Customer satisfaction and customer behavior: The differential role of brand and category expectations

Previous research has suggested that consumers use multiple strands to evaluate their satisfaction with a product and to establish postpurchase behavioral intention. However, prior empirical research has focused on which individual standard best predicts satisfaction. In contrast, this article develops and tests a model of consumer satisfaction and postpurchase behavioral intention in which consumers simultaneously use multiple standards—perceptions of performance, brand expectations, and category expectations. The results of an experiment for a simulated service encounter provide support for the proposition that consumers use multiple standards and that these standards have differential effects on such postpurchase outcomes as satisfaction, repurchase intention, and willingness to recommend. Brand expectations are shown to be better predictors of affective outcomes (such as satisfaction), while category expectations are shown to be better predictors of behavioral outcomes (repurchase and recommendation). Consistent with prior research, perceived performance is shown to have a strong effect on both satisfaction and behavioral intention.     

Prospects and problems in modeling group decisions

This paper summarizes some of the major issues related to group decision modeling. We briefly review the existing work on group choice models in marketing and consumer research. We draw some generalizations about which models work well when and use those generalizations to provide guidelines for future research.     

Inter-firm learning and knowledge-sharing in multinational networks: An outsourced organization's perspective

This research provides insights into how learning and knowledge are exchanged multinationally between customer firms and their outsourced suppliers who provide non-core, yet essential, services. The paper seeks to understand: (1) how information is exchanged in these networks; (2) how cumulative knowledge adds value in these networks; and (3) how boundary-spanners assist in the dissemination of knowledge and learning within the network. Based on a pharmaceutical industry case, the results suggest that: (a) multinational firms operate more effectively and interact by sharing knowledge with outsourced firms which reflect the customers' structure and fit; (b) networked firms benefit from interactions through economies of scope, but knowledge is not necessarily shared equally among partners; (c) learning and knowledge-sharing interactions are tightly coupled at the product development stage; and (d) outsourced firms interact with external boundary-spanners as needed. The research provides insights for managers of multinational organizations and managers of firms from where essential services are outsourced.     

The historical roots of India’s service-led development: A sectoral analysis of Anglo-Indian productivity differences, 1870-2000

India fell further behind the UK in terms of GDP per capita and overall labour productivity between the 1870s and the 1970s, but has been catching-up since. This paper offers a sectoral analysis of these trends. Comparative India/UK labour productivity in agriculture has declined continuously, and agriculture still accounts for around two-thirds of employment in India. Agriculture thus played a key role in India’s falling behind and has subsequently slowed down the process of catching up. Although there have been substantial fluctuations in comparative India/UK labour productivity in industry, this sector has exhibited no long run trend. The only sector to exhibit an upward trend in comparative India/UK labour productivity is services. India’s recent emergence as a dynamic service-led economy thus appears to have long historical roots. Although India has been characterised by relatively low levels of physical and human capital formation overall, its education provision has historically been unusually skewed towards secondary and tertiary levels. This has provided a limited supply of high productivity workers who have been employed predominantly in services.     

Investigating Customer Resistance to Change in Transaction Relationship with an Internet Vendor

Many academics and practitioners have reiterated the importance of online customer retention to ensure long‐term profitability. Consequently, a number of studies have identified various means of customer retention. These studies lay significant emphasis on creating customer loyalty. However, retaining customers, especially in the context of Internet shopping, is very difficult because of the low costs in comparison and switching. Most of the loyalty programs have also shown disappointing results. This study suggests that by tapping on an individual customer's inclination to resist changes in a transaction relationship, an Internet vendor can achieve customer retention. Using status quo bias theory, this study examines customer resistance to change (CRC) as a means of retaining customers in a transaction relationship with the Internet vendor. The empirical study of an Internet bookstore reveals that trust, relative attractiveness, and switching costs together influence CRC. The empirical results also show that CRC and switching costs have positive effects on willingness to pay more. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Customer-Based Valuation

Customer lifetime value (CLV) has emerged as an important metric to manage and grow customers. Marketing scholars have written many books and articles on this topic. However, most of this research has focused on tactical marketing decisions. While this is important, it is not enough to gain attention of senior managers who are concerned about firm level metrics such as stock price. To have greater impact marketing needs to go beyond brand-level profits to show the impact of marketing actions on firm profitability. In this paper we focus on customer lifetime value and its link to firm value. We discuss research that provides customer-based valuation of firms and suggest directions for future research.     

Structural breaks and GARCH models of stock return volatility: The case of South Africa

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of structural breaks in forecasting stock return volatility using both in-sample and out-of-sample tests applied to daily returns of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) All Share Index from 07/02/1995 to 08/25/2010. We find evidence of structural breaks in the unconditional variance of the stock returns series over the period, with high levels of persistence and variability in the parameter estimates of the GARCH(1,1) model across the sub-samples defined by the structural breaks. This indicates that structural breaks are empirically relevant to stock return volatility in South Africa. However, based on the out-of-sample forecasting exercise, we find that even though there structural breaks in the volatility, there are no statistical gains from using competing models that explicitly accounts for structural breaks, relative to a GARCH(1,1) model with expanding window. This could be because of the fact that the two identified structural breaks occurred in our out-of-sample, and recursive estimation of the GARCH(1,1) model is perhaps sufficient to account for the effect of the breaks on the parameter estimates. Finally, we highlight that, given the point of the breaks, perhaps what seems more important in South Africa, is accounting for leverage effects, especially in terms of long-horizon forecasting of stock return volatility.     

Is Marriage Poisonous? Are Relationships Taxing? An Analysis of the Male Marital Wage Differential in Denmark

Differences in the pattern of marriage, cohabitation, childbirth, and intrahousehold specialization between the United States and Denmark, as well as a rich, register-based panel sample of about 35,000 young Danish men, are exploited to shed light on the nature of the male marital wage differential. The results indicate that failing to control for cohabitation can seriously bias estimates of the marital wage differential, that marriage is a more selective state than cohabitation, and that specialization may explain some of the marital wage differential in the United States but not in Denmark. In Denmark, by contrast, there is evidence that fatherhood has a significant impact on earnings.     

Foreign enclaves and economic development: A theoretical analysis

We consider an urban foreign enclave with sector-specific foreign capital in an otherwise mobile-capital Harris-Todaro model. We consider the taxation of foreign capital. A dynamic version of this model is considered. The long-run equilibrium and the comparative steady-state effects are analyzed. We get some interesting effects of reduction in tax rate on foreign capital on the short-run and the long-run equilibrium levels of domestic factor income and national income under some meaningful conditions.     

Time-varying linkages between tourism receipts and economic growth in South Africa

The causal link between tourism receipts and GDP has recently become a major focus in the tourism economics literature. Results obtained in recent studies about the causal link appear to be sensitive with respect to the countries analysed, sample period and methodology employed. Considering the sensitivity of the causal link, we use rolling window and time-varying coefficient estimation methods to analyse the parameter stability and Granger causality based on a vector error correction model (VECM). When applied to South Africa for the period 1960–2011, the findings are as follows: results from the full-sample VECM indicate that there is no Granger causality between tourism receipts and GDP, while the findings from the time-varying coefficients model based on the state-space representation show that tourism receipts have positive-predictive content for GDP for the entire period, with the exception of the period between 1985 and 1990. Full-sample time-varying causality tests show bidirectional strong causality between tourism receipts and GDP.