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Voices of the new library professionals
Edited by David McMenemy
Introduction
One of the most frequent and substantial pressures on management in all types of organizations is to identify customer needs thereby motivating customers to use their products (tangible goods and intangible services). In today's networked environment, public libraries are just one of many information providers. In other words, if public libraries cannot motivate customers to use their products and satisfy their needs, they may lose advantage over other information providers. Therefore, it is important for public libraries to satisfy and motivate customers for the libraries' survival and prosperity.
The advent of the concept of motivation is not new in the industrial and vocational psychology field. Scholars used the motivation concept to analyze and explain behavior since the beginning of the 20th century. In this context, Victor [6] Vroom (1964) introduced "expectancy theory" to organize and integrate existing knowledge in the field of vocational psychology and motivation. Furthermore, through subsequent researchers, his theory revealed implications for the explanation of the motivational factors of individuals to various situations or settings as well as for the explanation of the motivation factors of the worker to his work. Furthermore, as [4] Robbins (1983, p. 152) stated, "though expectancy theory has its critics, it has generally developed results that indicate it is currently the clearest and most accurate explanation of individual motivation".
Problem statement
[8] Workman (1999) defined marketing as "the process of understanding what your customers want, and then designing and delivering products and services that fit those needs" (as cited in [7] Woodward, 2005, p. 130). In other words, marketing can be viewed as a variety of activities designed to motivate target customers to exchange values voluntarily. These activities include organizational efforts to encourage customers to use their products frequently. Furthermore, from the customers' perspective, the concept of "motivation" premises on voluntary involvement in the value exchanges with the organizations. Therefore, the following question should be the primary question of marketing activities of an organization: how can we motivate customers to use our products?
Vroom's expectancy theory premises the importance of motivation. He examines motivation from the perspective of why people choose a particular action or behavior. From this perspective, Vroom's expectancy theory offers critical value for...