E-business developments represent a significant step in the evolution of inter-organisational systems (IOS). Their impact on external supply chains is a major area of discussion and analysis in the literature, principally examining issues of governance structure and process efficiencies. This paper, however, addresses issues relating to the impact of e-business developments on internal customer service with a focus on electronic procurement introduction – in other words it concentrates on the intra-organisational system dynamics of e-business. The procurement process is the basis for one of the primary internal customer-provider interfaces and thus presents a valid and useful domain of study in internal customer service. In contributing to the emerging e-service field the article first contends that much of the recent research into e-service has taken a primarily external customer focus. However, reports suggest that the potential of e-business comes from applications both within and between businesses. Consequently, this paper focuses on the findings relating to internal e-service obtained from an extensive, primarily qualitative and exploratory, research programme incorporating 97 organisations. The article concludes that internal customer satisfaction is central to the success of e-procurement deployment and is a significant determinant of the cost benefits to be gained from its adoption.
PurposeThe objective of the paper is to describe the “scientific identity” of the “top” journals in services marketing by reviewing and evaluating the methodological approaches and the geographical affiliations of authors published in selected journals.Design/methodology/approachA sample of “top” journals in services marketing is selected on the basis of expert opinion. The selection includes the International Journal of Service Industry Management (IJSIM), the Journal of Services Marketing (JSM), the Journal of Service Research (JSR), Managing Service Quality (MSQ), and the Service Industries Journal (SIJ). The review and evaluation considers all papers (a total of 1,107) published in these journals over a six‐year period from 2000 to 2005. The papers are categorized and the geographical affiliations of the authors are noted. The compiled results are analyzed for patterns that reveal the “scientific identity” of each of the selected journals.FindingsThe “scientific identities” of JSM and JSR are revealed as being built upon quantitative research designs and the North American paradigm of research values. MSQ and SIJ are found to be largely based upon a mix of empirical research designs and the European paradigm of research values. IJSIM is found to be based on a mix of empirical research designs and a mix of European and North American research values. However, no journal is found to be narrowly focused, and the variety of “scientific identities” among the journals studied here bodes well for ongoing scientific enquiry in services marketing.Research limitations/implicationsFurther studies of the “scientific identity” of individual research journals are required in other sub‐disciplines of marketing.Practical implicationsScholars will benefit from insights into the “scientific identities” of the “top” journals in services marketing. In particular, scholars can note the particular features of individual journals while acknowledging the paradigmatic flexibility and richness of research designs that are present in all of these journals.Originality/valueThis is the first review and evaluation of the “scientific identity” of “top” service‐marketing journals in terms of categories of papers published and geographical affiliation of published authors. The study provides valuable insights into the nature of academic publishing in the burgeoning area of services marketing.
PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to explore how frontline contact persons appropriate and use learning tools from the socio‐cultural context for learning about customers in their everyday work.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilises an ethnographic‐research approach involving participant observations, informal conversations, and interviews among car salespersons and service advisors at a car‐retailing company.FindingsThe study comes to two main conclusions. First, learning tools are appropriated and utilised for learning about customers in a two‐layered process: interactions between frontline contact persons and the socio‐cultural context; and interactions between frontline contact persons and customers. Secondly, learning about customers can be of two types: subject‐ or object‐driven learning.Practical implicationsTools that enhance the process of learning about customers can be developed within the socio‐cultural environment of an organisation whereas tools that inhibit the learning process can be minimised.Originality/valueThis paper provides a novel socio‐cultural conceptualisation of how learning about customers takes place. This approach has not been previously emphasised in service‐management research.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to isolate and characterize organizational factors that enable the formation of high‐performing business services in product manufacturing firms.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a case research design. In total, 32 depth interviews were conducted with 11 different managers from a Global 100 information technology manufacturing firm. These managers were directly responsible for forming a highly successful business service. All interviews were tape‐recorded, transcribed, and the resulting 500 pages of interview data were open‐coded in QSR NUDIST. A case report was reviewed by study participants to enhance construct validity.FindingsThe general conclusion is that forming high‐performing business services in product manufacturing firms stems largely from managers' ability to create internal alignment among several organizational factors that collectively “fit” conditions in the market.Research limitations/implicationsThis study does not provide the statistical generalization to a larger population offered by a large‐sample study. In addition, all data were collected from individuals who were directly involved in the formation of the focal business service.Practical implicationsThe insights from this study can help managers design within a product manufacturing firm an organization that supports the formation of complex business services.Originality/valueWhile product manufacturers' expansion into services is very prevalent in practice, the development has received sparse academic research attention.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why other‐customer misbehavior has a negative influence on customer satisfaction with the service firm.Design/methodology/approachData for this study were gathered by retrospective experience sampling.FindingsThere are several important findings that can be obtained from the results. First, people consider another customer's failure to be the firm's responsibility when they perceive that the failure is under the firm's volitional control (i.e. controllability attribution). This controllability attribution leads to customer expectations of compensation for recovery from dissatisfaction. Second, stability attributions about other‐customer failures were not found to be significantly related to the firm's responsibility. Third, the severity of the other‐customer failure experience bears no relation to the customer's service recovery expectation, but it is negatively related to satisfaction. Finally, the customer's evaluation of service is not only affected by the other‐customer misbehavior, but also by how employees react to situations when other customers are unruly or potentially disruptive.Practical implicationsProviding employees with the appropriate coping and problem‐solving skills for working with problem customers is a key issue for service providers. More importantly, employees should be trained to help the affected customers, to alleviate any bad feelings caused by the other‐customer's misbehavior.Originality/valueThe paper suggests that employees in a service‐providing firm may need to act as “police officers” to ensure that all their customers behave appropriately.
PurposeThis study aims at deepening understanding of the role of emotion in customer switching processes and identifying the relative frequency of negative discrete emotions in terms of different triggers.Design/methodology/approachCustomers of Swedish telecommunications services were interviewed about their switching processes. The interviews were analyzed according to switching path analysis technique, which divides relationships into different stages in accordance with their relevance to the relationship strength. The ultimate focus is on self‐reported emotions embedded in the switching process.FindingsThe main finding was that the identified emotions were located in the trigger part of the relationship, and was expressed by the respondents during the switching process in form of annoyance, anxiety, disappointment, dissatisfaction, distress, depression, rage, stress and tension.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical study is conducted within the telecom industry which may influence the switching frequency because of the deregulations in the beginning of this decade. This interpretation of valence and activation was based on theoretical assumptions about where various discrete emotions are located on a continuum.Originality/valueThe paper offers insight into the role of emotion in customer relationship.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine if the service worker's display of smiles in the service encounter has an effect on customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachAn experimental design was used in which participants (N=220) were randomly allocated to one of four service encounters. Two variables were manipulated; the service worker with whom the participant interacted had either a neutral facial expression or a smiling facial expression, and the service worker was either male or female.FindingsThe smiling service worker produced a higher level of customer satisfaction than the neutral service worker, regardless of the sex of the service worker (and the sex of the participant). In addition, the results indicate that this outcome involved both emotional contagion and affect infusion.Originality/valueThis paper extends the service literature's discourse on the impact of the service worker's smile behavior on customer satisfaction by including intermediate variables such as appraisals, emotions, and the attitude toward the service worker.
PurposeCustomers' judgment of service quality is by and large based on their evaluation of personal experiences during the service encounter. The purpose of this study is to investigate from a customer perspective, the impact of familiarity (of the individual service provider) and cultural orientation on evaluations of both successful and failed service encounters.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employ an experimental design with data collected from student samples in the USA (Western, individualist culture) and Thailand (Eastern, collectivist culture).FindingsResults show an individual customer's cultural orientation, as well as familiarity (with a focal service provider), have an impact on perceptions and post‐purchase evaluations of both successful and unsuccessful service encounters.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the services marketing and consumer behavior literature by shedding light onto the role of familiarity and cultural value orientation in influencing consumer responses to service encounters. It is one of only a handful of cross‐cultural studies in this research domain.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a concrete integrated roadmap structure and a supporting tool for efficient roadmapping, to enhance interdisciplinary research on product‐service.Design/methodology/approachThe paper first clarifies definitions based on literature review. Next, the integrated roadmap structure is designed by overcoming limitations of the existing product‐service roadmaps. Lastly, a modified quality function deployment technique is developed to be used as a means for the integration process and applied to the mobile communications industry for the case study.FindingsThe suggested roadmap and roadmapping process have potential advantages that can help strategic planning and management of product‐service.Research limitations/implicationsThere are issues related to complexity of the suggested technique and completeness of the case study.Practical implicationsThe suggested approach stimulates communication and knowledge sharing between manufacturers and service providers, providing a useful guidance to picture the long‐term future from the same perspective.Originality/valueThe paper provides a holistic approach on the development of the product‐service sets, which is characterized by many challenges and uncertainties.
PurposeThe present study aims to empirically explore the relationships between selected operations strategies and the associated operations activities. Specifically, for service firms targeting specific competitive priorities, it examines the extent to which there are significant differences in the relationships between these priorities and the operations activities among high‐ versus low‐performing firms.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical data for this study were drawn from 190 managers of the Australian service organisations whose primary responsibilities were related to the daily operations of the firms. The targeted service organisations encompassed various sectors including transportation, communication, banking, insurance, health care, education, wholesale, retail, and professional services.FindingsThe results show that high‐performing firms have stronger relationships between their operations strategies and operations activities than low‐performing firms. The results also reveal how different operations strategies need to be deployed into different operations activities.Research limitations/implicationsThe design of this study was exploratory in nature, and therefore, can be improved in terms of the robustness of the scales and observations. Also, the cross‐sectional design of the study could not capture potential unique characteristics of some service sectors that affect the examined relationships.Practical implicationsThese findings suggest the importance of implementing operations activities in the firm's strategic directions. As firms decide how they choose to strategically position their operating systems, they in turn need to decide how to best focus their resources on operational elements that support these goals.Originality/valueFrom the authors' best knowledge, this is the first study which examines the link between operations strategies and operations activities in service firms.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore consumers' perceptions of price unfairness in services, what are its antecedents and when it is important for the consumer. Thus, the central question of this research is whether consumers care about how much profit the service company is making and whether there are significant differences to physical goods.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on justice and equity theory, a causal model is developed – which analyses the main antecedents (seller profits vs customer value), moderators and consequences of perceptions of price unfairness. Structural equation modelling has been applied to test the proposed model.FindingsThe lack of specific tools to measure perceptions of price fairness required the development of a multi‐item scale to capture the complexity of the evaluation. This instrument has been tested for reliability and validity in a variety of settings, with excellent results, and can be appropriate when using the survey as a data collection method. Also, the authors have argued that there should be significant differences due to the nature of the product – service industries vs physical goods– as well as due to the number of available alternatives that the buyer has in the market.Originality/valueThe validity of a new model is tested by means of an empirical research conducted in four different settings, two different services (automobile repair services and music concerts) and their related physical goods (automobiles and music CDs). A multi‐item scale is also developed to capture the complexity of price fairness perceptions. Finally, significant differences between contexts, as well as due to the number of available alternatives present in the marketplace are examined.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a novel approach of fuzzy importance‐performance analysis (FIPA) to replace conventional importance‐performance analysis (IPA) for determining critical service attributes those really need to improve for achieving superior customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachFirst, referring numerous studies, conventional IPA has some erroneous assumptions, the customer satisfaction of attribute performance has the characteristic of three‐factor theory and the novel approach which integrates natural logarithmic transformation and partial correlation analysis is feasible for acquiring the implicitly derived importance of attributes. Second, according the fact and nature of fuzziness in human perception, this study applies fuzzy set theory to revise conventional IPA. Finally, the FIPA is proposed and subsequently implemented in a Taiwanese hot spring hotel case study.FindingsThe implementation of FIPA shows the determined critical service attributes are almost completely different from those attributes acquired by conventional IPA. Hence, the application of conventional IPA may cause practitioners make incorrect decisions of improvement priorities for service attributes and direct unsuitable quality‐based marketing strategies.Originality/valueThe proposed FIPA which integrates fuzzy set theory, three‐factor theory, partial correlation analysis and natural logarithmic transformation avoids the erroneous assumptions of conventional IPA, considers the nature of fuzziness in human perception and includes the actual importance of service attributes. Therefore, the proposed FIPA can effectively assist business managers in determining critical service attributes to improve service quality or customer satisfaction and to achieve competitive advantage.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach for gauging the performance of the operating units of a retail banking organisation, responding to the special demands of an internal evaluation.Design/methodology/approach - The paper defines a measure of internal performance (MIP) based on behavioural theory, particularly on disappointment models.Findings - MIP is applied for the internal evaluation of a network of bank branches. Application to this real managerial setting reveals that bank managers' preferences support behavioural decision theory, including prospect theory.Practical implications - The paper shows how MIP can be used as a management tool for improving organisational performance. The approach can be extended to other sectors.Originality/value - The proposal differs from others existing in the literature in two main aspects. Firstly, it is consistent with the requirements of an internal evaluation because it uses the managers' real preferences instead of assuming them. Secondly, it takes into account that each unit has a different target to achieve according to its specific characteristics.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to further investigate the linkages between business process management (BPM) and customer satisfaction. Also, to challenge the dominance of the customer contact perspectives on service processes and to propose a more systemic focus on the totality of service design.Design/methodology/approachThe research builds on the existing work of Maddern et al. through the use of structured equation modelling (SEM) tool. The multiple SEM models described here provide a more robust statistical approach for confirming/refuting the constructs found in the earlier research.FindingsThis paper presents the results of an empirical analysis, based on longitudinal data from a large UK bank on drivers of customer satisfaction. The results confirm that process management is a critical driver of technical service quality. This suggests that companies with reliability/dependability issues should not emphasise customer satisfaction programmes based on SERVQUAL intangibles until substantial improvements in process design have been achieved.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is limited to a single case study of a UK bank over a five year period. The generalisibility of these findings is therefore limited. Further work in other sectors and over longer periods would establish the reliability of the findings. The paper also highlights some limitations in the service operations literature, particularly the emphasis on customer presence within the service process.Originality/valueThe paper uses time series data to identify the importance of BPM in achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction. The authors provide a platform for further research based on the design of service delivery systems and their impact on customer satisfaction.
PurposeThis exploratory paper investigates internal service from a service management perspective. The objectives were to identify the main internal barriers that are preventing improvements to external service within business‐to‐business (B2B) organisations, to explore the bi‐directionality of internal services provided between internal functions, to assess the quality of internal services provided between functions and develop a means of testing staff and managers for their level of internal versus external focus.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative study was conducted involving structured interviews in two European countries with 20 staffs and managers from a large international express package delivery firm.FindingsFive findings emerged. First, six main internal barriers to improving external quality were identified. Second, the study found that the barriers in B2B organisations were the same as those in business‐to‐consumer (B2C) organisations. Third, it suggested that internal service, unlike external B2C service, is bi‐directional. Fourth, it demonstrated a perception gap in internal service provision suggesting some degree of arrogance or delusion. Fifth, it demonstrated that the managers and staff viewed their service from an organisational, inside‐out, perspective, despite articulating a desire to provide excellent service to their business customers.Research limitations/implicationsThe key limitations were that only one organisation was studied and 20 interviews conducted. The paper provides support for the total quality management approach and suggests that a dual approach combining a service, customer, perspective with an operations, efficiency, perspective might be useful in generating deeper insights to better understand and bring about improvements to the quality of services delivered.Practical implicationsFrom a practitioner perspective, the findings suggest that managers and supervisors need to develop a better understanding of the performance of internal services.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the knowledge of internal service, particularly in B2B services.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to articulate the challenges of learning and improving in service delivery systems – that present managers with imperfect information, confounded variables, and tightly coupled interactions between operational and psychological factors – and present a simulator to assist managers to overcome these challenges.Design/methodology/approachAfter reviewing the literature on “learning from simulations” and the main challenges of learning in a service environment, the paper presents the assumptions underlying the service quality management simulator, its interface, and protocols to use it that have proven effective.FindingsIt is possible to assist managers to develop operational understanding – what to do, when and how much of it to do – about the drivers of service quality using a simulation environment.Research limitations/implicationsIn its present form, the simulator only takes a functional definition of service quality and captures the relationships in a business‐to‐consumer service environment. These shortcomings suggest future expansions to the theory. Also, while anecdotal evidence is reported of the benefits using the simulator, quantifying these benefits remains a challenge for future research.Practical implicationsThe ability to customize the simulator's parameters to represent specific service settings makes it a powerful tool for operating managers facing some of the challenges described by the theory.Originality/valueThis paper documents, in a non‐technical way, the elements a set of relationships that has been shown to confuse managers and cause erosion of service quality and describes the simulator's uses and benefits in a pedagogical environment.
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the role of core self‐evaluations (CSE) as a coping resource in customer service roles.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaires were administered to 265 service providers, measuring CSE, burnout, social stressors involved in interaction with customers (perceived customer negative behaviors and emotional regulation performed by service providers) and coping resources (service orientation and social support).FindingsThe results show that CSE is negatively related to service provider burnout as reflected in depersonalization and emotional exhaustion, and positively related to a sense of accomplishment. CSE was also negatively related to perceived customer negative behaviors and to emotional regulation. The results show a partial mediation effect of emotional regulation on the relationship between CSE and burnout. Service orientation and social support were found to interact with CSE and enhance its effect on social stressors.Research limitations/implicationsThe use of a non‐randomized sample might bias the results.Practical implicationsThe results can inform managerial practices designed to enhance service providers' resources of coping with role stressors.Originality/valueThe study introduces a fundamental personality trait, CSE, to the area of service and shows its effect on burnout through its relationship with situational stressors and interaction with coping resources.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a literature review that highlights significant findings from empirical research examining the impact of music within various real and simulated service environments.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines the results of studies that have manipulated specific musical variables (genre, tempo, volume, and liking), and attempts to identify consistent patterns of findings to guide managers and researchers. The studies focus upon a range of dependent variables including evaluation of the environment, perceived wait and stay duration, consumption speed, affective response, and spending. Possible explanations for apparently inconsistent findings are discussed.FindingsA variety of studies reveal the positive influence of musical congruity upon desired outcomes. Future research proposals identify the need to examine defining‐attribute and prototype theories of musical congruity.Originality/valueThe review highlights a range of implications drawn from the studies that will be of value to service organization managers who use music as a key component of their servicescape in order to enhance desired cognitive and affective responses.
