Understanding registration influences for electronic banking

Abstract

The growth in online or e-banking has resulted in customers interacting with their banks through remote technological channels to a greater extent. That said, there is much variation in online banking registration and adoption levels and little is understood about actual customer motivators and perceived barriers to registration for online banking services. As part of a larger study exploring the impact of the Internet on bank – customer relationships, this paper reports on key findings which shed light on such motivators and inhibitors for online banking registration. The results show that convenience (through 24-hour banking access) and reassurance about security are the most important considerations for customers in registering for e-banking within the case bank. Marketing implications for the case bank, as well as the broader industry, are discussed.     

The Moderating Effects of Involvement on the Relationships Between Satisfaction,Trust and Commitment in e-Banking

Most prior research into customer loyalty emphasizes the effects of the dimensions of online satisfaction and trust. However, research into how customer involvement moderates this relationship model – in the online environment – has been less than conclusive. On the basis of a satisfaction–trust–commitment model, and given that involvement is a significant precondition to customer loyalty, this paper explores the interaction effects of customer involvement on the evaluation of e-banking services.Empirical results were collected from an online survey in electronic financial forums, Usenet and mailing lists. Partial Least Squares (PLS) was used to estimate the parameters of the interaction effects model.The results support most of the hypotheses and, in particular, confirm the moderating role of customer involvement. The influence of online satisfaction on commitment was significantly stronger for highly involved users; conversely, the effect of satisfaction on trust was weaker. However, customer trust had a stronger effect on commitment for customers with high purchase involvement, and a weaker effect for highly ego-involved customers. The interaction role of customer involvement thus offers a more complete view of the satisfaction–trust–commitment model, providing an initial test of the efficacy of using involvement to understand online decisions. Implications for online marketing management and future research in this area are discussed.     

Organisational Perception of Customer Satisfaction: Theories and Evidence

Do managers in service organisations believe that the struggle matters more than the triumph? This paper proposes a model of organisational perception of customer satisfaction which posits that, given a lack of first-hand information on customer responses, organisations tend to adopt a process-based approach of evaluating the level of satisfaction of their customers. This evaluation process depends not on the assessment of actual outcomes such as sales revenue and customer complaints, but instead on the organisational efforts involved in satisfying the needs of customers. The propositions are tested by surveying 150 e-banking service providers and the data supports the hypotheses.     

Key influencers and inhibitors on adoption of the Internet for banking

The focus on new technologies in service situations is growing and is of particular importance in financial services contexts. It is argued that there is mutuality of benefit for both bank and customer through the adoption of self-service technologies (SSTs), of which e-banking is but one example. While the economic imperative for banks’ adoption of e-banking solutions is clear, the value proposition for the customer can be less evident. It is proposed that the value proposition on offer through e-banking could be better conveyed to customers were banks to have a greater understanding of the appropriateness of the on-line medium for products as they varied according to complexity level. This paper reports on a study which examined customer-stated propensity to purchase financial products on-line at varying levels of complexity. Findings underline the importance for banks to achieve a customer-oriented balance between face-to-face relationship-managed activity and online enablement and to understand now this balance varies according to customer and complexity of product. Strategic marketing implications for the case bank are discussed.     

The effect of a hotel's star-rating-based expectations of safety from the pandemic on during-stay experiences

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, safety is one of the top priorities for travellers when choosing a hotel. This work examines the effect of customers’ pre-stay expectations of a hotel about its safety-focused services, shaped through its official star-rating, on the during-stay confirmation of those expectations, satisfaction, and revisit intentions. A cross-sectional research design is used spanning temporally from the pre-stay to the during-stay phases. The pre-stay phase was the peak COVID-19 period in India (June–July 2021) to stimulate the safety concerns in the travellers planning their travel, while the during-stay phase was when the planned travel was undertaken with the traveller staying at the planned hotel (October 2021–January 2022). Data were collected from 452 customers and the results supported the proposed model. Further, the star-rating, as a signal for safety-focused services, was found to have a serial effect on revisit intentions, through the pre-stay expectations of safety services, and the during-stay confirmation of expectations and satisfaction.     

Customer Satisfaction with Consumption Systems

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This research examines how satisfaction toward a product and its associated services offered together by a single provider jointly affects behavioral intentions toward the provider.

Design/methodology/approach: In this study, empirical tests were conducted using longitudinal data spanning 5 years from a multinational company that offers both products and associated services as part of a consumption system to their customers.

Findings: Results show a joint congruent effect of product and services satisfaction on behavioral intentions is linear and positive. It appears that offering great service cannot compensate for less-than-adequate satisfaction toward the product. The results further highlight decreasing customer sensitivity to improvements in both sources of satisfaction and imply that focusing on too high levels of one type of satisfaction for their customers can actually be counterproductive for firms.

Research Limitations: Our model was tested using the data obtained from a single firm. Future research could test this model with data from multiple firms in various different industries and establish broader generalizability to the findings.

Practical Implications: Findings provide managers with insights on how to allocate resources across product and service spaces and to manage product and services revenues over time. Results also indicate that customer behavioral intention ratings are more weighted on product quality over the service received by them. However, mere improvements in the product cannot provide the highest desired results and therefore quality improvements in the product need to be complemented by improvements in service quality.

Originality/Value: There is a rapid emergence of the phenomenon of manufacturers providing both products and services as an integrated consumption system to their customers. While the provision of both product and service subsystems by the same firm leads to certain synergies, there are obvious costs to the development of new service capabilities and coordination with existing product capabilities. Our research intends to address this issue.     

Research on the influence of after-sales service quality factors on customer satisfaction

Determining customer satisfaction elements in retailing after-sales services have been well explored; however, the increasing competition in this area demands the investigation of actual instrumentality of these elements on satisfaction of customers. In the present research, we have proposed a framework for assessing the instrumentality of after-sales services on customer satisfaction. Kano model and SERVQUAL framework were used to categorize customer satisfaction elements. In addition, in order to address behavioral dissimilarities among customers, RFM clustering technique was used for analysing 243,180 customers of automobile after-sales services. Accordingly, dissatisfaction decrement index and satisfaction increment index were measured for every cluster separately. We identified a group of 21 quality elements and demonstrated the instrumentality and quality of these quality elements on customer satisfaction. RFM clustering technique is applied to address customer dissimilarities and we demonstrated the preferences and desires of customers in each cluster. While some papers have already identified the influential factors of after-sales services on customer satisfaction, this is for the first time that the instrumentality of after-sales services is being identified. Accordingly, this study demonstrates how different after-sales services quality elements affect customer satisfaction. Therefore, the results of this study can help companies to allocate their resources more efficiently.     

The Importance of Hotel Employee Service Attitude and the Satisfaction of International Tourists

Although there have been numerous studies dealing with service attitude and customer satisfaction, they have not specifically addressed international hotel customers. Moreover, most of them have discussed the subject from the viewpoint of the employee. This study takes a customer perception approach and emphasises critical factors (elements) of service attitude affecting the satisfaction of international tourists. It has been found that the importance of employee attitudes to service and the level of satisfaction with the service vary significantly among customers of different nationalities. For example, American travellers emphasise elements such as employees being able to solve their problems, and so are dissatisfied with the service when employees lack an adequate command of English. Taiwanese customers stress the importance of employees treating customers politely regardless of their attire. They feel that they are treated unfairly because of employee expectations of tips from well-dressed customers. These findings could furnish managers with useful information for planning marketing and personnel training.     

Learning from the past and present: measuring Internet banking service quality

The Internet has played a pivotal role in transforming banking services into e-services. While several studies have examined the effective measurement of e-banking service quality, their lack of a holistic view has hindered the accumulation of past knowledge. To address this issue, this study first reviews and summarizes the methodology, service quality dimensions, suggestions and limitations of seven e-banking service quality studies conducted in seven countries. An empirical study is then conducted to derive the first robust and comprehensive measure of e-banking service quality in Taiwanese context by compensating three shortcomings of a prior Taiwanese study. To improve our understanding of e-banking service quality, a comprehensive scheme is proposed that has managerial implications. The primary contribution of this study is to present a holistic view of e-service quality for e-banking with embedded cultural factors and to provide a rigorous measurement scale development procedure applicable to areas other than e-banking.     

Differences in Customers’ Online Service Satisfaction Across Cultures: The Role of Thinking Style

ABSTRACT

Online retailers constantly strive to improve customer satisfaction. However, satisfaction levels can vary significantly across cultures when customers experience mixed quality services, that is, services with a mixture of high and low quality service attributes. Based on two studies, we find that Westerners (e.g., European Americans) react more negatively than East Asians (e.g., Chinese) toward mixed quality online services. Our findings show that due to differences in thinking style, Westerners (analytic thinkers) are more likely to focus on negative service attributes than East Asians (holistic thinkers), who tend to consider the amalgam of high and low quality service attributes as an integrated whole when forming their overall perceptions and levels of satisfaction. Moreover, the results suggest that for online retailers marketing across cultures, providing superior quality on each individual service attribute may be more important to achieving satisfaction for customers from Western rather than Eastern cultures.     

Re-examining encounter intensity's conceptualisation,measurement and role

This paper contributes to previous research on encounter intensity in services in two ways. First, it offers a precise conceptualisation and measure of the construct while at the same time reflecting its complexity and multifaceted nature. Second, it sheds a new light on encounter intensity's role as an antecedent to customer satisfaction by introducing the mediation of the services brand in this relationship. The paper builds on a qualitative study, using customers’ introspections, and survey data from retailing customers (N?=?1188) analysed with structural equation modelling. These studies lead to a definition as well as a parsimonious and reliable measure of interaction intensity in terms of the frequency of customer–employees exchanges, their diversity, their importance for the customer and his or her interest in the interaction. The data also support that encounter intensity exerts a strong influence on cumulative satisfaction through the mediation of services brand credibility.     

Changing Perceptions and Changing Behavior in Customer Relationships

We formulate a theoretical model in which we postulate that if customers' behavior is perceived as not optimal, customers will adjust this behavior based on their current satisfaction and payment equity. Furthermore, customers will also include new experiences. In our empirical study we particularly investigate customer referrals and the amount of services purchased. Our results show positive effects of current satisfaction and payment equity on referrals, while also changes in satisfaction and payment equity affect customer referrals. With respect to the amount of services purchased, our estimation results reveal a positive significant effect of only changes in satisfaction.     

Measurement of Service Quality in Internet Banking: The Development of an Instrument

Service quality measurement in Internet banking services is an area of growing interest to researchers and managers. Building on a synthesis of the extant literature on service quality in traditional services and that of Internet delivered services, this study develops a battery of measures that can be used to measure customer service quality in e-banking services. The study shows that service quality in e-banking can be measured using twenty-one parsimonious measures spread across five dimensions, namely, access, Website interface, trust, attention and credibility. The article discusses the importance of these findings for practitioners and for future research on service quality in Internet delivered services.     

Social media's contribution to customer satisfaction with services

An important recent initiative in the effective transmission of healthcare services is the establishment of the patient-centered medicine (PCM) philosophy as a mechanism for enhancing customer satisfaction. Although the goals of PCM are important, there is less understanding of the means by which service providers can promote this philosophy.

This study examines the relationship between customers’ attitude toward and use of social media, PCM, and their satisfaction with healthcare services. Data were collected from a large, urban-based pediatric office in the northeast. The sample consisted of 234 respondents who were classified as ‘e-Patients’ – that is, they reported having access to the Internet and going online for health information. A three-stage regression analysis, conducted to establish the path coefficients for each stage in the model, shows that customers’ (patients’) attitude toward social media can be an effective method to enhance PCM and, ultimately, satisfaction. The findings contribute to theory in services by exploring the challenges of managing service delivery at the interface between customer satisfaction and the role and usefulness of adopting and effectively using social media.     

Customers' Satisfaction Factors Regarding University Food Court Service

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify university customers' satisfaction levels regarding foods and services in the food court at Oklahoma State University. A survey of 276 customers was conducted regarding customer satisfaction levels of foods and services. Results indicated that food quality was found to be the most important factor contributing to customers' overall satisfaction. It is suggested that management should pay attention to the freshness, appearance, and nutrition of the food to increase the customers' satisfaction. Moreover, focusing on product differentiation by offering convenience packaged Asian, Mexican, and Italian cuisines may prove to be a potential variable contributing to customers' purchasing patterns.     

Customer Satisfaction with Retail Banking Services in Ghana

Recent studies indicate high competitiveness of the Ghanaian banking industry, making it difficult for banks to satisfy and retain customers. However, little empirical knowledge exists on the determinants of customer satisfaction toward the services delivered by the banks. This article reports a study of the determinants of customer satisfaction of retail bank services in Ghana. An extensive review of the extant literature was used to identify the theoretical determinants of customer satisfaction in retail banking and their measurement scales. These were adapted to build a conceptual framework for the empirical investigation conducted. Data were collected using a questionnaire administered through personal interviews to 650 customers of retail banks, and the results were factor analyzed and regressed. The empirical results indicated that relational, core, and tangible dimensions of service were positively associated with customer satisfaction in retail banks in Ghana. The study discusses the strategic implications of the findings for the management of customer satisfaction for retail banks operating in Ghana. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Multiple sclerosis patients as counsellors and evaluators of rehabilitation

The article is concerned with multiple sclerosis (MS) patients’ experiences of rehabilitation services. Customers choose and assess the rehabilitation services they want. In the spring of 1999, group interview data were collected as part of an evaluation study of outpatient activities organized by the Finnish MS Society. Illness experience, changes in functional capacity and experience of health care services provided by both the public and voluntary sectors were all shown to have an effect on how customers chose services. When customers guide their own rehabilitation, their wishes and decisions concerning rehabilitation should be heard and respected. This indicates that customers make choices taking account of the opportunities provided by society.     

How to increase multichannel shopping satisfaction? An adapted Kano based stage-gate approach to select new technologies

Today, brick-and-mortar retailers with integrated online shops have many alternatives to increase their customers’ shopping satisfaction: They could invest in (for the retailers) new physical store technologies (e.g., beacons or magical mirrors if not implemented up to now), new online shop technologies (e.g., visual tagging or webcams), or in new less technology-based improvement options (e.g. events or product testing). We propose an adapted Kano based stage-gate approach to support multichannel retailers confronted with such selection problems. The approach is applied to a major European sporting goods retailer. 37 improvement options are pre-selected and evaluated by current and potential customers. It can be shown that instore returns, instore services, reserve&collect, click&collect, customization, product testing, and magical mirrors are drivers of satisfaction for the current customers and should be implemented in contrast to, e.g., geofencing or beacons. The potential customers are more technology-savvy, but show similar categorizations as a current customer segment and so confirm the selection.     

Two-sided effects of customer participation: roles of relationships and social-interaction values in social services

This research aims to extend customer participation and value co-creation theory to the social-services sector, where consumer choice is restricted. This study examines the relationship between the value creation of participation and customer satisfaction in social services. The perceived value corresponding to different types of relationships was divided into company–customer (relationship value) and customer–customer (social-interaction value). To test hypotheses, data were collected via an online survey of customers using child-care centers in Korea. The participating customers had children who attended day-care centers, and the proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Empirical result shows that customer participation as information resource and customer participation as co-developer affect the relationship and social-interaction values. The most important and interesting result is that the relationship value has a positive effect, but the social-interaction value has a negative one on customer satisfaction. These results suggest that customer participation in social services has both positive and negative outcomes, which means that the social-interaction value of co-creation does not always lead to customer satisfaction in a choice-limited service such as child care. This study explains a counterintuitive and interesting relationship between the social-interaction value and customer satisfaction by validating the moderating role of social network service-based interaction intensity in child-care services.     

The Determinants of Retail Loyalty of Indian Consumers

This study investigated the influence of expectations and evaluation of functional and social attributes on Indian consumers' food retail loyalty. Structural equation modeling results indicate that social self-congruity is an important determinant of food store patronage in India. Food assortment and services are critical drivers of supermarket loyalty, whereas relative advantage is the only determinant of store loyalty among traditional food retail customers. Positive store experiences lead to increased store commitment and perception of greater relative advantage for traditional retail shoppers, whereas positive store experiences increase switching costs for supermarket customers. Implications for food market entry into India are presented.