Culture and personal values: How they influence perceived service quality

This research analyzes the effects of culture and personal values on perceived service quality. Data on bank service quality are collected from 509 Canadian and 216 French users. The results confirm that power distance and uncertainty avoidance influence perceived service quality. Personal values such as self-fulfillment, self-respect, sense of accomplishment, and security also influence perceived service quality. The study findings show that the effects of personal values (micro-level variables) and culture (macro-level variable) on perceived service quality are distinct.     

Management of perceptions of information technology service quality

The present study evaluates the perception gaps of service quality between information technology (IT) service providers and their clients. IT services require high investments, which make analyzing its effectiveness increasingly important. To do this analysis, this study uses the instrument SERVPERF of the SERVQUAL model. The research took place in a large Brazilian retail bank, which identified gaps in perceptions between IT service providers and its clients. The findings suggest opportunities for improvement in the quality of IT services from a strategic alignment perspective, particularly in the following dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The study also indicates some enhancements for the SERVQUAL model.     

Employee training and service quality in the hospitality industry

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between employee training and service quality in the hospitality industry. The study tested the impacts of perceived access to training, perceived benefits of training and perceived support for training on service quality in the hospitality sector. Survey technique was used for the data collection. The research participants were frontline employees and their customers. The frontline employees responded to the training dimensions, while the customers’ completed the questions on service quality. One hundred and twenty useable surveys were included in this study. This study reveals a significant relationship between the employees’ perception of the benefits of training, support for training and service quality. This study offers some important management and theoretical implications.     

Airline customer satisfaction and loyalty: impact of in-flight service quality

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the in-flight service quality on airline customer satisfaction and loyalty. This study analyzed the data from passengers of two classes: prestige (business) and economy. The results suggest that there are different factors of in-flight service quality that are important according to the customer seat class. In the case of the prestige class, there were six service quality factors of importance: alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage, responsiveness and empathy, reliability, assurance, presentation style of food, and food quality; while the economy class showed five important service quality factors: responsiveness and empathy, food quality, alcoholic beverage, non-alcoholic beverage, and reliability. These findings imply that airline companies’ in-flight service should have different delivery strategies based on the customer seat class.     

Public service quality and customer satisfaction: exploring the attributes of service quality in the public sector

Beyond the existing SERVQUAL-based research, the authors develop an alternative model of public service quality. The various sources of public service quality are explored and a new classification scheme formulated by using critical incidents technique. Four main qualities of public service are identified: process quality, outcome quality, design quality, and relationship quality. The findings suggest that the critical attributes of public service quality for customer satisfaction differ according to the types of customers in the public sector. Final customers (beneficiaries) give priority to the process and outcome qualities, whereas intermediary customers (social workers) have high regard for the design and relationship qualities.     

Service quality dimensions and superior customer perceived value in retail banks: An empirical study on Mexican consumers

This study concerns the service quality topic in the retail bank sector. A sample of 209 retail bank clients was taken, measuring the performance of service quality attributes of their principle retail bank. Behavioral performance variables such as satisfaction, loyalty and customer perceived value were also measured. In a factor analyses the attributes were separated into three factors. These three independent factors explain a considerable amount of variability of a satisfaction–loyalty factor. On the other hand, they could not explain the superior perceived value; and no differences between the service quality performances of the bank brands were found. In conclusion, regardless of the degree of satisfaction and loyalty, the customer is not willing to pay more for banking services at his regular bank than he would at other brands. This implies that superior perceived value is not being achieved via service quality, which suggests a lack of differentiation between brands in this sector.     

Integration of standardization and customization: Impact on service quality,customer satisfaction,and loyalty

The basic objective of this study is to analyse the direct and indirect impacts of standardization and customization on customer satisfaction and loyalty through service quality. The service quality has two dimensions: technical quality and functional quality. A framework is developed by extending Grӧnroos’ model of service quality by including the antecedents of service quality. A questionnaire-based survey collected data from 315 customers of three service industries: healthcare, hospitality, and education. The data was analysed and the model validated using PLS-SEM. The findings show that: (1) integration of standardization and customization of service offerings is critical for improved service quality; (2) standardization has higher impact on service quality when compared to customization; (3) functional quality has higher impact on customer satisfaction when compared to technical quality; and (4) customer satisfaction has a significant effect on customer loyalty. The contribution of this study is the development of an integrated framework to analyse the roles of standardization and customization on service quality.     

Partnerships in the provision of services by multi-agencies: four dimensions of service leadership and service quality

This paper explores the relationship between four key dimensions of service provision through adopting different partnership approaches. These dimensions are identified to describe partnerships as mandatory or voluntary and service provision based on contract or trust. Propositions about the nature and interaction of these variables are presented and combined as a heuristic suggesting complying, constraining and creating modes of partnership-working and service delivery. Examples are provided of these modes in practice. The paper concludes that this heuristic is a useful tool for practitioners to locate their form of partnership-based service delivery within the spectrum identified.     

The four levels of loyalty and the pivotal role of trust: a study of online service dynamics

A four-dimension scale of loyalty that reflects Oliver’s [Satisfaction, a Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1997] conceptualization of a sequential loyalty chain is proposed, operationalized, and tested. Further, through both synthesizing and building on existing research into loyalty, trust, satisfaction, value, and service quality, a framework is proposed and tested that positions trust as a pivotal driver of loyalty. Data is collected and analyzed from two surveys of online customers, the first being purchasers of books and the second being a study of online flight purchasing. Analysis suggests that the hypothesized cognitive-affective-conative-action loyalty sequence is statistically most likely out of all possible variations. Although some differences emerge in the two studies, structural modeling largely supports the hypothesized framework and positions trust as central to service dynamics.     

Measurement of organizational investments in social capital: The service employee perspective

This paper describes the development and validation of a measure of organizational investments in social capital (OISC). The scale development process is carried out over three stages (item generation, scale purification, scale validation), with two separate data collection phases involving a total of 735 working adults from multiple and diverse service-related workplace settings. As such, the data provide evidence for the face, content, discriminant, convergent and nomological validity, dimensionality and reliability of the OISC measure. The OISC measure is a concise, unidimensional scale that has the potential for significant usage in the development and testing of theory, as well as practical application in retail and other service provision contexts.     

Waiting for service: modelling the effectiveness of service interventions

Most service businesses tend to experience unwelcome delays in service delivery that often generate strong negative impacts from customers. In response, managers develop and implement service intervention strategies, such as providing length and reason of a delay, both of which have been reported to have positive impacts on customers. However, the results from studies investigating such interventions are mixed. Accordingly, it is hypothesised that these effects may be contingent upon certain situations. This research project has investigated the wait situation using an experimental design. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design was first created using a restaurant scenario for the stimulus material and an online web site was used to collect data from 130 respondents. Our findings indicate a significant moderating effect of level of service use and degree of goal attractiveness on the effectiveness of providing duration and cause information. More importantly, we found that under certain conditions a service intervention may be counterproductive to the intended strategy. This finding suggests that managers need to be wary of developing and executing expensive service recovery strategies without due regard to the customer segment being targeted.     

The effects of 3rd party consensus information on service expectations and online trust

The marketing literature has recently explored a number of ways in which trust can be communicated by Internet retailers, including 3rd party consensus ratings. This paper explores the impact of consensus sequences over time and across high and low ranges, rather than the mere valence of ratings as presented in past research. Second, effects are compared across products with variant levels of risk. Two experiments investigate service quality inferences, expected satisfaction, and trust beliefs for online retailers as outcomes of 3rd party consensus information (i.e., agreement among a firm's past customers). Results indicate that online trust beliefs vary positively with consensus ratings and trust is higher when ratings trends increase rather than decrease. Service quality inferences and expected satisfaction are shown to mediate these relationships. More interestingly, results of study two suggest sequence direction becomes insignificant when ratings do not approach certain range limits (e.g., high, moderate, low cut-offs). Comparisons across products varying in risk show that consensus ratings are more important when consumers evaluate high risk products. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are offered.     

International sourcing of services: the “Homeshoring” alternative

The offshoring and outsourcing of service work from high-wage to low-wage countries has received considerable exposure in the popular press. Here, an alternative to offshoring is presented, called “Homeshoring.” In Homeshoring, a process is decoupled, just as it would be if it were offshored, but the work is sent to low-wage areas within a firm’s own country, rather than to another country. Homeshoring does not represent merely “domestic sourcing,” as it implies a new relationship and a working relationship with governmental economic development agencies. The benefits and disadvantages of this strategic choice are examined.     

Service sabotage: The dark side of service dynamics

While many aspects of services research assume that employees are largely compliant to management prescribed service standards, a number of recent studies have highlighted the deliberate sabotage by service workers as a key issue. We contend that service sabotage is important not simply because of the pervasiveness of such behaviors, but also because of the impact that such acts can have on firm growth and profitability. Consequently, we seek to achieve three inter-linked objectives in this article. First, we highlight how service saboteurs harm customers’ service experiences and negatively affect the performance of the firm. Second, in order to assist managers in recognizing these behaviors, we identify the most common types of service saboteurs and forms of sabotage. Specifically, we classify and describe four main types of service saboteurs: Thrill Seekers, Apathetics, Customer Revengers, and Money Grabbers. Finally, and most importantly, we provide a series of suggestions regarding how managers might effectively address service sabotage in their firms. These include gathering information and exploiting existing data to establish the extent and nature of sabotage, recruiting the right quality of service staff, training and rewarding employees, enriching and empowering employees, developing a service culture, and initiating better monitoring systems and procedures.     

User involvement in measuring service quality of local authority occupational therapy services; a new approach

The aim of this paper is two‐fold: (i) to describe the development of a new measuring instrument for quality of care from the perspective of the users of local authority Occupational Therapy (OT) services, and (ii) to evaluate the potential of the new instrument as a standardized approach for involving consumers in the service evaluation of home health care services. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. Focus group discussions with users of local authority OT‐services preceded a postal survey. Questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 997 users of the local authority OT Bureau in Kent, UK. The response rate was 55%. A valid and reliable instrument – the QUOTE‐OT Services questionnaire – was developed, which reflects the (expressed) needs of the users of OT services. Feasibility tests showed that information from the instrument can play an important role in follow‐up activities that aim at continuous quality improvement. The QUOTE‐OT Services instrument can be seen as an example of a new generation of questionnaires for assessing user views in quality of care research. Potentially, instruments such as the QUOTE‐OT questionnaire contribute to the empowerment of users in programmes that aim at improving the quality of home health care services.     

Group service recovery strategies effectiveness: The moderating effects of group size and relational distance

The extant service recovery literature focuses on consumers' responses to individual failures. However, group service failures are in fact common, but they have received insufficient research attention. This study contributes to theory and practice by applying social impact theory to explain the social nature of group failures. Findings from two studies show that group size and relational distance substantially affect consumers' response to group service recovery strategies. Specifically, private economic recovery creates less consumer satisfaction as group size increases, whereas consumers with a distant social relationship are more satisfied with public recovery for both economic recovery and social recovery. However, consumers with close relationships are more satisfied with public economic recovery and private social recovery. Apart from offering practical insights, this study expands the theoretical understanding of service failures, suggesting that they occur in a complex social ecology instead of relatively simple dyadic interactions between service providers and consumers.     

The interrelationships among service quality,customer satisfaction,and customer loyalty: Examination of the fast-food industry

The purpose of this study was to use customers’ perspectives to develop a conceptual model for improving service quality and enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. The 197 samples were selected from customers of leading fast food franchise enterprises in Taiwan. The research results indicate that service quality positively influences customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Service quality positively influences customer loyalty through customer satisfaction. The research findings indicate that managers need to ensure they have efficient service quality to enhance customer satisfaction and customer loyalty levels.     

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.     

Telecom market liberalization and service performance outcomes of an incumbent monopoly

Using data from a high-income, emerging market economy in the Middle East, this study examines changes in service performance outcomes of an incumbent monopoly during different periods in the phased liberalization of the country’s telecommunications market. The study draws on Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) theory and Social Exchange Theory (SET) to develop hypotheses about expected changes in four customer-based service performance outcomes—service quality perceptions, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer attitudes. These are tested using data collected in a longitudinal tracking study spanning different periods in the liberalization process. Results show that all four performance outcomes improved significantly during an early post-liberalization period when there was only one additional competitor in the market, but declined slightly during a later period when a second competitor entered the market. However, structural relationships among the outcomes themselves remained invariant across liberalization periods. Policy-making and theoretical implications of the results are outlined and discussed. Although the data come from a single industry in an emerging market economy, a particularly key implication is that while incumbent monopolies may initially harbor a preference for the comfort and ‘freedom’ that comes with being the only player in the market, under certain circumstances liberalization can actually benefit them through the impetus that it provides for their own service quality improvements.