Consumer expectations of online information provided by bank websites

Information search has been identified as the primary reason for Internet use in the UK. It is, therefore, important that companies understand the information requirements of consumers in order to ensure website effectiveness in aiding consumer decision making. This paper explores factors contributing to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with current online information provision by retail banks. The research consisted of a two-stage method involving focus groups and a quantitative questionnaire survey of young adult Internet users. Two hundred and fifty three usable questionnaires formed the basis of the quantitative analysis. Factor analysis identified seven key underlying expectation dimensions. An analysis of the most and least important attributes revealed that those contributing to decision-making convenience are preferred over the technological entertainment value of the site. The results provide an indication of the website features and design most likely to attract and retain customers.     

What skills and attributes does an accounting graduate need? Evidence from student perceptions and employer expectations

For some years there has been much debate between various stakeholders about the need for accounting graduates to develop a broader set of skills to be able to pursue a career in the accounting profession. This study uses mixed methods to examine perceptions and expectations of two major stakeholders: students and employers. Findings indicate that students are becoming aware of employers’ expectations in terms of communication, analytical, professional and teamwork skills. Although employers are still expecting a good understanding of basic accounting skills and strong analytical skills, they are also requiring ‘business awareness’ and knowledge in terms of the ‘real world’. Both students and employers report that many of the ‘essential’ non‐technical and professional skills and attributes are not being developed sufficiently in university accounting programmes.     

Rethinking models of technology adoption for Internet banking: The role of website features

Research on the adoption of information technology, drawing on models borrowed from social psychology, typically views adoption as a function of individual attitudes, the influence of others, perception of ability to perform a particular behaviour, and facilitating factors. A significant limitation of these models, in technology-adoption situations, is failure to consider the features of the technology itself. This essentially theoretical paper introduces the construct ‘website features’ as potentially influential in technology adoption, and specifically Internet banking. Research evidence on the salience of such features is reviewed, and it is argued that the effective features and their impacts differ along the stages of the customer purchase process. A theoretical framework is developed for evaluating website design in relation to these stages. Incorporating this construct into existing models, it is argued, will advance marketing theory in an online environment and assist website designers in enhancing website effectiveness to the benefit of the business–customer relationship.     

The effect of task-technology fit on purchase intention: The moderating role of perceived risks

Electronic commerce to date has experienced rapid growth, and online purchases have become very popular among online consumers. To successfully attract online consumers and benefit from doing so, e-tail product providers should learn about consumers’ purchase intention, its antecedents, and moderators. This study proposes a research model of purchase intention using perceived performance risk and perceived privacy risk as moderators based on a perspective of task-technology fit. In the proposed model, purchase intention is positively influenced by three antecedents: task-technology fit, perceived navigation, and perceived reputation. Each model path is moderated by perceived performance risk and perceived privacy risk, respectively. Empirically testing using a survey of 749 registered members (consumers) from the database of Taiwan’s largest e-learning commercial website confirms that task-technology fit, perceived navigation, and perceived reputation positively influence purchase intention. The relationship between task-technology fit, perceived navigation and purchase intention are significantly moderated by the perceived performance risk and perceived privacy risk. Finally, managerial implications and limitations of our findings are discussed.     

Online-Aktivität als moderierender Effekt der Wirkung Convenience instrumentalisierender Attribute auf Kundengewinnung im Versicherungsneugeschäft

Digitization’s increasing influence on the Germans’ everyday lives leads to changes in their buying behavior. In the internet age, customer orientation means, inter alia, to actually understand the changes in the consumers’ expectations. This raises the question how the shift of customer activity from the analogue to the digital world changes the effect of certain exogenous, convenience exploiting attributes on a supplier’s predefined response variables (e.?g. customer acquisition). This article focuses on the insurance industry and, theoretically, deals with the question, whether doing business online can be considered as moderating effect of the relationship between convenience attributes (controllable by insurers) and customer acquisition as target figure in insurance business. Based on the example of contracting a new motor insurance policy it can be derived hypothetically that “digital customers” have different expectations in terms of speed of processing (as convenience attribute) than those signing a policy together with their agent.     

A comprehensive comparison of corporate environmental reporting and responsiveness

This research is motivated by an interest in determining if there is an association between companies that have been identified as environmentally responsive according to an independent ranking and the quality and extent of their disclosures about their environmental impacts. We use the proactive approach to achieving legitimacy to develop the expectation that legitimacy theory can be used to predict a positive association between environmental responsiveness and disclosure. Using all forms of environmental reporting (both hard copy and website), we comprehensively assess the quality and extent of what is being reported and then match this assessment with an independent assessment of each company's environmental responsiveness. We find significant positive correlations between the independent ranking and our rankings based on the quality and extent of disclosure. This suggests that companies’ environmental disclosures reflect their environmental responsiveness and supports the expectations we developed in terms of legitimacy theory.     

Stock option use by Australian IPOs

This paper examines the use of stock options by Australian IPOs. Stock options in this setting exhibit heterogeneity of ‘in the moneyness’ attributes. We can therefore identify incentive ‘out of the money’ options and reward ‘at or in the money’ options and study their usage. The setting also features options granted to employees (CEO, executives, non-executive directors, and managers) and external parties (e.g., underwriters, lenders, seed capitalists, and promoters). We examine the motives for granting stock options with different ‘in the moneyness’ attributes to employees and external parties, as well as the performance outcomes. Our results suggest ‘in the moneyness’ attributes of options vary according to uncertainties about growth options, general operating risks, and/or agency risks relating to the use of IPO proceeds; however, these relations do not translate into robust links from the option grants to future performance.     

The magic of branding: The role of ‘pledge’, ‘turn’ and ‘prestige’ in fostering consumer trust in financial services

The purpose of this article is to study the impact of brand image on consumer trust through empirical investigation in the context of the financial services sector. While trust helps to bind consumers to brands, a strong brand image works like magic in reducing consumers’ risk perception and promoting trust. This study analyses how brand image influences consumers’ trusting intention through operationalising an interdisciplinary brand-trust model. Constructs and measures were drawn from interdisciplinary brand and trust literature and tested through employing EFA, CFA and structural equation modelling. Data were collected through a quantitative survey of 300 financial services consumers. Using the analogy of a magic trick, the study unveils the key role of financial services branding in engendering consumer trust in the ‘pledge’ or ‘prestige’ parts of the trick but not in the ‘turn’. The research contributes to the convergent and mutually inclusive theories of trust and branding as well as services marketing literature. For managers and policymakers in the financial services sector the findings will help them to effectively manage brand image and foster consumers’ trusting intention.     

E-business opportunities in financial services

Over many years, technological developments have enabled financial services products to be sold and administered via remote distribution channels. E-business is the latest channel whose potential is being explored by both traditional financial services players and new entrants alike. But, in their haste to ‘go online’, are organisations, new and old, falling into the ‘technology trap’ and ignoring the fundamentals underpinning financial services retailing and, perhaps, undermining some of their ‘segment-of-one’ strategies? This paper concludes that the key to successful e-financial services retailing is to take the nuances, attributes, techniques and skills that have accompanied financial services products in the physical world and reinvent them in an e-environment. Only by following this approach will e-business avoid being labelled as a solution looking for a problem. UK high street banks are continuing to extend the choice of channel through which customers can manage their money, eg e-banking. But it is suggested that channels such as e-banking potentially reduce the level of personal contact between bank and customer to the extent that a ‘virtual’ relationship develops. This paper concludes that, given the tendency towards ‘virtualisation’, it is inconceivable that bank–customer relationships will become any more intimate in the future. Indeed, a greater degree of personalisation in customer communication may be the very best that banks are able to offer.     

Bank service quality: A comparison between a publicly quoted bank and a government bank in Singapore

This study, conducted in Singapore, investigates three aspects of service quality. The study samples customers of two specific banks, one of which is publicly quoted and one of which is government owned. For comparative purposes, five service quality dimensions, which the authors created, were used. The results showed that consumer expectations about an excellent bank's service quality were not significantly different as between the publicly quoted bank and the government bank. The perceptions that consumers had about the service quality of the bank they patronised, though, showed some significant differences. The publicly quoted bank was perceived as having a significantly better ‘services portfolio’, specifically in regard to making customers aware of its services and offering a variety of services through its ATMs. The government bank was perceived as having better ‘staff who deliver the service’, specifically in the way the staff dressed and the efficiency with which they served customers. The five service quality dimensions were found to have better predictive capabilities for the measurement of the overall satisfaction of customers who patronised the government bank.     

Effects of the risk sources and user involvement on e-commerce adoption: application to tourist services

Past research has focused on the dimensions (consequences) of perceived risk and the effect of global risk on e-commerce adoption by consumers. This paper uses a new approach to examine the influence of perceived risk on e-commerce adoption and, on the basis of the Theory of Planned behaviour (TPB), develops an integrative model that includes the effect of three risk sources (i.e. technology, vendor and product) on the attitude towards the website use and online purchasing intention of users. In addition, this study examines how involvement, one of the main determinants of consumer behaviour, affects the role of these sources of perceived risk in e-commerce adoption. The results obtained in a sample of 1083 users of tourist services suggest that technology risk is the main determinant of online purchasing intention, which is also influenced by the variables from the TPB model. For its part, the technology risk and vendor risk have a negative influence on attitude towards the website use. In addition, both types of risk have a higher negative effect on attitude in the case of high-involvement users, supporting the moderating influence of involvement on e-commerce adoption. From a practical point of view, the findings of this research help managers to implement actions aimed at reinforcing the users’ trust in their websites and, consequently, at fostering the online purchase.     

The role of expectations in stabilization policy

This paper develops and tests a theory of the process by which private agents in an economy form expectations about government policy. Agents form and update their beliefs about the true state of government policy in a Bayesian fashion. The ‘credibility’ of a policy is defined to be the subjective probability that the government is pursuing a 'reform' policy rule. The ‘credibility’ of a reform of monetary or exchange rate policies is a function of the parameters of both monetary and fiscal policies. The theory is applied to the Chilean and Argentine exchange reforms of the late 1970's.     

Corporate social responsibility reports: topic analysis and big data approach

ABSTRACT

This paper performs topic modeling using all publicly available CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) reports for all constituent firms of the major stock market indices of 15 industrialized countries included in MSCI Europe for the sample period from 1999 to 2016. Our text mining results and LDA analyses indicate that ‘employees safety’, ‘employees training support’, ‘carbon emission’, ‘human right’, ‘efficient power’, and ‘healthcare medicines’ are the common topics reported by publicly listed companies in Europe and the UK. There is a clear sector bias with industrial firms emphasizing ‘employee safety’, Utilities concentrating on ‘efficient power’ while consumer discretionary and consumer staples highlighting ‘food waste’ and ‘food packaging.’ To produce these results, we used a battery of python code to organize the hundreds of reports downloaded from Bloomberg and the internet, the latest R-algorithm to estimate LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) model and the LDAvis interactive tool to visualize and refine the LDA model.     

Controllers’ use of informational tactics

Controllers typically have a ‘dual accountability’ towards the finance function and operational management, respectively. This dual accountability at times confronts them with conflicting expectations. In this paper, we suggest that ‘informational tactics’ constitute an important resource which controllers rely on so as to handle these expectations and to successfully present themselves vis-à-vis their different internal stakeholders. Drawing upon interview data, we demonstrate that informational tactics relate to different dimensions of information control (i.e. ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ information is to be exchanged) and that they depend on the respective room for manoeuvre a controller has in a given situation. Overall, our analysis adds a more nuanced picture to the literature on controllers’ handling of information and demonstrates the fundamental role of informational tactics for their everyday work.     

Monetary policy and aggregate volatility

Discretionary conduct of monetary stabilization policy can increase real and nominal aggregate volatility by arbitrary amounts when firms pay limited attention to aggregate shocks. A conservative central banker with stronger preference for price stability eliminates the commitment problem, thereby reduces output and price volatility and gives rise to a policy-induced ‘Great Moderation’. Increased focus on price stability facilitates firms’ information processing and aligns their expectations better with policy decisions. This ‘coordination effect’ reduces aggregate real and nominal volatility. Consistent with empirical evidence, the moderation manifests itself through reduced residual variance in vector autoregressions (VARs) involving macroeconomic variables.     

A ‘panoptical’ or ‘synoptical’ approach to monitoring performance? Local public services in England and the widening accountability gap

This article highlights how recent reforms to the auditing and assessment of local public services in England suggest there will be a shift from panoptical to ‘synoptical’ monitoring approaches. This is because the UK Government has abolished its centralised monitoring regime and instead required local authorities to publish a range of financial and performance datasets online, ostensibly so that citizens can hold organisations to account directly. However, the complexity and raw nature of these data, along with the sidelining of professional auditors, will result in most citizens being either unable or unwilling to undertake this task. As such, the proposed ‘synoptical’ approach will not materialise. Indeed, other legislative changes will mean that outsourcing firms effectively become the new, unaccountable observers of local public sector bodies within an enduring panoptical system. In many cases these companies will then assume responsibility for delivering the same services that they have assessed.     

An integrative model of installed online trust in the financial services industry

Trust is crucial for any long-term consumer–vendor relationship. It is a central component in many traditional and electronic commercial activities. Studies to date have mostly examined the antecedents that influence initial online trust (new customers), neglecting installed trust in the online company. Thus, the purpose of this article is to test an integrative model of installed online trust in the financial services industry. An online survey conducted with 476 panel members reveals that three website features, namely, design, perceived security/privacy and information quality, as well as quality of support (relationship characteristic), positively affect installed online trust. Findings show that unlike for initial online trust, reputation (company characteristic) does not influence installed online trust. The study also confirmed that installed online trust influences the four levels of loyalty (cognitive, affective, conative and behavioural). Some practical implications are provided.     

Corporate reporting on the Internet and the expectations gap: new face of an old problem

While the practice of Internet financial reporting (IFR) has evolved rapidly, research has questioned the corresponding responsiveness of the auditing profession. This study investigates the existence and nature of an expectations gap that may have arisen in relation to the auditor's role and responsibilities with respect to IFR. Based on a questionnaire survey in New Zealand, results confirm the existence of an expectations gap between auditors and stakeholder groups. Specific responsibilities contributing to deficient performance, deficient standards, and unreasonable expectations components of this gap are identified. The principal pronouncement dealing with auditors’ relevant responsibilities in New Zealand is AGS 1003 Audit Issues Relating to the Electronic Presentation of Financial Statements and Related Auditor's Reports. AGS 1003 discusses, inter alia, the auditor's role and responsibilities in relation to electronic financial statements before and after online publication, and the implications of IFR for the auditor's report and other audit communications. The study argues that the authoritative status of such guidance statements may contribute to a perpetuation of the gap. Furthermore, the profession is urged to avoid ‘standard’ professional responses to the issues, which risk being labelled insufficient and/or strategically motivated. The findings have policy implications for standard-setters internationally.     

An observation analysis of e-service quality in online banking

This study focuses on observing customer perceptions of internet banking and e-service quality from a user-based perspective within an Irish context. The study involves an observational study of a purposive sample of 20 consumers based upon their perceptions of the Bank of Ireland website using unstructured and structured observation techniques. Respondents moved from basic to higher order gratifications according to IT experience and internet usage. While information and transaction gratifications were deemed key to online banking, enjoyment gratifications held limited associations, thus emphasising its functional nature. User group categorisations had a direct impact on online behaviour in terms of time spent evaluating in addition to the level of customer pro-activity. The paper highlights the value of the uses and gratifications categorisations system, which provides a key platform to the study of e-service quality and offers e-banking providers a more effective system of serving individual customer e-service needs. Online banking providers can make the process of using e-banking more enjoyable by enhancing website interactivity and creating unique online experiences. Future e-banking penetration and the success of complex financial product adoption will be dependent on proactive online marketing campaigns coupled with increased website responsiveness. This paper adopts a unique perspective by exploring e-service quality from the user-based approach by assessing the uses and gratifications sought by online users, and subsequently examines their impact on effective web design and the e-service dimensions deemed focal to premium usage.     

On the inherent stability of rationally adaptive expectations

This paper analyzes Cagan's model of hyperinflation under the assumption that the stochastic process generating the behavior of the money supply is such as to make adaptive expectations ‘rational,’ in the sense of Muth. The paper shows that when the coefficient of adjustment of expectations has the value implied by the assumption of adjustment of ‘rationality,’ the stability condition of Cagan's model is necessarily satisfied.