Members of professional associations join these associations for reasons that include benefits and services to members, advocacy and lobbying on behalf of members and their interests, networking opportunities and a sense of community and identification with fellow association members. Members are likely to commit to the association and remain as members to the extent they are satisfied with what the association provides and if they perceive the benefits to exceed the cost (not just monetary) of membership. This survey of members of a professional association investigates the relationship between personal benefits, professional benefits, customer service satisfaction, membership satisfaction, membership value, and members’ commitment and their willingness to renew their membership. The results show a strong relationship between membership commitment and membership benefit satisfaction with intention to renew. Significantly, the study also finds that commitment is a complete mediator of membership value on intention to renew.

Organizations join associations to gain a wide range of benefits, such as advocacy in the local community, more expertise, or access to markets and new technologies. However, these benefits do not always result in readily observable positive outcomes as compared to the monetary costs and time investment for businesses. Such value judgements may result in lower commitment to the association and ultimately dropped memberships. The purpose of this study is to better understand the factors that drive member organizations’ commitment to a chamber of commerce. The results of the empirical study show a positive impact of members’ role expectancies and satisfaction with the chamber’s performance on their commitment to the association. Further, resource investment in the association, expressed as participation, length of membership time and organization size, have additional interactive influence on commitment. This study shows the importance of understanding the factors that drive commitment so that associations may design better ways to engage with different types of members.

Organizations of different types (large or small, for profit or not) associate in order to gain benefits from working together such as advocacy in the local business community, business expertise, access to markets, and more efficient operations through better communication and collaboration that drive the effectiveness of their leadership and innovation. The purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that drive member organizations’ commitment to membership in a local Chamber of Commerce. The research hypotheses look at how membership commitment is impacted by the chamber’s role in the community, member satisfaction, member organization size, membership length of time, and member participation. Membership commitment, defined as the members’ attachment to the association, includes three types: normative commitment, continuance commitment, and affective commitment. The advanced hypotheses are: H1: Expectancies for the Chamber of Commerce’s role in the business community has a positive effect on commitment to Chamber of Commerce membership H2: Satisfaction with the Chamber of Commerce’s performance of its core services has a positive effect on commitment to Chamber of Commerce membership H3: Extent of participation in Chamber of Commerce activities has a positive effect on commitment to Chamber of Commerce membership H4: Length of organization’s membership time in the Chamber of Commerce has a positive effect on commitment to Chamber of Commerce membership H5: Organizational size has a positive effect on commitment to Chamber of Commerce membership To test the advanced hypotheses the authors conducted a survey of 286 Chamber of Commerce members organizations located in a city of about 100,000 population in the Rocky Mountain Northwest in the U.S. The three dimensions of commitment were measured with 7-point scales reported in previous studies. Members’ expectancies for the chamber of commerce’s role and their satisfaction with the chamber’s performance of its core functions (advocacy, expertise, collaboration, leadership, connection, and innovation) were similarly measured on 7-point agreement or satisfaction scales. In addition, the data analysis included three categorical variables: level of participation or interaction with the chamber (high/medium/low), organizational size (small is less than 20 employees vs. large), and length of membership time in the chamber (short is less than 5 years vs. long). Data analysis was conducted in SPSS. The Multivariate General Linear Model included the three commitment dimensions as dependent variables; participation hours, membership time and organization size as fixed factors; and chamber expectancies and satisfaction as covariates. The results indicate that, as hypothesized, chamber role expectancies, satisfaction with chamber performance of core service, and participation hours have significant effects on commitment. However, the effects of membership time and organization size are reflected only in their interactions with each other. Small organizations (20 employees and less) display increasing continuance and affective commitment as they engage in a higher level of participation and have longer membership time with the chamber. However, for larger organizations both forms of commitment display interesting patterns. While the effect of participation hours on commitment seems to be as predicted for those organizations that have longer membership time (over 5 years), for newer members (less than 5 years) commitment is relatively higher for organizations that invest either few hours or many hours in the chamber interaction (low or high participation hours). The results indicate the importance of understanding the factors that drive commitment and the necessity to better segment the membership base and understand the ways in which associations need to engage with their different types of member organizations.

The current study draws upon socialization theory to investigate both antecedents and outcomes of support service utilization within a sales employee context. Research indicates high performing, in contrast to low performing, salespeople may be more adept at discerning the ways in which an organization’s support services can be useful to them. The empirical results obtained from sales personnel of a financial services firm suggest that effective socialization/communication is important in securing an employee’s reliance upon organizational support. Further, high-performing salespeople are more proactive and instrumental in relation to utilization of support services, while low-performing salespeople are more passive and conforming in interfacing with support. Implications to both practice and research are discussed.

This paper investigates the interactive effects of student service employees’ job resourcefulness and organizational resource support on employees’ commitment and ability to provide high quality customer service, which in turn results in higher job satisfaction and performance outcomes. This exploratory study’s goal was to help campus managers improve service employee development practices. This study involved a survey sample of 98 student employees working in customer service roles at a mid-sized university campus recreation center. The study finds that job resourcefulness is the most important factor that positively determines student employees’ commitment to service quality and skill proficiency, along with job performance and satisfaction. While formal training benefits all employees, supervisor coaching seems to benefit student employees with low levels of job resourcefulness while displaying some negative effects for high job resourcefulness employees. Both commitment to service quality and service skill proficiency determine employees’ job-outcomes.

Given the critical need for retail firms to provide high quality customer service and satisfaction, this article investigates the importance of formalizing customer complaint handling policies and procedures with regard to its relationship to the ways in which retail companies receive, record, and respond to customer complaints. A survey of 184 firms from the retail environment of a midsized community reveals that the existence of such formalized procedures is significantly associated with firm size, better channels of communication with customers, mechanisms of recording customer feedback, and better-trained employees, which have been shown to relate to higher firm performance.

The globalization and intensification of competition in markets have generated considerable interest in those factors affecting business performance. Among those factors, managers’ values and attitudes are important because they affect their perceptions of the world, which in turn determine the formulation of their marketing strategy. An increasing body of research identifies individualistic and collectivist values as domains which have an important impact on business behavior. However, there is insufficient understanding of the specific ways in which individualistic and collectivist values influence marketing managers. The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptual discussion of the relative influence of managers’ individualistic versus collectivist values on business practice, in the context of the privatizing economies in Central and Eastern Europe. The dynamics of the social and economic changes of transition have created a context in which traditional collectivist value systems coexist with new entrepreneurial values of a more individualistic nature. This situation makes privatizing countries ideal research laboratories for comparing marketing practices used by managers with different values and attitudes.

A market economy has the potential to bestow a variety of benefits upon consumers: better products, greater choice, more competitive prices. We argue that consumers in transition economies may have particular difficulties that affect their ability to reward firms that provide market-oriented benefits. Previous literature and in-depth interviews in Romania are used to develop a framework for exploring market orientation in transition economies from the consumer point of view.

While front line customer service employees’ motivation and ability to provide high quality customer service is paramount for firm performance, it is unclear how employees’ internal resources may interact with organizational support. This paper advances a theoretical model for the possible interactive effects between customer service employees’ job resourcefulness and the external resource support provided by the organization, in the form of formal training, informal coaching, and rewarding mechanism, in determining the employees’ levels of commitment to customer service quality and the development of customer service skill proficiency. An exploratory study conducted on a sample of 98 student employees at a mid-sized university campus recreation center provided a first insight into the forms taken by such interactive effects and the resultant implications for the customer service employees’ job outcomes. The results of the study found that Job Resourcefulness had a strong positive effect on both the employees’ commitment to Customer Service (CS) quality and CS skill proficiency. CS training had a significant positive effect on both the employees’ commitment to CS quality and CS skill proficiency while the other two forms of support, supervisor coaching and CS rewarding, did not have positive effects. This study also looked at the interaction of the factors. With respect to employees’ commitment to CS quality, job resourcefulness did not interact with CS training, but interacted negatively with supervisor coaching and positively with CS rewarding. There was a negative impact at high levels of supervisor coaching with employees that had high job resourcefulness. However, employees with low job resourcefulness would benefit greatly from supervisor coaching. Employees with low job resourcefulness responded negatively to CS rewarding by displaying a lower level of commitment to CS quality. Finally, as predicted, employees’ commitment to CS quality had a significant positive impact on their perceived job satisfaction and performance. The contribution of the paper is to demonstrate that job resourcefulness is indeed a key determinant of CS employee’s ability and motivation. Managers are encouraged to provide formal CS training to all employees, supervisor coaching to those employees who display relatively low job resourcefulness, and stay away from providing extrinsic CS rewards.

Providing superior customer service and having effective and efficient customer complaint handling procedures are critical to a firm’s success in the marketplace. This paper reports on a survey of Chamber of Commerce members in a community with a population of about 65,000 people with regard to their customer complaint handling policies and practices. The findings indicate that firms which train customer service employees in customer complaint handling are likely to collect, record, and respond to customer feedback and complaints in a more systematic way than those firms which do not provide such training. These firms are also more likely to systematically communicate their customer service policies to all of their employees and customers. Overall, it seems that small businesses are at a competitive disadvantage because they tend to engage less in such practices than the larger businesses. It is recommended that managers, especially in small businesses, engage in more systematic training of customer service employees and pay closer attention to the development of formal customer service policies and information systems for tracking customer complaints.

Organizational support theory is used to investigate the moderating effects of both instrumental and social/psychological support on the relationships between a salesperson’s customer orientation and level of psychological empowerment and job performance. Results obtained within a sampling of 830 financial services salespeople operating from remote locations indicate that organizational support may interfere with salespeople’s attitudes in the development of salesperson performance. Specifically, this study found that under conditions of low social/psychological support the positive effect of empowerment on job performance becomes weaker, but the positive effect of customer orientation on job performance becomes significantly stronger. Further, instrumental support seems to be somewhat counterproductive to high-performing salespeople by diminishing the positive relationship between empowerment and performance. Implications of such findings are discussed.

This research addresses significant gaps in the application of distributive fairness to sales management. A study of sales professionals from across several industries details how the equitable distribution of rewards affects important job outcomes such as satisfaction, voice (constructive suggestions for improvement of the firm), and exit (quitting the firm). The study also demonstrates that equity judgments are derived, and differently affected, by referent comparisons including other salespeople within the firm, other employees within the firm, and salespeople from outside the firm. Several conditions that describe the sales environment are shown to moderate these effects and, consequently, what is perceived as "fair" and "unfair." Together, these insights reveal the underlying mechanics in judgments of fairness (yielding a richer theory) and contribute to better managerial practice.

PurposeIncreasingly companies ask customers to participate in creating and producing services. This research aims to explore the effect that communicating role expectations to customers may have on their processing and evaluation of the encounter.Design/methodology/approachA dyadic experiment using prototypical customer‐couples and practicing insurance agents was implemented. Couples and agents were randomly assigned to dyads, which were then assigned to one of two conditions – a no‐expectations or an expectations condition. Post‐encounter, couples evaluated service quality and indicated their satisfaction, trust and anticipation of future interaction.FindingsThe study found that socialized customers relied more on service quality in evaluating the encounter than did unsocialized customers. However, socialized wives showed decreased trust, satisfaction and anticipation of future interaction than did non‐socialized wives (no significant differences for husbands).Research limitations/implicationsExpectations were simply provided to customers; and these expectations were framed to emphasize the benefits of complying with expectations may mitigate some negative effects of socialization.Practical implicationsWhile socialized customer outcomes declined, these customers relied more on the service quality elements of the encounter rather than peripheral elements beyond the control of the firm and the service provider. These findings highlight the caution managers must exercise as they juggle the trade‐offs inherent in communicating the customer's expanded role in the service production.Originality/valueThe customer's role in creating and producing service experiences has received increased attention. This research offers evidence that the benefits achieved through increased customer participation have costs to be considered.

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to explore the possible negative asymmetric effects in the impact of service quality on the satisfaction and retention of different customer segments in a professional business services context. Negative asymmetry means that a lower than average service quality evaluation has a stronger effect on customer satisfaction and retention than a higher than average evaluation.Design/methodology/approachThe article provides a survey of 124 business customers of a Midwestern radio advertising services provider, preceded by nine in‐depth interviews with account reps of the advertising firm and two focus groups with business customers.FindingsAlong the service quality dimensions – customer satisfaction – retention chain, there are significant negative asymmetric effects and the mediating role of satisfaction varies widely. There are important differences across customer groups: service outcomes are most important determinants of customer satisfaction for large and relatively newer accounts; functional quality dimensions (empathy) are most important factors for small and relatively mature accounts.Research limitations/implicationsSurveying customers of one organization in one industry reduces the generalizability of the findings. The study employed only two segmentation variables, while many other variables could be investigated. The focus is on the asymmetric effects of service quality; other factors, such as costs, were not considered.Practical implicationsManagers should invest resources in improving low performance in the service quality dimensions with strongest impact on customer satisfaction and highest negative asymmetry. The identified segment differences suggest the need to achieve strong results for large accounts and relatively new accounts. The customer relationship is most important for small accounts and relatively mature accounts. Maintaining service reliability is critical for small and new account retention.Originality/valueThis study is a first effort to explore the differences in effects across service quality dimensions and customer segments in a professional business service context. The findings indicate that aggregating customers and the service quality measurement can offer misleading information to managers.

SUMMARY Internal services (i.e., support services) are an important form of organizational support for external boundary spanners (e.g., salespeople, customer service representatives). Internal services such as information systems, market research, training, accounting, and facilities support are intended to allow boundary spanners to better serve the firm's customer. Little research, however, has addressed factors that influence a boundary spanner's satisfaction with such services. The research presented here offers insight into how internal communication by both managers and service providers impacts a boundary spanner's satisfaction with support services. Results indicate that service provider and manager communications are largely complementary and that satisfaction with service outcomes, rather than service quality, appears to have an enduring impact upon a boundary spanner's overall job satisfaction. Implications for future research are addressed.

SUMMARY The paper discusses the changes in the retailing environment of a privatizing economy of Eastern Europe. As Eastern European independent retailers face increasing competition from each other and from large foreign retail chains entering their markets, their future competitive viability depends on the ability to identify strategic niches. One strategy for survival is to become embedded in the local communities. A survey of 191 small retail business managers in Romania explores the relationships between managers' collectivist and individualistic values, market orientation, retail-mix strategy and performance. The results of this study indicate that managers' collectivist values appear to have a positive impact on their ability to assume a customer orientation, which significantly impacts their community oriented strategy (especially through service and merchandising), customer retention and community leadership performance. In contrast, the consequences of managers' individualistic values are unclea...

Summary The paper advances a framework and a set of propositions regarding the relative influence of collectivist and individualistic values of small retail business managers on the management of the retail-mix and business performance, in the context of the privatizing economies of Central and Eastern Europe. The conceptual discussion, supported with two case illustrations from Romania, suggests that managers embracing the two value systems develop complementary retail strategies. Managers with more individualistic values tend to be more competitor-oriented and emphasize business growth and innovation, while managers with more collectivist values tend to be more customer-oriented and emphasize business relationships, stability and predictability.

Export performance research has proliferated in the last decade. Significant progress has been made in developing better theory and knowledge of the export performance of firms. However, the field of inquiry is characterized by a diversity of conceptual, methodological, and empirical approaches that inhibit the development of clear conclusions regarding the determinants of export performance. In this article, an updated review and synthesis of the empirical literature on determinants of export performance between 1987 and 1997 is offered. Using a combination of the narrative and vote‐counting approaches, 50 studies were identified, reviewed, and synthesized. Major directions for future research are also discussed.