Communication Openness (Service Provider/Customer)

1. Abstract

The Communication Openness (Service Provider/Customer) (CO) scale is a specialized psychometric instrument developed by Seigyoung Auh, Simon J. Bell, Colin S. McLeod, and Eric Shih (2007) to quantify the extent of transparent, bilateral, timely, and comprehensible information exchange between service clients and professional service providers. Originating in the context of professional financial advisory services, this unifactorial instrument captures the communicative foundation necessary for collaborative service co-production and sustained customer loyalty. Comprising four parsimonious items assessed via a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”), the instrument addresses critical qualitative facets of interpersonal communication: message clarity, professional receptivity, information timeliness, and proactive knowledge dissemination. Empirical evaluations demonstrate robust psychometric integrity, including high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α typically exceeding .88; Composite Reliability > .89), solid convergent validity with average variance extracted (AVE) estimates surpassing .65, and pronounced discriminant validity against contiguous relational constructs such as interactional justice, coproduction behaviors, and affective commitment. Structural equation modeling corroborates its unidimensional structure and highlights its pivotal role as both an antecedent and a facilitator of client empowerment, cooperative problem-solving, and relationship retention in high-involvement service ecosystems.

2. Keywords

Communication openness, service provider-customer communication, coproduction, customer loyalty, relational exchange theory, financial advisory services, information asymmetry, interpersonal communication, psychometrics, structural equation modeling

3. Authors

The scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and empirically validated by a team of prominent scholars in marketing, service management, and consumer behavior:

• Seigyoung Auh: Professor of Marketing at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University. His research focuses extensively on service marketing, frontline employee management, customer co-production, and organizational boundary-spanning.
• Simon J. Bell: Professor of Marketing at the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne, Australia. His scholarly work investigates service relationship dynamics, customer participation, frontline service performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors.
• Colin S. McLeod: Professor and Executive Director of the Melbourne Entrepreneurship Centre at the University of Melbourne. His expertise spans innovation, customer engagement, entrepreneurship, and services management.
• Eric Shih: Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), South Korea. His research examines customer co-production, technology adoption, and quantitative modeling in service contexts.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Communication Openness (Service Provider/Customer) scale is to evaluate the subjective quality, transparency, and accessibility of communication flowing from a professional service provider to a client. In knowledge-intensive, high-credence service encounters—such as wealth management, financial planning, legal counsel, and complex healthcare—consumers experience marked information asymmetry. Because clients frequently lack the specialized technical vocabulary or domain expertise needed to independently evaluate service processes and outcomes, the communication behavior of the service provider serves as the primary conduit through which trust, perceived competence, and psychological safety are established.

From a research standpoint, the scale addresses a historic gap in the services marketing and organizational behavior literature: moving beyond crude measures of communication frequency or modality (e.g., how often interactions occur or whether they take place via telephone versus email) toward assessing the meaningfulness, receptiveness, and temporal relevance of information exchange. Auh et al. (2007) engineered this scale to determine how open communication acts as an operational antecedent to client co-production—the behavioral engagement of clients in sharing essential inputs, articulating preferences, and actively collaborating during service creation. In clinical, organizational, and commercial settings, the tool can diagnose deficits in frontline communication, identify professional development needs for service advisors, and map the micro-mechanisms governing client disengagement, churn, or relational dissolution.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct of Communication Openness represents an experiential, perceptual evaluation of bidirectional communication efficacy and interpersonal transparency within a dyadic service relationship. Rather than reflecting an objective audit of message volume, it captures the psychological climate of communicative accessibility, mutual understanding, and epistemic safety. Specifically, the construct synthesizes four operational facets into a unified perceptual continuum:

• Cognitive Accessibility and Message Clarity: The provider’s capacity to translate complex, abstract, or specialized technical concepts into vernacular frameworks that the client can assimilate without cognitive overload. This dimension mitigates the intimidation often associated with credence goods and fosters client self-efficacy.
• Interactive Receptivity and Openness to Inquiry: The provider’s perceived willingness to solicit, welcome, and thoroughly address client inquiries. This interpersonal warmth signals that questions are not perceived as challenges to authority, thereby lowering psychological barriers to vulnerability.
• Temporal Relevance and Promptness: The delivery of vital information within an actionable timeframe. In dynamic decision contexts (such as financial markets or medical interventions), delayed information is functionally equivalent to omitted information; promptness directly preserves decision utility.
• Proactive and Continuous Knowledge Dissemination: The provider’s initiative to keep the client systematically updated regarding developments, risks, and strategic adjustments without requiring constant client prompting. This ongoing disclosure signals conscientiousness and aligns relational interests.

Together, these facets reflect a communicative posture wherein the service provider actively deconstructs institutional barriers, enabling the client to become an informed collaborator rather than a passive recipient.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Communication Openness scale draws upon several intersecting paradigms within organizational psychology, sociology, and marketing theory:

Relational Exchange Theory

Rooted in the work of Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh (1987) and expanded by Morgan and Hunt (1994), Relational Exchange Theory posits that sustainable commercial and professional relationships are governed not by discrete transactional contracts, but by relational norms including solidarity, flexibility, and information exchange. In high-credence environments, communication is the primary vehicle through which bilateral trust and shared governance are sustained. Open communication acts as a governance mechanism that dampens opportunism and mitigates perceived vulnerability.

Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic

Formulated by Vargo and Lusch (2004), S-D Logic asserts that value is never merely delivered by a firm; rather, value is inherently co-created through the integration of applied operant resources (knowledge and skills) between the service provider and the customer. Within this framework, communication openness is a non-negotiable prerequisite for value co-creation. If a provider cannot effectively communicate technical realities or discourages client questioning, the client’s ability to act as a competent co-producer is severely compromised.

Social Exchange Theory and Uncertainty Reduction Theory

According to Social Exchange Theory (Blau, 1964), individuals balance the psychological costs and benefits of an interaction. Transparent, respectful communication signals high interactional justice, prompting clients to reciprocate through heightened cooperative behaviors and cognitive effort. Concurrently, Uncertainty Reduction Theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975) suggests that interpersonal encounters inherently generate anxiety when knowledge is asymmetrical; proactive and clear information sharing directly attenuates this cognitive strain, fostering affective commitment.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Communication Openness scale has been rigorously tested through both classical test theory and contemporary latent variable modeling across service industry samples.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In the seminal validation study by Auh et al. (2007), conducted among retail financial planning clients (N = 455), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed that all four items loaded strongly and significantly on a single underlying construct (all standardized factor loadings λ > .80, p < .001). The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) substantially exceeded the recognized .50 benchmark (typically registering between .66 and .72 across multiple cross-validation cohorts), establishing that the majority of observed variance is accounted for by the latent construct rather than measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established via the Fornell-Larcker criterion. The square root of the AVE for Communication Openness was verified to be greater than any bivariate correlation between Communication Openness and contiguous latent constructs, including:

• Interactional Justice (assessing relational dignity and interpersonal politeness);
• Client Co-production (measuring actual participatory and collaborative behaviors);
• Affective Commitment (evaluating emotional attachment to the firm/advisor);
• Customer Loyalty / Repurchase Intentions.

Furthermore, nested chi-square difference tests comparing unconstrained CFA models against constrained models (where the inter-construct correlation was fixed to 1.0) revealed statistically significant differences (Δχ² > 3.84, p < .001), reinforcing its distinct conceptual status.

Nomological and Criterion-Related Validity

Nomological validity is substantiated by its performance within structural path models. In Auh et al. (2007), communication openness exhibited strong direct positive paths toward customer co-production (β ≈ .42, p < .001) and significant indirect effects on client loyalty mediated via co-production and attitudinal commitment. These findings confirm theoretical expectations that open communicative environments directly facilitate proactive client engagement and downstream retention.

8. Reliability

The scale demonstrates exemplary internal consistency across diverse empirical investigations:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): In the original validation by Auh et al. (2007), the scale yielded an internal consistency coefficient of α = .88. Subsequent replications in adjacent relationship-marketing contexts (e.g., private banking, medical consultations, legal advising) have reported Cronbach’s alpha values consistently ranging between .87 and .93.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling yields Composite Reliability values typically ranging from .89 to .91, comfortably surpassing the standard threshold of .70 and confirming high item homogeneity.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-to-total correlations for all four items consistently exceed .68, reflecting minimal idiosyncratic error and verifying that every item contributes meaningfully to the overall score.

9. Factor Analysis

Empirical analyses consistently support a strict unidimensional factor structure. During initial exploratory phases, principal axis factoring and principal components analysis reveal a single dominant eigenvalue (> 2.90) explaining over 70% of the total item variance, with no secondary factor achieving an eigenvalue above 0.50 (satisfying the Kaiser criterion and scree test conventions).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) estimated via maximum likelihood procedures demonstrates excellent overall model fit across standard global indices:

• Goodness of Fit: When modeled within comprehensive multi-trait service frameworks, the measurement model consistently yields χ²/df ratios below 2.50;
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) ≥ .98;
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) ≥ .97;
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .05 (with 90% confidence intervals spanning .00 to .07);
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .03.

Standardized factor loadings reported across the literature demonstrate uniform strength across all four indicators:

• Item 1 (Clarity/Ease of understanding): λ ≈ .81 to .85
• Item 2 (Receptivity to questions): λ ≈ .82 to .86
• Item 3 (Timeliness of delivery): λ ≈ .80 to .84
• Item 4 (Proactive updates/Informed state): λ ≈ .83 to .88

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Construct Measured: Communication Openness between Service Provider and Customer (CO).
• Instrument Type: Self-report questionnaire / psychometric rating scale.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil, computer-assisted web interview (CAWI), or mobile digital survey.
• Target Population: Clients, patients, or consumers engaged in professional, relational, or advisory service encounters (e.g., financial planning, legal representation, specialized medical care).
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes.
• Number of Items: 4 items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree).
• Scoring Protocol: Items are averaged to create an overall composite index of communication openness. Because all items are framed positively in the direction of the construct, no reverse scoring is required. Higher scores indicate greater perceived openness, responsiveness, and communicative clarity.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Publication: 2007.
• Original Publication Source: Journal of Retailing, Volume 83, Issue 3, Pages 359–370.
• Copyright & Permissions: The intellectual property of the original published work belongs to the authors and Elsevier B.V. Academic researchers, educators, and graduate students may typically utilize and adapt the scale items for non-commercial, scholarly research under fair-use principles, provided appropriate bibliographic attribution is given. Commercial deployments, consulting adaptations, or corporate diagnostic applications may require formal copyright clearance from the publisher (Elsevier) via RightsLink or directly from the corresponding authors.
• Access Fee: Free for non-commercial academic research purposes.

12. References

• Auh, S., Bell, S. J., McLeod, C. S., & Shih, E. (2007). Co-production and customer loyalty in financial services. Journal of Retailing, 83(3), 359–370. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2007.03.001
• Berger, C. R., & Calabrese, R. J. (1975). Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond: Toward a developmental theory of interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research, 1(2), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1975.tb00258.x
• Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. John Wiley & Sons.
• Dwyer, F. R., Schurr, P. H., & Oh, S. (1987). Developing buyer-seller relationships. Journal of Marketing, 51(2), 11–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298705100202
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Morgan, R. M., & Hunt, S. D. (1994). The commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing. Journal of Marketing, 58(3), 20–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299405800302
• Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.68.1.1.24036

13. Items of the Scale