The influence of guarantees,active requests to voice and failure severity on customer complaint behavior

Anecdotal evidence suggests that service guarantees and requests by service workers to complain encourage customers to voice following failure, while holding negative word of mouth and exit at bay. However, empirical support for these tactics is limited. To address this deficiency, we conducted an experiment examining the influence of these devices on customer complaint behavior (CCB) across restaurant failures of varying severity. Findings suggest that offering a guarantee, regardless of it being unconditional or combined, encourages voice. Failure severity had the strongest influence on CCB, and it interacted with both active request and guarantee type in influencing exit. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.     

Has Mumsnet changed me? SNS influence on identity adaptation and consumption

Abstract

This paper seeks to assess how one SNS network may support ongoing processes of identity adaptation and explore the role of consumption references in identity negotiation on the site. Drawing on theories of the liminality of motherhood, and the identity reconstruction processes that emerge in online communities, this paper traces the complexity of identity adaptation on SNS. With focus on SNS as a platform that may enable different phases of liminality, the transition to reincorporation phase is explored, revealing how members may experience support for ongoing identity renewal. Adopting a qualitative approach and direct observation method, posts from 12 extensive mumsnet.com discussion threads were screened and analysed using qualitative content analysis. Findings show how the functionality of this SNS site may facilitate some identity reconstruction.     

Assessing the Assessments

They said of the July 1997 Asian regional financial crisis that ‘…it could never happen again’. They were right. There has not been another regional crisis—just an international one! This paper owes its origins to the Asian financial crisis. The crisis sparked the development of an assessment model for the evaluation of insolvency laws. The paper reviews the considerable developments in this area, commencing with the pioneering work of the Asian Development Bank in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and culminating in the, now, quite established triennial practice of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in its assessment of the insolvency laws of its ‘countries of operation’. Along the way, mention is also made of the development and application of the World Bank ‘Principles’ and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Legislative Guide for Insolvency Law. All of these diagnostic tools have been variously employed in an endeavour to provide a fair and acceptable basis for evaluating an insolvency law. The paper draws comparisons from these tools and concludes that there is a considerable degree of correlation between them, such that approaches taken in 1998 have remained much the same to this time. The EBRD assessment programme is singled out for fuller analysis. It was developed with the benefit of the earlier assessment models and is consistently used as a means of tracking the development of insolvency laws. Accordingly, the paper presents the survey questionnaire on which the EBRD assessment is based, explains the methodology behind it and presents the results of the last of such assessments (2009). It invites an examination of the bases on which the EBRD assessments are undertaken and whether the approach is sufficiently broad, objective and fair and its use in possibly creating aspirations for reform. One purpose of the paper is to capture and record the historical origins and development of the assessment models before it all becomes lost in the passage of time. The paper also advances the use of the EBRD assessment model as a teaching tool in courses in comparative and international insolvency law. Copyright © 2014 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd     

‘Eco’ For Whom? Envisioning Eco‐urbanism in the Sino‐Singapore Tianjin Eco‐city,China

Eco‐cities have attracted international attention from governments, corporations, academics and other actors seeking to use sustainable urban planning to reduce urban environmental impacts. China has devoted significant political will and economic resources to the development of new‐build eco‐city projects, reflecting the Chinese government's goals to build a ‘harmonious society' in which environmental sustainability and social stability are mutually reinforcing. We critically analyse the case of the Sino‐Singapore Tianjin eco‐city to demonstrate that the eco‐city's ecologically modernizing visions of eco‐urbanism construct a protective environment for its residents that constrains broader consideration of social sustainability. Through analysis of the marketing and presentation of specific domestic and other spaces of the eco‐city, we examine the application of ecologically modernizing construction and technology to the design of the city. We argue that the eco‐city is discursively constructed as ecologically beneficial for its inhabitants rather than for the broader socio‐environmental landscape. Our analysis of residential spaces in Tianjin eco‐city introduces the question of what ‘eco’ means when considering the construction of eco‐urban environments for the city's residents.