiences in the service sector.

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Jaakko Autio works as a Researcher in Economic and Social History at the University of Helsinki, Department of Political and Economic Studies. He has been recently teaching corporate communication at the Aalto University School of Business. His research interests include service innovation, the rhetoric of strategic management and business history.

1 Introduction

Consumers currently consider economic, aesthetic, functional, environmental and symbolic aspects important when choosing a dwelling (e.g., Hoyer and Stokburger-Sauer, 2012; Killip, 2013). The home also reflects consumer styles and identity, and is affected by culturally defined aesthetic values, norms and design practices (Featherstone, 1991). Consumer aspiration concerning housing solutions change over time when regarding flat size, colours and interior decorating trends etc. The construction industry has been seen as conservative in meeting consumer expectations and it has been argued that this business area in particular uniformly resists innovations (Harris and Halkett, 2007) and focuses mainly on cost-effectiveness.

In Finland at least, the earning logic of the construction industry has traditionally been based on characteristics defined by Georg Ritzer’s (1993) notions of efficiency, calculability, predictability and technological control. However, the construction industry is attempting to respond to consumers’ diversifying housing desires by moving towards a more customer-centric culture (e.g., Harris and Halkett, 2007; Autio et al., 2011; Kaijanen, 2010; Killip, 2013). For example, consumer-customers have more opportunities for influencing solutions regarding their homes, previously carried out by an architect or interior decorator. Active consumers who plan and implement their own choices for their new homes should thus be seen as vital actors in the housing market.

For companies to create successful, innovative and customer-oriented business strategies, they need to understand people’s everyday life expectations and experiences (e.g., Carù and Cova, 2007). Service marketing theories have stressed the importance of customer needs and wants, alongside the service-dominant logic where companies and customers jointly co-create the value of a product or service (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Although theories increasingly emphasise the importance of the consumer-customer, and how crucial it is for businesses to understand people’s lives and world-views, in practice phenomena are often examined from the company’s perspective, which restricts understanding the customer in an everyday context.

Alternatively consumer cultural theory sees consumption and production as an interactive and dynamic signifying process between consumers, producers and researchers (e.g., Arnould and Thompson, 2005; Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). Innovative ideas, consumer expectations, societal values and norms, as well as culturally shared significances are materialised in the form of products and services in this process (du Gay et al., 1997). Consumers are thus seen as active players that shape and negotiate the meanings of products and services (e.g., Cova et al., 2007; Carù and Cova, 2007). In this sense consumer cultural theory has approached the service-dominant logic of marketing, where customers and companies together produce the value of a service (Arnould, 2007; Helkkula, 2011; Uden and Naaranoja, 2011).

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Instead of studying value co-creation as such we firstly focus on home buyers’ experiences in everyday life settings and secondly on meanings of trust and the role of taste in the housing market. Trust is essential because purchasing a home is usually the largest individual expenditure item for a household (Säylä, 2009), and it thus requires mutual trust between the consumer and the company personnel. Our empirical context is the Finnish housing market, where an innovative construction company (Harris and Halkett, 2007) has developed an e-service that enables a home buyer to visualise the furniture and interior decorating solutions available for the new flat. This additional service does not focus on the actually selling flats, but forms part of a service process leading toward the selection of materials for a flat under construction. The interior decorating e-service allows the active participation of a consumer who can select materials for the future home. We study both the consumers’ experiences with the e-service and the building of trust between a home buyer and service provider (e.g., Blomqvist, 1997).

2 Consumer-company relationship – trust and taste

Consumer cultural research has taken an interest in consumer-customers’ service experiences (e.g., Arnould and Price, 1993; Carù and Cova, 2007), where the aim is to understand shared cultural symbols, myths, values, stereotypes, role expectations and stories (Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). In the cultural approach, customers and the market are not seen as ‘manageable’ by collecting and analysing numerical data. The market is rather viewed as a common cultural product of companies, employees and consumers alike, which is why these agents should be studied together (Peñaloza, 2000; Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). This enables the company to develop products and services that are both meaningful and comprehensible to their customers.

Relationship marketing theories have also emphasised the importance of interaction between companies and customers alongside commitment and trust, as requirements for the creation of long-term relationships (e.g., Grönroos, 1994; Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Blomqvist, 1997; Bagdoniene and Hopeniene, 2013). According to Grönroos (1994, pp.9–11), trust is necessary in customer relations and partnerships due to the agents’ unequal position. The weaker or more vulnerable the position of one negotiating party, the more that party needs to trust their collaborator. If the trading party have nothing to lose, trust is not essential either (e.g., Autio et al., 2011).

Trust is a multidimensional and elusive concept with several meanings. Trust can, e.g., be understood as being process-based, institutional-based or knowledge-based (e.g., Shapiro et al., 1992; Bagdoniene and Hopeniene, 2013). Furthermore, trust is categorised as benevolence, integrity and competence (expertise), and it is often divided into a cognitive and affective side (e.g., Komiak and Benbasat, 2004). In consumer business, trust is based on the belief that a company or a representative of company personnel cares for the customer (e.g., Kaijanen, 2010; Kania and Gruber, 2013), and acts in the customer’s best interest. In other words ‘takes care of the customer’. Trust can also stem from a sense of security and comfort which the customer experience while interacting with the service provider (e.g., Blomqvist, 1997; Bagdoniene and Hopeniene, 2013; Kania and Gruber, 2013). In this case the personnel in customer interface (e.g., salesmen and saleswomen, customer servants and other experts) play a central role in the process of producing confidence amongst clients (Blomqvist, 1997).

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Competence, expertise and integrity (including honesty) are key concepts in our study in regards to the trust-building process when examining the empirical data. However, the housing context and the decoration service in particular brought up the issue on taste (e.g., Bourdieu, 1984; Featherstone, 1991). As Hoyer and Stokburger-Sauer (2012) have argued, consumer taste plays a critical role in judgment and decision-making, particularly for hedonic products and services. According to Bourdieu (1984), cultural taste, related to, e.g., clothing, home furnishings and entertainment, is created by upbringing and education. Through culture we learn what represents ‘good’ or ‘bad’ taste (e.g., Soronen, 2011). Consumers continuously negotiate the cultural meanings of products and services (e.g., Cova et al., 2007; Carù and Cova, 2007) and thus participate in the process of defining taste. Madigan and Munro (1996) have argued that ‘home’ carries a heavy ideological weight and influences the interpretation of home-related consumption (e.g., questions of style, design and tastefulness). Thus, trust in taste seems to be an essential part of the trust-building process in the housing market.

3 Research material and questions

The starting point of our study1 was to compare user and service provider perspectives on e-service to find out how end user experiences meet the service provider perspective. Interviews were chosen as the method of data collection to analyse individual experiences (Moisander et al., 2009), which concurrently enact and reveal cultural meanings. We examine customer experiences and trust building in the housing market through an e-service provided by a construction company. As argued above, this service offers home buyers the possibility to explore various interior decorating and equipment solutions, such as kitchen fittings or floor areas for their flat under construction.

The interviewed home buyers are the company’s customers because they have already made the decision of purchasing a flat. Our study was carried out at a point in time when the alteration choices had been made, but the home buyers had not yet been able to move into their new flats. The service is internet-based and open access. The sample home seen in the e-service is not flat-specific however, so it is not possible for the consumer to examine an individual flat of her choice, nor does it therefore supply exact price calculations for the selected alterations.

Our study is explorative in nature as the e-service was launched recently but is not in great use. Furthermore, the study focus is on one construction company and its customers, and therefore only a limited amount of consumers were available for interview. Home buyers who had used the e-service were also difficult to reach as the service was launched recently. Our results should therefore be treated with caution.

We interviewed six company personnel (e.g., an interior architect, marketing manager) involved in the interior decorating and furnishing e-service, and six customers using the e-service (Peñaloza, 2000; see Autio et al., 2011). Company personnel were interviewed first, to form a picture of their understanding of the newly developed e-service. Our interest was in how the informants described their experience, and what aspects the personnel considered valuable for their customers. The customers were interviewed next and asked how they familiarised themselves with the new service, how they experienced using it, and how they would like to develop the e-service. Although the original purpose of the customer interviews was to obtain data on the e-service, the interviewees also elaborated further on the service they had received during the process

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of buying a home and completing it, as well as on the factors influencing their trust towards the construction company and the industry as a whole. This means that although a rather narrow section of the service business was studied, consumer interviews open up a wider perspective of the field and its cultural practices (e.g., Denzin, 2001). This enabled us to study not only the service innovation but also the service culture of the company, as well as the related trust and power structures (Autio et al., 2011).

We used data-driven analysis, meaning that we did not have specific questions in mind at the beginning of the interviews (Moisander at al., 2009). After the interviews we turned to thematic analysis, with trust and taste gain as our main interest (also Autio et al., 2011). Our research questions are

1 How do customers experience the e-service as part of the company’s service encounter?

2 What constructs the trust in the service encounter?

4 Consumers and company personnel discussing e-service and the housing market

4.1 Trust in the e-service – visualisation and being looked after

When a Finnish consumer buys a home, the flat is usually based on turnkey solutions. Individual preferences can thus be mostly based on furnishing and decorating solutions from pre-selected packages (Mäntysalo and Puustinen, 2008). A home buyer can visualise the new flat either by using a conceptual drawing or trusting one’s own imagination, as the home has not been built yet. Some construction companies also build and decorate ‘model’ homes to present real-life solutions. However, a need existed for developing a new service for virtually visualising interior decoration. A company representative defines the advantages of this visualising e-service for the customers:

“So we clearly get the customer interested in our wonderful projects. And when you think further what something looks like, what are the alternatives, well this is an excellent way of visualising all that. (…) We do after all want to be a customer-oriented agent, so it does look like, all the trends and all the customer surveys indicated that more and more of those options for doing and taking care of things should be online. (…) And then the fact that this kind of internal objective exists, so customers find it easier to make those decisions and that brings us the transactions. (…) It might be an advantage for the work sales personnel and customer service engineers that they don’t have to go back and forth quite as much with the customer, being able to visually demonstrate that this is what the end result might turn out like. (...) But I’d say that that’s the kind of added value we can create with, for example, other agents in this line of business in mind.” (Personnel Interview number 3)

The quote above shows that the development of the service has also been affected by pressure of the operational environment, such as a general e-tendency in the business world and an objective for setting oneself apart from the competition, as well as the internal needs of a company, e.g., making work easier and more efficient. According to Lin et al. (2007, p.225), companies develop e-services to increase the efficiency of their business activities, improve existing services and ultimately create added value to consumers. Personnel interviewees perceive modern consumers as being accustomed to

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doing business online and inspired by original solutions in interior decorating magazines and TV shows.

The furnishing and decoration choices for the flats sold by the construction company are made, as mentioned above, from a limited selection of pre-determined options. The sales price normally includes a few basic options, after which the buyer has the possibility of selecting from alternatives offered by the constructor for an additional price. The interviewed flat-buyers mentioned that they had used the new e-service both before the actual transaction to examine equipment standards, and after the transaction to make furnishing choices. A customer reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of the new e-service:

“Because it was e.g. very difficult for me to picture it [interior decoration], having one conceptual image with certain colours, but also e.g. the bathroom was a completely different shape in the image. So I think they could’ve made one in a way that would have corresponded to your actual blueprint and then you could place the colours in that. But on the other hand it’s [e-service] a very fun pastime for me, I’ve been to the site often to have a gander and see what it might come out like. At times I noticed that I was even getting a bit hooked, jotting down names of tiles and checking other sites to see how it might turn out.” (Home Buyer, Interview number 1, 30 years of age)

The service provides an opportunity to experiment with different alternatives, which then activates consumers to play around with the options and may even get a consumer a bit ‘hooked’ on experimenting. Although the consumers feel that the e-service improved their service experience with the company in question, they also find aspects to be improved. Customers complain the colours are not natural and the service does not provide sufficient information for making final decisions concerning furniture and decoration. Customers feel that it is essential to become acquainted with real-life samples in a housing exposition or model flat. The apartment alteration calculator, which tells the additional choice costs, also appears to be cursory and does not specify how alterations would affect the total price. The problem with perception is partly due to the customers’ lack of competence as new apartments are bought so rarely. A customer narrates:

“Maybe it [alteration options] wasn’t terribly clear, all these alterations and such. It hasn’t always been clear, the things it [e-service] clearly includes and which ones are separate and how the payments go and what the instalments are. And it’s also always been a little confusing what the deadline is for ordering each thing (…) so it’s not really that clear for me, not being an expert. (…) And then you don’t necessarily understand all of the notations, not being a construction professional, it’s not really all crystal clear in your mind.” (Home Buyer, Interview number 6, over 40 years of age)

The company’s main challenge is how to make the e-service so straightforward and reliable so that the customer feels secure making decisions. The interviews brought out an issue of trust: consumers value the trustworthiness of a construction company and want to be ‘looked after’ for the duration of the home-buying process (also Kaijanen, 2010). Customers also value information reliability, constant updates and the expertise of company personnel. As Vargo and Lusch (2004, p.9) have argued, the primary flow in the service economy is information, meaning that service is the provision of information to a consumer who desires it, with or without an accompanying appliance. The information provided by the e-service seems to be insufficient when regarding visualisation and pricing. The customer’s decision-making is thus primarily based on

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personal service. Trust is in fact constructed upon the abilities, expertise and integrity of a service provider (Kania and Gruber, 2013), and the e-service supports the trust-building process. Although buying a home is a financially substantial investment, price is not necessarily always the deciding factor, as alongside it consumers appreciate service that takes the customer into account.

4.2 Trust in competence – negotiating average and individual taste

As Finnish scholars Väliniemi et al. (2008) have argued, offering consumers additional details and alterations is a traditional way of modifying interior decoration. Customers can only influence the variety of choices in a limited number of ways, because companies usually only offer pre-produced options. Due to construction being expensive, and alterations even more so, the product range has to be simple and affordable. However, customers can make their own decorating decisions according to their taste if they are prepared to pay separately for not choosing standard options.

The question amounts to who defines ‘average taste’, i.e., sets the options to be chosen from. As Moisander and Valtonen (2006) argue, companies use knowledge and expertise to control and manage people’s buying and consumption habits and their tastes. We asked company personnel whether more alternatives ought to be made available for customers. They emphasised their expertise, meaning that the company’s own interior decorators and architects had already developed compatible selections for consumers. The company personnel justified the selection by mentioning that consumers are incapable of promoting their individual taste. A company representative argues:

“I just think Finns are so, sort of, safety-oriented. These [pre-selected packages] are after all, sort of sure, durable. You always think… some people may think they won’t hang any pictures up on the walls because they think they’ll sell it [the flat] eventually, so not to make a hole. So there’s a lot of these kinds of people. (…) But people do look for, in e.g. kitchen cupboards, the kind of simplicity that lasts a long time and is easy. Nothing too individual. So I don’t think the ones that are after the individual stuff would necessarily come get a new flat.” (Personnel Interview number 4)

This view illustrates how the interviewee uses the resale price to justify a safe, average solution. This idea is based on the assumption that a flat inconsistent with ‘average taste’ may be more difficult to sell later on. However, this view conflicted with another company representative’s interpretation:

“I do believe housing is a once-in-a-lifetime investment for a person. So they really do put thought into it. And more and more these decorating trends and the TV is full of decorating programmes, with green space construction and so on, they are on the rise. So normal people now concern themselves with these things. So not just the trendsetters, which used to be the case.” (Personnel Interview number 3)

This view emphasises that contemporary consumers seek original ideas for interiors, a view that originally directed the development of the e-service. Thus, consumers do not want to buy a so-called ‘bulk flat’, but would rather change the look of their home using alterations (Autio et al., 2011). Rask et al. (2008, p.45) have argued that housing planning is affected by various myths, one of which is ‘consumers are conservative’ (also Soronen, 2011). Constructors think that consumers do not want novelties, are protective of their living environment and prefer to stick to their old habits. Rask et al. (2008) see that

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experts in city planning and construction bring up the consumer’s resistance to change and the inability to invent interesting novelties, which to the experts is a reason to keep expertise and ultimately authority with themselves also in the future.

Although consumers stressed how limited the selection was, opposite views were also stated. This home buyer trusts that the experts working for the company have considered the best for the consumer:

“Yeah, I was able to check out the options. And I thought it was nice, the fact it [the e-service] wouldn’t let you make some selections, because they wouldn’t have worked together anyway. So it guided you a little. But quite well in my opinion. So it wouldn’t let you make completely crazy combinations. There have after all been, I assume, professionals setting up those specific combinations. So then why would you not listen to them.” (Home Buyer, Interview number 2, over 60 years of age)

This interviewee has interpreted the small range of possibilities offered by the e-service to be due to the fact that the company’s experts aim to prevent consumers from making incompatible choices. In other words they define consumer taste (Moisander and Valtonen, 2006). The view that company personnel consider the good of the consumer may have increased the interviewee’s trust in the company. Sales representatives and alterations architects, as well as people responsible for marketing, are close to the customer interface, and can in fact be considered experts. They consider themselves competent to define which of the consumer’s selection criteria are relevant. However, the personnel interviews clearly reflected an internalised idea that the cause for the limited selection was the company’s earning logic:

“Somehow the main emphasis, selling the flat, well it might be something like us making and marketing, so buy this flat and we have this new service to entice and get them hooked in a way. (…) And then even though we want the website to mention the alterations and there is a section called “alterations”, but even so we think maybe we could sell them without any alterations after all.” (Personnel Interview number 6)

Personifying housing is challenging for companies because alterations slow down the construction work and may lower efficiency. On the other hand the interviews did reveal that the personnel had internalised customer-centricity, to provide consumers individual flats and living options. However, they have concurrently adopted a production-centric frame of mind that has been dominant in the industry for a long time, one of fast and cost-effective construction (Harris and Halkett, 2007), which may hinder customer-centric thinking. However, a company’s cost effectiveness also serves consumer interest in a healthy competitive market.

These two ideologies – individual taste versus a company’s earning logic and company taste – hence battle in the housing field, and are reconciled by both the construction company and the consumer. A consumer looking for individual solutions also faces the added pressure of cost, as one has to be willing to pay more for personifying the flat. The consumer has to concurrently bear the possible financial risk for lowering the resale value if the personal choices prove to be ‘too’ original, instead of catering to ‘the average taste’. On the other hand, a consumer can add to the value of their flat with their own high-quality interior solutions (Autio et al., 2011) and alteration costs may even be lower when the work is carried out by the consumer himself or by a privately-hired craftsman.

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4.3 Playing with trust and distrust: industry, company and personal service

During recent years the construction industry has frequently been featured in Finnish media regarding problems with flawed construction. Discussions have been carried out on poor building quality, dishonesty, and the troubles home buyers have encountered with constructors if problems have arisen after moving in. As Forsythe (2006) has argued in the Australian housing context, consumers tend to be highly involved in following the building materialise and are likely to have a strong emotional attachment to the quality of the resulting end product. According to Forsythe (2006), distrust in the construction industry originates from a change in construction culture. In previous times a clear understanding of quality existed, which was handed down from master tradesman to apprentice, and supervision was generally provided on a relatively full-time basis by either an on-site builder or possibly a leading hand carpenter. Forsythe (2006) sees that changes in the organisational and business structure of the residential construction industry, plus a lack of skilled labour, have gradually caused the erosion of such traditions. We have faced similar changes also in Finland. A customer relates ‘how things used to be’:

“There was a show on TV, discussing how when they build these days they do sloppy work, nothing you can do about it, compared to how things used to be. (…). We all spend our own money, most of us don’t have millions to part with, so when you do buy one [flat] you do definitely want to buy quality. That is to say you want a decent one. My sister’s flat e.g., eventually they got another firm in the end to do the final repairs, which were left from the construction phase. I do wish of course that that won’t happen with this company. That they’ll fix whatever might come up.” (Home Buyer, Interview number 2, over 60 years of age)

During the interviews home buyers did speak quite a lot about the worry related to construction standards, even though this subject was not the theme of the interviews. In addition to the media, distrust towards the field was brought on by unpleasant experiences in the consumers’ close network (word-of-mouth). The interviewed home buyers mentioned their concern regarding the way the construction company will deal with possible problems arising after residents have moved into their new flat. Distrust felt towards the field may also stem from the unequal position of constructors and consumers (e.g., Grönroos, 1994), due the fact that construction companies are influential and have more power compared to the customer (Autio et al., 2011).

Consumers’ trust towards a company is based on a sense of security and comfort, which reinforces customer relationships with the service provider (e.g., Blomqvist, 1997; Kania and Gruber, 2013). The following quotation from a customer reflects the difficult relationship with construction agents:

“The biggest challenge anyway is somehow making sure what the quality of construction is. What you can expect. That’s probably the biggest challenge in general when dealing with buildings. And that simply is difficult.” (Home buyer, Interview number 3, over 50 years of age)

The home buyers were happy with how the construction company had handled the deal so far. Personal service provided by the sales personnel and alterations architects especially received positive reflection from the home buyers. The furnishing and decoration e-service works as an additional tool, but it does not replace the human interface:

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“Well of course I was very happy, especially with this Anna Aalto who I dealt with. If I sent her an enquiry, if she did not respond the very same day, the next day at the latest she would have replied. So that in itself already helped a whole lot. And I never felt like, can I ask these questions, is this a stupid question. So to me the customer service here worked wonderfully well. (…) every now and then you start to wonder whether it’s overkill going back and forth on something like the tile grout colour, but really it’s not because it’s going to be your own home in the end. And then also what it’s really going to look like and whether you are making good choices, well I thought it was really nice, the fact they’d give their opinion and she also had some tips for how it ought to be done.” (Home Buyer, Interview number 1, 30 years of age)

Although the customer is content with the service, her view reflects the existing power structure between the service provider and customer. She feels awkward about wanting a specific tile grout colour for her home. Expressing her personal taste and creating the feeling of hominess is culturally bound. She wants to distinguish herself from the average, safety-oriented Finn (Rask et al., 2008) and requires that the company serves and supports her personal taste (Soronen, 2011), but still wishes for a second opinion. The construction company on the other hand does not encourage individual decoration choices and changes due to the logistical challenge (ref., personnel interview number 6 above).

The interviewees stated that the sales and alterations personnel they had spoken to had been very knowledgeable and had genuinely listened to their concerns and given them advice when necessary. It is also interesting that the consumers spoke of the salespeople by name (Autio et al., 2011). Interaction with the sales personnel is close, and they are not seen as impersonal company representatives, but rather as a link of trust between the company and customer-consumers. Kania and Gruber (2013) argue that usually it is the salesperson that knows his customers by name to create a sense of security and trust. It seems that in the housing market context it is also in the customer’s interest to create a close relationship with the company personnel. As Kania and Gruber (2013) further argued, both customers and employees identified several similar concepts as being important for a successful service encounter e.g. friendliness, competence, responsiveness, honesty and communication skills.

Trust in the salesperson, the company and the company brand is built through complex interaction. Sales personnel ethics is an important factor in the construction of trust. Román and Ruiz (2005) have described how ethical behaviour in salespeople increases customer satisfaction, commitment to the salesperson and through him/her to the company, and increases trust (Cho and Menor, 2010). The salespeople in the company we studied were generally considered reliable and customers being on a first-name basis with their sales representative also reflects customer commitment to a salesperson they consider trustworthy.

5 Conclusions

We have studied how trust and taste are articulated in the housing context where a construction company has developed an electronic interior decoration service. Consumers perceive the e-service as a rather sufficient visualising instrument with solutions designed by professionals. The playfulness of the e-service encourages and activates customers (e.g., Cova et al., 2007) to experiment and imagine their future flat. On the other hand

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customers also felt that the service did not fulfil their personal expectations (Table 1), and wished for a flat-specific service (structure of ground plan, colours and materials, transparency of pricing) and would like to see more alternatives for furniture and decoration.

Home buyers recognised that the existing selection represents average cultural taste. When customers choose one of the pre-planned decoration alternatives for their flat and express their satisfaction with the offerings, they reinforce the assumption of safety-oriented Finns (Rask at al., 2008; Soronen, 2011). Taking average taste as a starting point for housing design creates tension between the company and customer. Company personnel, on the other hand, see that selections provided by professionals are safe, affordable and therefore desirable. A company’s customer-oriented approach seems to be run over by the principles of logistics and by carrying out alterations, thus customers may feel like the underdog in relation to the company. Table 1 Dimensions of customer trust

Actors Building and reducing trust

E-service • Taste of the offerings Visualisation and usability • Playfulness, easier to imagine flat under construction • Reducing trust: visual capacity of e-service, pricing

Personnel/company • Expertise on taste Competence • Expertise on personal service • Looking after, sense of security and comfort • Company brand • Reducing trust: company’s average taste

Industry • Cultural average taste Reputation • Cost-effectiveness • Reducing trust: poor quality of building, negative word-of-

mouth, producer-centricity

Despite the faults of the new e-service, the unclear pricing and the distrust rising towards the field, consumers trust the competence, expertise and integrity of the salespeople (Table 1), and that the personnel were acting in the customers’ best interest (Blomqvist, 1997; Kania and Gruber, 2013). Particularly ongoing communication between personnel and customers and care, i.e., maintaining interaction, is essential in trust-building. Customers experience trust towards the company, its brand and reputation especially through personal contacts and personified customer relations. The elements reducing trust are mostly industry-based, e.g., poor building quality and dishonesty (also Forsythe, 2006). One important trust dimension in the housing industry is taste (Table 1, Hoyer and Stokburger-Sauer, 2012), which has been neglected in earlier service studies.

As companies move towards increasingly web-based services, the interaction and mutual balance between virtual and personal service play a key role. Thus, a virtual supplementary service cannot replace face-to-face interaction in the housing market, but it can support the success of the service process and it enables consumers to perform self-directed experiments and decisions. Seeing consumers as active agents in trust-building

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and also in taste-building in our case would provide tools for remodelling the value co-creative processes in the housing market.

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Notes 1 The data of our study is collected as a part of the project INNOPEX – Service innovation from

the provider perspective and as a customer experience funded by Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. The aim of our project was to increase understanding on how the service provider perspective is in-line with end user experiences.