No, should not. As a customer, I highly appreciate being served, not taught how to serve myself.

PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity is measured by the ratio of output over input. The off loaded product generally has less input: labor for a fully constructed unit. This savings in input cost contributes to the increase in productivity. Similar measurement may also be made by the buyer, i.e. cost of fully assembled and non-assembled product.

Products that require assembly are generally sold at a lower price than products that come fully assembled. The decision by the consumer to buy off loaded product is made after a calculation about the utility of such product vis-a-vis the required labor and time input. The buyer has made a conscious calculation about the anticipated utility and compared it to the anticipated lost productivity, and made the purchase accordingly. It is only when the buyer miscalculated the level of difficulty of the assembly that he/she ends up spending too much time on the assembly that he/she realized later that it was a bad deal. This post facto assessment is made in hind sight; however, at the time of the purchase, the choice was made with a calculated decision.

One can argue that the time required for the assembly is a waste of time; therefore, a loss of productivity has occurred. That is quite incorrect. The time spent for the assembly of the product had been calculated by the buyer that he/she has free time on hand. The time spent on the assembly of the product in fact is a time well spent---thus productivity is derived from that activity. If the assembly of the product should fail, the time spent on the project is lost. Does that mean that the buyer wasted time and, therefore, did not gain any productivity from it? No, actually the buyer's "time wasted" was most productive even by the mere fact that the assembly of the off loaded product fails. The productivity here is the spending of that time to learn that the buyer cannot engage in such assembly and should not buy such product again in the future. This "lesson" is valuable. This valuable lesson is the utility of failure that most people fail to appreciate. When there is some valuable gained through the activity, and the final analysis shows that the benefits derived is more that the cost, the existence of productivity cannot be denied.

BUSINESS LOGISTICS

One overriding objective of business logistics is to cut cost with the objective of increasing profit. If the sell price remains unchanged, in order to increase profit is to cut cost. Labor cost is a significant component of cost. Off loading certain tasks to consumers would directly reduce labor requirement on the part of the seller. Even selling at the same price, profit increase is possible. The reduction of input cost here is cutting of the labor cost component. Machines and raw material cost remains the same. In the alternative, since the cost component ha been reduced by removing some of the labor cost component, the seller would have more leeway for price competition. Another means for profit increase is to reduce sale price through cost reduction; the expected effect is an increase in sales.

SELLER'S UTILITY

For the seller, the utility of off loading is cost reduction. The cost reduction may transformed into profit increase through either (i) same price to consumer with reduced cost, thus increase profit, or (ii) drive down price lower than competitors' as the result of price savings, thus, increase sales.

BUYER'S UTILITY

It would be too subjective and simplistic a view to say that consumers do not receive any utility from off loading. Assuming that a buyer buys a piece of furniture, say a table. A fully constructed table would be difficult to be transported by a passenger car, i.e. assuming that most buyers do not drive pick-up trucks. However, if the table comes in piece-by-piece nicely packed in one box that can neatly fit at the back seat or the trunk of a passenger car, arguably the buyer has received some utility from off loading. In the prior instance, assume that the table costs $500; the delivery of a fully constructed table would cost an additional $50 for delivery. Where the table comes in pieces with nuts and bolts in a box may cost $500 or less.

MEASUREMENT

Can the productivity loss or gain from off loading be measured? This is a straight forward quantitative analysis. Generally, firms had conducted studies on the time required to assemble the unit. This assembly time has been compared to the labor cost inside the factory if the seller would have the product assembled plus space cost in transport and storage. Moreover, market response to off loaded product had been positive---through market mechanism these products are bought and sold.

MACRO EFFECT

Off loading is conducive to competition. The savings in labor cost by seller may be passed on to consumers. This reduction in cost creates flexibility in the pricing structure. Sellers may compete on the basis on price. It is undeniable that consumers would also benefit from this price war among sellers.

LIMITATION AS TO KIND

Not all products are appropriate for off loading. Only certain consumer products are feasible. Industrial products, such as cars, chemicals, heavy machines, weapons, or medical devices, for obvious reasons must be sold fully assembled and ready for use. Products for common day-to-day use may be off loaded, i.e. consumers products.

Gaining productivity by loading the customer ? I wouldn't like to be in the customer's shoes 😄

I think the answer lies in the fact that you have product differentiation when imbedded services are included versus off-loaded onto the buyer. So, adding up "units produced" gets more complicated or is impossible. The problem is that data in many instances does not account for these services. For example, when we look at food sales by grocers, we would not consider a box of cereal that is professionally bagged as somehow differentiated from a box of cereal with the same SKU bagged by the consumer. I'd say there is plenty of room for additional research on this issue.

Thanks all for the interesting comments.

@Paul Louangrath, what I got out of your well thought out answer (maybe or maybe not what you intended for me to get) is that if input and output are measured carefully, then measurements of total productivity should be, in theory, correct. An assembled bicycle or piece of furniture should not be counted the same as an unassembled one. The manufacturer puts in less labor and produces less than a finished product. The productivity of shipping and stocking is increased as well, so the consumer may be confronted with dramatically different costs, possibly justifying a less productive end user assembly process. Like a heart surgeon assembling furniture. This is at least easy to analyze, but was not the thing that most concerned me.

In the food field, mention by Kyle Stiegert, it seems that the trend has been in the opposite direction, toward more nearly complete preparation by suppliers and vendors, as their packaging problems are less than for furniture or bicycles, chemical preservatives are available, and the consumer assembly cost is large and repetitive.

The use of information systems was actually what most concerned me, even more than physical products, which can be accurately accounted if the problem is noticed. If a company fires all its customer service personnel and takes its phone numbef off its website and forces consumers to choose products and services without knowledge and assistance, for example, and it becomes a universal practice of all competitors in an industry, it's not clear to me the loss of productivity due to all the consumer effort is measured and factored into national productivity statistics ... Does anyone think it is? How significant is it?

Good comment, Robert, I vote you up

But I still expect to buy full service, not caring about the company and their business

No, I think the traditional model of productivity mearuement is biaed because it takes the producer perspective without taking any reagard to customer interests. I recently finished a short paper - available ony in German up to now - which considers to confront this with other stakeholser interest and perceptions.

You could ha a look at the English abstract.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2374374

customer satizfaction as well es employmee satisfaction are two counter parts as stakeholders should be incorporated in the analysis of efficiency measurement.

In Germany the issue of consumer work as outsourcing labor intensive production elements to enhace profitability and productivity of companies has become a research issue. E.g. IKEA, furniture company from Sweden, delivers furniture unassembled. Since these furniture are less expensive than assembled ones consumers have an incentive to save money to buy this. However, the surplus obtained by IKEA is significantly higher because they save the labour cost for assembly. Supermarkets compared to the traditional mom and pop shops let customers do all the self-servicing, similar in fastfood chains. Instead of a traditional restaurant with waiters people do all the servicing themself. This add-up to huge cost savings for the supermarket chains or the fastfood restaurants. The savings from this are not apropriately shared. By outsourcing important parts of the traditional production process productivity from ghe company perspective inceases significanty. For their customers it is a mixed comparative advanatge. They get cheaper products but without the previously incorporated services. If they would include the cost of self-servicing the outcome may often become negative.

Interestingly this issue has been raised by industry sociologists not economists.

see e.g.

http://www.robertfreund.de/blog/2009/11/08/industrie-und-techniksoziologie-forschungsprojekt-konsumentenarbeit/

@George, your abstract looks right on target to me. It goes beyond my question into the issue of customer satisfaction, which I believe is overall declining (there are exceptions of course). I perceive the rate of returns of merchandise to the store in my household and my sister's (merely anecdotal) to be around double of what it was 10 years ago.

In marketing research it is common to make surveys on customer satisfaction.

http://www.customer-service.com/

However, one should caution on some studies in this area if they are not impartial because they are contract research by companies to show to the public their superior service quality.

It would be much better to have independent research agencies including surveys on customer perceptions. How they assess the outcome before and after change in the serivices offered.

Have also a look at the Wikipedia Wbsite of Ralph Nader, There is a long list of institutions in the US for the support of consumer rights

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader

There might find peopl who have done some research in this area