Chinese relationship management: a qualitative study of banking in New Zealand

This study investigates the relational factors and motivations of Chinese migrant consumers towards financial service providers in New Zealand. Using convergent interviews, a deeper understanding is developed of immigrants’ relational behaviour with service providers. These relationships with service providers are significantly influenced by traditional Chinese values and guanxi and relational embeddedness plays an important role in how they are developed. The research contributes a better understanding of the interplay between Eastern and Western cultures in service relationships among immigrant groups. A general theory of the Chinese perspective of customer relationship management is developed. The implications for how marketing practitioners manage their relationships with migrant customers are explored.     

The relationship among gratitude,hope, connections,and innovativeness

The interwoven relationships among positive emotions and connections among people within the organization, manifested as collective gratitude and hope, and high-quality connections (HQCs), and firm service innovativeness and financial performance have rarely been addressed in the service innovation management literature. By studying 251 service firms, this paper shows that (a) collective gratitude is positively related to development of HQCs among people within the organization and firm service innovativeness, (b) HQCs among people within the organization are positively associated with firm service innovativeness, and (c) firm service innovativeness is positively related to firm financial performance. This paper also demonstrates that the collective hope of people within the organization positively moderates the relationship between collective gratitude and HQCs among them.     

Managing service shutdowns: Cash refunds or vouchers?

Service shutdowns—extended disruptions of operations—caused by exogenous events are on the rise. Such shutdowns pose major challenges for service providers, customers, and regulators. Providers prefer vouchers as a means of service recovery to limit bankruptcy risk, whereas customers demand cash refunds or vouchers that include a generous bonus. Regulators, on the other hand, insist that customers must be granted the right to be reimbursed in cash. This paper shows that a zero bonus is optimal under the voucher-only strategy, whereas the provider should always include a positive bonus with the voucher under the hybrid strategy that allows customers to choose between the cash refund and voucher options. Surprisingly, despite its higher flexibility in service recovery design, the hybrid strategy can be dominated by the voucher-only strategy in terms of profit and welfare. Moreover, we show that the ranking of strategies differs across the two important dimensions of expected profit and survival under shutdown. Finally, we study competition among providers and show that a high-quality provider is more likely to use cash-back as the service recovery strategy than its low-quality competitor.     

Competitive advantage through service differentiation by manufacturing companies

This paper examines the relationship among the complexity of customer needs, customer centricity, innovativeness, service differentiation, and business performance within the context of companies that have made a service transition from pure goods providers to service providers. A survey of 332 manufacturing companies provides the basis for the empirical investigation. One key finding is that a strong emphasis on service differentiation can lead to a manufacturing firm's strategies for customer centricity being less sensitive to increasingly complex customer needs, which can increase a firm's payoff for customer centricity. In contrast, the payoff from innovativeness appears to be higher if the firm focuses its resources on either product or service innovation; that is, a dual focus does not work well. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for researchers and managers.     

Service innovativeness in retailing: Increasing the relative attractiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 primarily spreads through close contact between humans and has affected retailing industries extremely hard. To manage the situation retailers have turned to service innovation to change their operations to make consumers feel safe while shopping. This research focuses on the role of service innovativeness in retailing firms during the COVID-19 pandemic through an empirical study of almost 6000 consumers of 28 retailing firms. The results suggested that retailers with high service innovativeness performed COVID-19 imposed innovations better to improve their relative attractiveness. For retailers with physical stores, changes to the servicescape and the offering were found to be the key antecedents of service innovativeness. The findings on COVID-19 imposed service innovations demonstrate the importance of service innovativeness in successfully changing retailing services to adjust to the restrictions from governments and safety needs of customers.     

Is there any value in the online reviews of remedial satisfied customers? An empirical study in the hospitality industry

Hospitality service providers lack attention to the positive reviews written by remedial satisfied customers, although they have devoted a lot of energy to service recovery. Drawing on the accessibility-diagnosticity framework, this study investigates the relationship between the online review types of remedial satisfied customers and potential customers' booking intentions. The results indicate that outcome satisfactory review not only improves review impression and positively affects customers' booking intentions, but also reduces perceived risk and enhances customers’ booking intentions. The review valence consistency plays a moderating role in the dual-path effect of online review types on booking intentions.     

The Role of External Relationships for LSP Innovativeness: A Contingency Approach

Innovativeness is key to the success of logistics service providers (LSPs) and as LSPs often lack competencies for innovation internally, external relations as sources to acquire knowledge relevant for innovation are important. To the authors' knowledge, there is no research identifying the relevant knowledge sources for LSP innovativeness. Based on contingency theory, we develop a conceptual model on the relevance of different external relations in the context of the innovation focus of the LSP. Thus, we extend insights from previous studies that have only discussed the benefits of external knowledge acquisition in general and outline how to use existing business relations of an LSP to facilitate different types of innovation. The hypothesized model is tested based on survey data from 201 LSPs using structural equation modeling. The findings support the model and outline that better relationships with external service firms or other LSPs are not important for internal process improvements and innovations for existing customers, but very valuable for innovations targeting new customer business, while good relations to customers even show a slight tendency to hamper the development of innovations for new customer business. In addition, it is shown that innovativeness is a strong driver of LSP firm performance.     

Performance or learning goal orientation: Implications for business performance

An organization's long-term effectiveness and efficiency reflect its learning goal or performance goal orientation. Goal orientation concepts originate in psychology of achievement motivation theory. Goal orientations drive the development and deployment of organizational capabilities, such as market orientation and innovativeness to achieve organizational performance outcomes. Extant research pays little attention to whether or not industry type (services or manufacturing) operates as a significant moderating factor in the relationships among an organization's capabilities, goal orientation, and performance outcomes. This study addresses this gap. The study results indicate a significant moderating effect of industry type on relationship between goal orientation and performance but not between goal orientation and either market orientation or innovativeness. Goal orientation appears to be more important for service industries than for manufacturing.     

Planning and implementing effective service guarantee programs

This article highlights different types of service guarantees, explains the benefits of service guarantees to consumers and service providers, examines why service guarantees are so rarely used, and describes the characteristics of effective service guarantee programs. We seek to motivate additional service providers into offering service guarantees (when appropriate), to improve the effectiveness of service guarantee programs, and to spur additional research that can reduce the gap between academic research and industry practices relating to service guarantees. Properly planned, implemented, and controlled service guarantees can benefit service providers by serving as a signal of quality to customers, focusing on consumer expectations, developing specific performance standards, providing reliable data on service failures, determining weak points in the service-delivery process, and regaining customers who would otherwise be lost. Despite these benefits, service guarantees are not commonly used by service providers for a variety of reasons. We study and evaluate these impediments as well as describe characteristics of effective service guarantee programs from both the consumer's and service provider's perspectives.     

Service innovation: Inward and outward related activities and cooperation mode

Knowledge of how customers co-create value, the way that suppliers and providers co-produce services, and how research and development centers and universities transfer technologies is becoming increasingly important to scholars' understanding of service innovation. This paper presents an analysis of the relationship between inward and outward innovation activities in service organizations and their modes of innovation, using network innovation premises and an extended innovation model. Empirical data from retail, health and education sector service organizations show the existence of a relationship between the degree of development of the inward innovation process and the degree of development of outward innovation activities. The majority of service organizations have innovation processes with an orientation toward customers and suppliers rather than other service network members, and leading service organizations follow a path that the literature defines as oriented toward the service value network. Findings lead to implications of how innovation managers could develop their internal innovation capacity to balance inward and outward activities properly.     

THE EMPOWERMENT OF FRONTLINE SERVICE STAFF IN 3PL COMPANIES

Research on third‐party logistics (3PL) service providers has focused more on managing customer relationships than on managing the frontline personnel who interact with customers on a daily basis. Thus, even though the overall need for 3PL's to be market‐oriented is well‐recognized, relatively little is known about how 3PL companies support and develop frontline service staff to provide better service. This study draws on 3PL company site managers' responses to a postal survey that examines the influences of internal communication, customer service training and managerial coaching for customer contact employees on the relationship between market orientation and frontline service recovery empowerment.     

Enhancing Dyadic Performance Through Boundary Spanners and Innovation: An Assessment of Service Provider–Customer Relationships

Firms recognize that working together through collaborative relationships offers potential benefits such as improving cooperation, information sharing, and overall performance. An additional and extremely valuable benefit of working together is the potential for creating innovative business approaches and solutions. Thus, developing external linkages has become a higher priority within many organizations. Boundary spanning employees offer one means of achieving closer cross‐firm relationships. We investigate the roles of boundary spanners by examining service providers and their relationships with customers. More specifically, we examine boundary spanning employees that are physically on‐site at customer facilities. Results provide strong support that boundary spanners perceiving higher levels of external organizational support from a client subsequently develop affective commitment to the customer. This, in turn, drives knowledge exchange and logistics innovation. A relationship between logistics innovation and performance (of service providers and of customers) was also found. Managerial implications of the research findings are discussed and suggestions presented covering future research.     

The development of service quality dimensions for internet service providers: Retaining customers of different usage patterns

This study examines the relationships among relevant service quality dimensions of Internet service providers (ISP) and their customers’ perceived value, trust and commitment. Data was collected from residential Internet users in Thailand. The final usable sample size was 1507. The analyses include segmenting ISPs’ customers on the basis of their usage pattern and evaluating their perceptions of Internet service quality dimensions. In addition, several alternatives models were compared using structural equation modelling to confirm the mediation effects. An ISP’s service quality is influenced by the following four dimensions (a) network quality, (b) customer service and technical support, (c) information quality and (d) security and privacy. The findings reveal that while all dimensions have positive effects on trust, only network quality, information support and privacy influence customer value significantly and information support is the only dimension which is directly related to commitment. Additionally, the effects of customer service and information support on value vary across customers of different Internet usage patterns. The contribution of the present paper stems from the simultaneous modelling of a range of mediation effects which can better help explain the impact of service quality dimensions on customers’ cognitive and affective evaluations in high-tech service settings.     

LOGISTICS SERVICE DRIVEN LOYALTY: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Based upon the extant literature and a qualitative study of buyer‐seller relationships, an exploratory model of the relationship between supply chain power, dependence, satisfaction, and loyalty is developed and presented. Four fundamental objectives are accomplished through this research and presented here. The first was to use a qualitative method to gain a deeper understanding of the logistics service driven loyalty that exists between suppliers and customers. The second was to develop a more thorough understanding of the gap in logistics service expectations between a supplier and their customers. The third objective was to examine how the power/dependence relationship affects both customer service expectations of the parties, and the actual logistics service delivered by the supplier. Finally, this research is intended to build a basis for future quantitative research of loyalty in supplier/customer relationships.     

Effect of customer involvement on co-creation of services: A moderated mediation model

The study explored the influence of customer involvement on co-creation directly and indirectly through three customer engagement dimensions, namely identification, interaction, and absorption from lens of customer-dominant logic and stimulus-organism-response framework. Data were collected from 211 Chinese service customers in Hong Kong. Results of IBM SPSS PROCESS models showed that customer involvement influenced co-creation directly and indirectly through absorption and interaction, but not identification. Customer involvement was found to exert a greater impact on co-creation of services for those with a high rather than low relation orientation. Thus, service providers should utilize mass media effectively to arouse customers’ feelings of relevance and important of services to them. They should also interact with customers continuously through social media that can be enhanced by various kinds of immersion technology.     

The effects of social justice and stigma-consciousness on gay customers' service recovery evaluation

This study examines how social justice and the stigma-consciousness level of gay customers influence their service recovery perceptions. The results, based on an experiment involving 379 gay respondents, indicate that distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice significantly affect gay customers' service recovery evaluations (satisfaction) and post-complaint behavioral intentions (negative word-of-mouth and repatronage). Also, higher stigma-consciousness gay customers show more negative service recovery evaluations and behavioral intentions than those with lower stigma-consciousness. Service providers who are interested in attracting and maintaining gay customers should create awareness among their employees about stigma-consciousness.     

The Underlying Dimensions of Relationship Marketing in the Malaysian Mobile Service Sector

After so many years, the Malaysian mobile service market is getting saturated, whereby service operators are having difficulties differentiating themselves because they offer similar services. As the service options are wide, customers become less committed to a particular provider and might easily shift from one operator to another. This situation forces the service providers to create a strategy that focuses more on gaining and retaining long-term relationships with their customers. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the underlying dimensions of relationship marketing in the Malaysian mobile service sector. A sample of 300 customers in Klang Valley was drawn using scientific procedures of mall intercept, and structural equation modeling was utilized in testing the proposed model. The results show that the relationships between the exogenous latent factors and the overall endogenous factor are significant, ranging from.77 to.94. This illustrates that a relatively high proportion of the variance in relationship marketing is well explained by each of the factors.     

An Investigation of Trust,Satisfaction, and Commitment on Repurchase Intentions in Professional Services

Abstract

The predictive ability of trust, satisfaction, and commitment regarding a customer's intent to retain professional service providers is explored. Trust, in business relationships, is typically perceived as a consequent of satisfaction and experience. However, professional service customers may be unable to commence relationships without trusting their providers; thus, the stance that trust leads to commitment may not hold. Given the difficulty that professional service customers have regarding their ability to assess their providers' trustworthiness, customers may take trust for granted once the relationship begins. Regression analyses suggest that professional service customers utilize satisfaction and commitment, rather than trust, to determine repurchase intentions.     

Understanding organization-customer links in a service setting in Russia

This study examines the effect of management commitment to service quality on customer satisfaction through the mediating links of service climate and core and relational service performance in a high-power distance culture. Data were collected using a survey distributed to the FLEs and customers of branches of a Russian retail bank. Study findings demonstrate that branch service climate mediates the management commitment to service quality – service performance relationship and that this indirect effect is stronger on core service performance relative to relational service performance. Contrary to expectations, our findings demonstrate the importance of relational service performance relative to core service performance as a mediator of the branch service climate – branch customer satisfaction relationship. Implications of these novel findings and future research directions are discussed.     

Value co-creation among hotels and disabled customers: An exploratory study

This study examines how service supplier and buyer value co-creation influences buyers' attitudes toward service providers. Service-dominant logic is a prevalent concept in the services industry, providing an important marketing theory in which intangible resources, co-creation of value, and relationships are the keys to determining marketing exchanges. This research describes a model for analyzing value co-creation management in the hotel industry, focusing on the specific market segment of disabled customers. This framework helps foster value co-creation to increase the benefits for participants during each stage of their relationship. The paper also presents the managerial implications of the research findings.