Keywords

1 Introduction

As various types of devices like smart watch, smart phone, smart Pad and Smart Table are provided, service providers come to offer services which are suitable for display characteristics of various smart devices when they offer a service. Under this change in circumstances, the importance about the management of integrated service identity has emphasized. Main idea of this study is to draw the results which could help manage service identity by defining the structure and elements for the management of service identity and analyzing the importance between the elements (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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Overview of main idea

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2 Previous Work

2.1 Identity

The definition for identity stems from philosophy. The identities in the field of management and economics which are being widely used at present are the theories that were established with the emergence of corporations after the Industrial Revolution. These theories can be deemed as a result of applying the identity theory of psychology to corporations rather than people.

2.2 Corporate Identity

The definition of CI has changed variously with the development of the industry. It can be summarized into three stages. In the first stage that was the era of graphical design paradigm, visual elements were defined as a corporate symbol. Thus, it was defined that customers would recognize corporate images through visual elements. In the second stage that was the era of the integrated communication paradigm, not only visual elements but also communication methods were included as an important element of CI. In the third stage that was the era of the interdisciplinary paradigm, a comprehensive definition was established by including corporate characteristics and behavior in addition to visual elements and communication methods (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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The development of corporate identity

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2.3 Brand Identity

Kapferer (1992) argues that brand is the essence, meaning and direction of a product. He also argues that brand define the identity of a product. Brand identity, which has many other definitions, can be seen as the most prominent communication strategy for a corporation to plant an awareness of its products in consumers.

2.4 Product Identity

Product image is an image that consumers have with respect to a certain product. It is also an overall feeling for the products of a corporation. Product identity is a strategy to express corporate images in products. It can be deemed as an integrated plan for a series of product images that create an improved value of design to meet consumers’ needs and enhance corporate image through certain product families produced at a corporation.

2.5 Service Identity

Hwasun Kang (2013) defined service identity as follows. Service identity was to create an identity for corporate philosophy and brand identity in accordance with the properties of a given service. Thus, it is the methodology to manage all those mediating elements and activities in an integrated way, which would help form an ideal service image in terms of conveying customers consistent and differentiated service experience and value through services (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Service identity model (Kang 2013)

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Those identities that have been applied to people are now being applied to corporations. It can be concluded that the area thereof has been expanded into not only corporate image, brand image and product image but also services whose importance is gradually growing in recent years. The management and use of service identity has become a very important factor for strengthening corporate competitiveness.

3 Service Identity Frame and Elements

3.1 Service Identity Frame

Service types can be classified largely into online service and offline service. Additionally, experiences provided by services can be classified into functional elements, interactive elements and superficial elements. Using this classification system, structure of service identity is defined (see Fig. 4) and was used in the research. In order to manage service identity in this study, components of online service identity were identified first and subsequently.

Fig. 4.
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Service identity frame

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3.2 Elements of Online Service Identity

In order to materialize the elements for online service identity, FGI was conducted targeting online service experts. FGI was progressed with the following procedures and results are like Table 1.

Table 1. Expert profile
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(1) Discussion and definition about Online Service Identity Elements

(2) Discussion and definition about the mapping of Online Service Identity Structure and Elements (Table 2).

Table 2. Elements of online service identity
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4 AHP Analysis for Service Identity

AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) is a calculation model which was designed by professor Thomas L. Saaty by understanding the truth that brain is using stepwise or hierarchical analysis procedures. This technique is one of the most appropriate methods to evaluate the expert’s decision through quantification. AHP analysis to identify the priority in the components of online service identity was executed with the following methods and the composition and questions of the experts who participated in AHP analysis are like following Table 3.

Table 3. Expert profile
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(1) Produce the cases about individual elements of Online Service Identity

(2) Write questionnaires to compare individual elements of Online Service Identity

(3) Execution of AHP analysis targeting experts.

These are the questions to identify the priority in 14 elements and the investigation about 105 questions was conducted and the results could be obtained like below (Table 4).

Table 4. Part of AHP research sheet
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Analysis results showed visual elements like color, icon, layout, font, shape and etc. These elements were identified to give the biggest effect to the identity, and the collection of provided functions and kinds of functions were identified to give second biggest influence. Elements which have high utilization in common like input methods and feedback were analyzed to give relatively little influence to the creation of the identity (Table 5).

Table 5. Survey result of AHP analysis
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5 Conclusion and Discussion

In this research, we present service identity framework and element prioritization of online service identity. Results express research meaning in the respect they could be used as basic data to manage service identity. This study has a limitation in those arguments about the appropriateness. The reason why the definition of service identity has not be built though society yet. Future research should be conducted to identify the components and to study the priority about offline service.