Traceability of Time Consumption for Costing Service Transactions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the particularities of the time consumption of transactions performed in an insurance firm and the prospective impact on costing. Design/methodology/approac This paper uses the results of an archival study conducted on data collected in an insurance firm. Findings The results suggest that the reasons underlying the heterogeneity of transactions' time consumption are multiple and rule out a systematic and unique explanation. They lend support to the importance of the "human effect" in explaining the time consumption of service transactions and support the need for more research into the evolution of marketing thought that subordinates the concept of transaction to the concept of relationship. In addition, our results not only suggest that the drivers of time consumption and their importance are contingent on the type of service activity performed within the same firm, but also that inside a generic service activity, deviations in time consumption remain due to the provision of specific services. Originality/value Services have their own characteristics which make it difficult to trace their resource consumption. Yet limited research has focused on examining the impact of services' characteristics on predicting costs. Our findings contribute to our understanding of such impact and cast doubt on the possibility of obtaining accurate costs for very detailed transactions for an acceptable cost-benefit trade-off.