Gadrey, Galloui and Weinstein (1995) define service innovation as innovation in processes and innovation in organizations for existing service products. Service innovation can also be described as new developments in activities undertaken to deliver core service products for various reasons, e.g. to make those core service products more attractive to consumers (Oke, 2007). Service firms view innovation as a valuable asset that holds the potential to enable increase in firm performance and competitive advantage. In accordance with some earlier scholars, Victorino Verma, Plaschka, and Dev (2005) support this assertion and posit that in the services sector, the benefits of innovation is apparent as it enhances service differentiation and induces financial gains to firms. Considered as a strategic ingredient for firms simply wanting to remain competitive and improve performance, continuous innovation is seen by various scholars as very imperative (Darroch & McNaughton, 2002; Li & Atuahene-Gima, 2001). Most scholars have argued that innovation is paramount in a contemporary environment characterized by hyper-competition (D’Aveni, 1994; Otero-Neira et al., 2009; Grawe, et al., 2009), as such, strong and speedy competitive moves call for firms to constantly innovate to create new advantages (Dess & Picken, 2000). …show more content…
Anning Dorson (2016) supports this assertion and posits that in a highly competitive environment, it is rather high levels of service innovations and the alignment of environmental conditions to its implementation that yield maximum service firms’ performance. In recognition of such marketing challenge, marketing scholars and practitioners are increasingly acknowledging that, high levels of service innovations can be built through a range of behaviors conceptualized as customer engagement. Brodie et al. (2011) therefore conceptualizes the customer engagement concept as “a psychological state that occurs by virtue of interactive, co-creative customer experiences with a focal agent/object in focal service relationships”. Similarly, Hollebeek (2009) supports this conceptualization and posit that customer engagement has the potential to enhance customer loyalty and superior firms’ performance through a strong enduring psychological connection accompanied by interactive brand experiences beyond purchase. As mentioned by Sprott, Czellar and Spangenberg (2009), customer engagements with a service brand influences important aspects of consumer brand knowledge, brand perception, brand attitude, brand loyalty and hence increase service