Toward the Operationalization of Resource Investments Made between Customers and Providers of a Tourism Service

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe the process of developing an instrument to assess the types of resources invested by customers and providers of tourism services. Previous literature suggested that the type of resources invested between individuals was associated with the length and intimacy of their relationship. This phenomenon was explained by some authors using Resource Theory. As a consequence, there was an opportunity of using this theoretical framework to help explain the stability and intimacy of customer-provider relationships. Thus, two scales were developed using traditional procedures and confirmatory factor analysis: Providers' Perceived Resource Investments (PPRI) and Customers' Reported Resource Investments (CRRI). Both measurement models had good fit with the data. Each model consisted of 14 items distributed in four dimensions and a second-order factor. These findings suggested that Resource Theory can be used to gain insight into customer-provider relationships.