ABSTRACT This study confirmed the important impact of desires on consumer satisfaction for a service organization. It further showed the important mediating influence of consumer experience. Specifically, as consumers gain more experience in using a service, desires and desires congruencies have a stronger impact on satisfaction.
ABSTRACT In this article it is argued that the dealings between small companies and their banks consist of a number of relationship elements. Because today most banks employ some kind of relationship banking, there is a need to further conceptualise the relevant dimensions in implementing such an approach. In a recent study ten small companies in the Stockholm area were interviewed. The results indicate that the account manager in the bank proved to be the crucial person in the customer-bank relationship and that banks can organise their activities and promotion in a supportive way. There is a large potential for improvements in banks in several countries regarding their relationships with small companies.
ABSTRACT It is believed by many business executives that services do not lend themselves to warranties. The arguments against offering guarantees in service industries center on the idea that most of the aspects of a service that can be guaranteed are very subjective in nature. Despite these beliefs, many companies have been successful in their use of service guarantees. As a result, market researchers have begun to empirically examine the use of these guarantees. However, to date, they have produced only a small, and often conflicting, body of work. The purpose of this study is normative in nature and sets out to establish the importance of guarantees in the consumer's preference assessment of service providers. Specifically, using a conjoint analysis research design, non-student respondents provide evidence that, in addition to price and brand name, the outcome of invoking a guarantee is an important determinant of prepurchase preference for a given service.
ABSTRACT This study of consumer professional services examines the role of experience in the development of service satisfaction with the personal financial planning services firm. Product experience possessed by the client moderates the interlinkages between service satisfaction and its two antecedents-performance and relational behaviour. The results of sub group analysis indicate that effects of the performance and relational behaviour vary considerably under different product experience conditions. The findings therefore add new insight to the understanding of satisfaction formation under different experience conditions, especially in the context of consumer personal financial planning services.
ABSTRACT This paper measured the marketing culture of an Australian public sector organisation using the instrument developed by Webster (1990). The perceptions of 1,400 employees working in the Western Australian operations of this organisation were sought. Respondents indicated their ideal marketing culture and their perceptions of the actual marketing culture of the organisation across 34 variables. Organisational performance was rated highest for items pertaining to service quality and innovativeness. The six dimensions of marketing culture identified by Webster (1990) were found to be reliable within this context and the gap between perceptions of ideal culture and actual organisational culture was computed for each of the dimensions. The organisation was found to have room for improvement in all six dimensions with particular areas for future attention being interpersonal relationships, internal communications and selling task. Recommendations for future initiatives were made.
ABSTRACT During the past twenty years, marketers of the educational product have seen significant growth in the percentage of minority students enrolled at colleges and universities across the United States. Those minority consumers of the educational product bring vastly different cultural values, norms, and experiences to the marketing exchange. Such cultural differences present compelling concerns for marketers of the educational product. This paper presents the application of the marketing concept and the marketing lens as a philosophical and empirical approach to more accurately determine and subsequently satisfy the needs of the culturally diverse consumers of the educational product. Results of the study indicated that Asian/Pacific Islander and Anglo students differed in the selection and weighting of evaluative criteria for the quality of the educational institution. Further, the two consumer groups possessed distinct antecedents of satisfaction with that product.
ABSTRACT Retaining members in nonprofit organizations is becoming increasingly difficult as more organizations compete for the time and energies of the member. Churches have not been immune to this erosion of loyalty. Understanding the factors which underlie member satisfaction allows church management to prioritize the use of resources and focus on those performance issues that make a difference to the member. This is an empirical study to determine the underlying dimensions of church member satisfaction. The research instrument used was a self-administered questionnaire that was completed by the members of a mainstream denominational church in the midwest. Members who were satisfied with the church's overall performance were compared and contrasted with those who were dissatisfied. Results of the questionnaire were subjected to bivariate correlation, factor analysis, and logistic regression. Ten underlying dimensions of member satisfaction were discovered. Eighty-six percent of all satisfied church members were correctly classified with a discriminant model derived from the data.
ABSTRACT Management consultants generally sell their services based on the premise that they can provide a service that the firm may not be able to obtain otherwise. Assistance with major project implementation is an example of a service many consultants wish to provide. Implementation of the Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing philosophy is one such major project. However, a number of manufacturing firms have successfully implemented the JIT philosophy without outside assistance. Therefore, the question arises as to what services consultants provide that are useful to JIT implementation? This paper uses literature review, and a survey of firms that have implemented JIT, to address this question.
ABSTRACT Intense competition in the higher education sector in New Zealand has forced a number of educational institutions to examine the need for assessments of customer-perceived service quality for differentiation purposes. Research studies in this area have mainly focused on either the administrators or the faculty's perspectives and have overlooked the other customers, namely students and employers. The instruments developed based on the Importance-Performance paradigm were administered to 280 New Zealand employers and 1,000 business graduates. The results indicate that employers and students have perceptual problems with the level of service provided by tertiary institutions. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.
This article describes a method used to evaluate customer satisfaction with a telephone Hotline that, at the time of the study, received more than 200,000 calls annually. The statistical analysis, which is based on responses to a customer survey, specifies three logistic regression models as a set of recursive equations estimated in a two-stage process. The first stage analysis estimates two equations designed to measure service quality characteristics that contribute to customer satisfaction. The second stage analysis estimates the likelihood that customers were satisfied with their Hotline experience, as a function of the service quality characteristics and other factors. The results of the analysis provided several practical areas lor improving customer satisfaction with the Hotline.
This paper provides insight into the dynamic sales processes that occur in the restaurant industry. Its primary purpose is to provide hospitality marketers and managers a framework tor improving overall sales in food and beverage organizations. After outlining this framework for increased restaurant sales, a detailed overview of buyer-seller interaction, relationship marketing, and restaurant management literature is provided to give the reader an understanding of previous Studies.
On occasion, rather than having a successful relationship, an audit client relationship is “at risk” -the client is giving consideration to changing auditors in the next few years. Can client relationships “at risk” be predicted or at least identified early enough to minimize the damage? This exploratory study provides insight into this important question. Based on a large sample of Fortune 1000 companies, the results indicate that client satisfaction, corporate controller work experience, and audit firm executive involvement in the engagement all are important determinants of the success of the relationship.
The proliferation of sophisticated computer-assisted communication technologies (e.g., voice mail systems, computer conferencing, video conferencing, electronic mail, image transmission) is causing organizations to examine the potential influence such technologies could have on the quality of service delivered to customers (both, internal and external). This paper investigates the impact of an advanced communication technology on the quality of service delivered by employees within an organization to their peers (internal customers). An empirical study was conducted to assess the expectations and performance levels of “internal service” after the incorporation of an advanced communication technology (voice mail) within one service organization (financial institution). Results indicate that the level of expectations of internal service in the context of voice mail were much higher than actual service performance. Analysis also revealed that perceptions of internal service quality significantly differed on the basis of gender and educational level of respondents. Directions for future research and managerial implications for enhancing internal service quality through the incorporation of new information technologies are also discussed.
Implementation of Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) are two quality philosophies or approaches that are being used by several manufacturing organizations worldwide for improving throughput, on-time shipments, and quality, among others. However, the application of these approaches in the service sector are very minimal. In this paper, we illustrate how service organizations, specifically banks and healthcare institutions, can utilize these approaches for gaining a competitive advantage.
Abstract The emphasis of quality in distance education in the last decade tended to place on operational efficiency under the concepts of quality control and quality assurance. This tendency has shifted towards a student's perspective in the wake of greater competitive pressure and heightened students' expectations. This paper reports the results of a study to identify service quality determinants based on the students' perceptions. The results of an exploratory factor analysis of 25 items and a regression analysis produce five dimensions in the following priority: (1) learning facilities, (2) quality of course materials, (3) studying atmosphere, (4) capability of tutors, and (5) center arrangement for tutorials. This study highlights the pressing need for a distance education institution to pay attention to physical facilities and course materials which represent the core of the service offering and are relatively easier to evaluate than other service elements.
The purpose of this paper is to assess the relevance of the return on quality (ROQ) approach to professional service firms. Using a sample of management consulting firms, managerial attitudes toward the assumptions underlying the ROQ approach were measured and compared with their firm's project mix, comprising Pacesetters, Significant Projects, Bread and Butter Projects and Analytical Work on Project Data. Results indicate that, although Pacesetters account for only a small proportion of the projects undertaken, firms with the highest proportion of the Pacesetters' type of challenging project experience tend to be most likely to consider service quality efforts an investment in their business and to believe that such efforts should be financially accountable. Further, successful firms, measured in terms of sales billings, appear to be more positively inclined toward both considering service quality an investment in their business and making quality financially accountable. Also, results indicate that professional service firms perceive the appropriateness of using the ROQ approach for Pacesetters, Significant Projects, and Bread and Butter Projects about equally.
The authors explore the effect of market orientation on service quality based on a survey on Taiwanese security brokerage firms. The results indicate that market orientation and service quality have a positive relationship, but fail to support the proposition of a curvilinear, diminishing function. An ad hoc investigation on the effects of individual components revealed that, among the four market orientation components, only customer orientation and profit expectation have a more consistent and significant effect on overall service quality and the five service quality components. Important managerial and future research implications are offered.
This study uses an experimental approach to test the influence of message framing and consumer involvement on the attitude toward a vacation resort as well as attitude toward on-line Jibrary services, and consumers' intention to use the vacation resort as well as the use of on-line library services. The findings indicate a strong effect of involvement on attitude as well as intention. The influence of framing is statistically not significant. Possible reasons for the outcome and implications for marketers in terms of message framing are discussed.
ABSTRACT Results of an empirical study focusing on marketing managers' perception of the critical computing issues are presented. This study was motivated by the increased evidence of the adoption of computing strategy in today's marketing organizations and the lack of understanding of marketing managers' (customers) critical computing needs. Seventy-eight marketing executives participated in the study. Future research directions and ways to improving customer satisfaction are also suggested.
