Unveiling professional service providers' willingness to educate: A configurational approach

Abstract
Customer education in professional business services demands that service providers solve multiple trade-offs in allocating limited educational resources. This study explains the differences in service providers' willingness to provide education in professional business services. Supported by the relationship marketing literature, service-dominant logic, and transaction-cost economics, the authors adopt a configurational approach to conceptualize the willingness to educate as a complex phenomenon. A fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis applied to a sample of 240 marketing service providers reveals eight equifinal configurations that elicit a willingness to educate and three configurations that lead to an unwillingness to educate. These findings enable customer firms to anticipate potential service providers' willingness to provide education, which can constitute a new criterion for service provider selection. Professional service provider managers can leverage these findings to reassess the foundational premises of their willingness to educate and upgrade the strategic role of customer education.