Strategies towards innovative services: findings from the German service landscape

The specifics of services seem to prohibit a simple transfer of innovation strategies from the manufacturing to the service sector. To better understand what works, successful strategic service innovators and their strategic approaches have been the focus of this study. To do so, 80 service innovators in Germany have been monitored over a period of one year. By analyzing them, according to the basic strategies they follow (low cost, differentiation or mixed emphasis) and the dominant design of their service delivery system (information technology-based, people-based or mixed approach), this paper provides an understanding of the strategic approaches followed by successful service innovators. Our findings propose that there is a fit between the complexity of service offerings and variety of the interaction approaches by successful service innovators. In sum, we argue that for an appropriate design of service innovation strategy both managers and researchers need to go beyond the traditional distinction of low cost and differentiation strategy.     

Influence of innovation on performance: analysis of Spanish service firms

The main objective of this research was to analyse innovation in service firms. In strategic management, the methodology of fit allows us to study the adjustment between two dimensions by revealing the internal consistency between them and its influence on the efficiency of firms. This paper is focused on the analysis of fit between types of services (classified according to intensity of innovation) and the innovation decisions made by these firms. The fit has been contrasted through the methodology of adjustment as an approach to the ideal profile. An important question in this paper consists in revealing whether the fit between the type of services and innovative decisions influences a firm's performance.     

Managerial approaches towards service quality: the case of three service organisations

Using a multiple case study, this paper is concerned with assessing the impact of senior management's approach and attitudes on service quality and its implications for middle and firstline managers. Date from 52 semi-structured interviews representing a variety of managerial levels suggests that there exist many conflicts and differences in senior management's orientation and approach towards quality management (QM) with that of middle and firstline managers. The results further indicate that getting such consistency appropriate to the needs of top, middle, and firstline management, and of the QM itself, is one of the key problems of current management of service quality. However, the findings highlight that where there is consistency between senior managers' underlying approaches towards service quality goal with that of middle and firstline managers, service quality programmes will highly likely produce expected results. Finally, the implications of these findings as well as future research are put forward.     

Key service drivers for high-tech service brand equity: The mediating role of overall service quality and perceived value

Abstract

This study investigates how different aspects of service quality could have effects on overall perception of service quality, perceived value, and service brand equity. Based on a survey of active users of mobile telecommunications services in Taiwan, we obtained the following findings. First, we found that empathy, network quality, reliability, and assurance, but not tangibles and responsiveness, have a significant effect on service quality and value perception. Second, the effect of overall service quality on brand equity is partially mediated by perceived value. Third, overall service quality has differential mediation effects on the relationships between specific service quality dimensions and perceived value. Finally, empathy and network quality have direct effects on brand equity. For managers, our study suggests the importance of identifying key service drivers for building strong service brand for high-tech service firms. The identification of key service drivers could then enable these firms to make strategic decisions on services investments. It also demonstrates the importance of the humanisation of technology for services firms. This study is original in that it explores the path from specific services qualities to service brand equity.     

Revisiting customers' perception of service quality in fast food restaurants

This research is an extension to previous work in fast food restaurant marketing. The population of this research consists of actual fast food restaurant customers. Following the literature, data are analyzed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Structural Equation Modeling, and Path Analysis. Findings of this work identify factors impacting customer satisfaction, as well as dimensions of service quality and their rankings in the fast food restaurant context. Results indicate that there is no direct way of increasing behavioral intentions through improving service quality for fast food restaurants. Rather, behavioral intentions can be improved through customer satisfaction as an intermediary. Further, this work finds evidence that customer satisfaction can be improved through service quality, food quality, and price-value ratio, which in turn would pave an indirect path toward improvement in behavioral intentions in this industry. Results of this research shed light on prioritizing managers’ focus and resource allocation for customer satisfaction and different dimensions of service quality and can be used by fast food restaurant managers to set guidelines and strategies in providing better service to their customers.     

电子商务创新服务体系重组研究

通过对博铺塑料鞋专业镇电子商务信息化的现状分析,发现存在的问题,提出了一套具有区域性、针对性和个性化的塑料鞋电子商务创新服务平台解决方案,创建了塑料鞋电子商务创新服务平台,并面向塑料鞋专业镇生产厂家、鞋业协会、批发商、经销商等提供开放式的电子商务信息化服务,提高当地经济转型升级的发展能力.     

Understanding hospital quality: the case of cumulative and balanced quality

A more precise way to conceptualize and operationalize hospital quality is needed to increase hospitals’ productivity. This paper investigates how hospitals’ conformance quality (CQ) and experiential quality (EQ), in terms of their combined magnitude (i.e. their interaction) and relative balance (i.e. the absolute difference between them) impact hospital productivity. First, we explore the impact of both the ‘combined dimension of quality’ and ‘balance dimension of quality’ on hospital productivity. Second, we investigate quality dominance to analyze its impact on productivity when CQ is greater than EQ, and vice versa. Secondary data (January 2015 to December 2015) were collected from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and American Hospital Directory (AHD) for US acute care hospitals. The results provide strong empirical support for the benefit of minimizing the gap between the two types of quality. In addition, the results suggest that considering quality dominance (experiential vs. conformance) might be useful in shedding light on the inherent tension that exists when firms are forced to allocate resources to provide different types of quality simultaneously.     

Risk identification and prioritization in banking projects of payment service provider companies: an empirical study

Identifying risks and prioritizing is important for payment service provider (PSP) companies to get banking projects and gain more market share. However, studies regarding the identification of risks and causal relationships are insufficient in the Iranian PSP industry and the industry is unique because of its characteristics. In this study, 30 experts involved with PSP companies are employed as the research sample. Eleven key risks and Forty-six sub-risks are also identified. Subsequently, the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory technique is applied to determine the effective and affected risks and the severity of their effects on each other. Finally, all risks are ranked. Due to the internal interrelationships of the main risks, the weight of each risk is calculated via the fuzzy analytic network process. As the second-level risks have no significant interrelationships, they are ranked via the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process. Moreover, the best-worst method is used to ensure that the obtained rankings are reliable. This study identifies the risks affecting the loss of banking projects and determines the impacts of these risks on each. A sensitivity analysis is then conducted on the weights of the criteria, and the results are compared.     

Female customers' expectation of the service offering and their perception of the service quality in an emerging clothing market

Worldwide, clothing retailers that offer similar merchandise and even the same brands are flanked almost next to one another in shopping centres. Clothing retail therefore appears to be poorly differentiated, and it is not always clear why consumers prefer to patronize one store and avoid another. This study explored female consumers' expectations of the service offering and their perception of the service quality of prominent clothing retail channels in Tshwane, a major urban area in South Africa. The survey involved 243 females that were 20 years of age or older. They completed a structured questionnaire that investigated their (1) expectations of customer service in terms of tangible evidence of the service offering; and (2) perception of service quality using two different instruments by means of a direct measurement approach. Explorative factor analysis was used to reduce the data in terms of relevant dimensions of the respective measuring instruments and to determine the significance of the various dimensions of customer service and service quality in the context of this research. Contrary to what the literature proposes about consumers in an emerging economy, findings of this study suggest that females' expectations of the service offering of clothing retail stores were high. Their expectations were cognitively structured in terms of three elements of customer service, namely (1) physical facilities and product presentation; (2) personnel; and (3) store image and processes. Their perception of service quality revealed an opportunity to augment the service quality through attention to activities that are associated with personnel and the so-called supportiveness dimensions of their service offering. Findings coincided with a prior investigation of Terblanche and Boshoff, although a re-labelling of one dimension of their instrument is proposed to prevent confusion. Recommendations to augment the service quality of clothing retailers are made in terms of tangible evidence of the service offering.     

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.     

Loyalty toward online food delivery service: the role of e-service quality and food quality

This study assesses the direct influence of food quality and e-service quality on customer loyalty toward online food delivery (OFD) service and its indirect influence through the mediation of customer satisfaction and perceived value. This study uses a survey of 405 OFD service customers from Bandung, Indonesia. By applying variance-based partial least squares to evaluate the proposed model, this study confirms the direct effect of food quality on online loyalty, but not e-service quality. Further, this study discloses the partial mediation role of customer satisfaction and perceived value on the relationship between both food quality and e-service quality on online loyalty toward OFD services.     

Strategy and structure of service multinationals and their impact on linkages with local firms

Drawing on case studies of two leading UK service firms in five host countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea and Malaysia), we examine how the strategy and organization of service multinationals shape the development of linkages with local firms in host economies. We find that there is reduced autonomy of subsidiaries to engage with local firms as a result of relatively centralized strategies of multinationals. Because of global policies ensuring consistency of services or global sourcing policies to reduce costs, service multinationals tend to prefer global suppliers. Backward linkages occur in a few cases when the relationship can be a vehicle for market expansion for the multinational in a particular host market. Local governments play an important role in the cases where backward linkages are developed.     

Zone of tolerance for banks: a diagnostic model of service quality

Service quality has become an increasingly important factor for success and survival in the banking sector. Provision of high-quality service aids in meeting several requirements such as customer satisfaction and its consequent loyalty and market share, soliciting new customers, financial performance, and profitability (Cui, C.C., Lewis, B.R., & Park, W. (2003). Service quality measurement in the banking sector in South Korea. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 21(4), 191–201.). This paper presents the bank service quality measurement in its extended form. It deals with the concept of ‘zone of tolerance’ in judgments of service quality proposed by Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman (1993, The nature and determinants of customer expectations of service. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 21(1), 1–12.). The ‘zone of tolerance’ is recognized in the service quality literature as representing a range of expectations and an area of acceptable outcomes in service interactions. The present study describes the zone of tolerance for young customers’ service expectations and determines the customer satisfaction level for banks. The study focusses only on the youth market to formulate long-term strategies because young customers tend to keep themselves up to date with latest technological developments. A conceptual model BANKZOT is presented in this study, and the results demonstrate that evaluation of services can be scaled according to different types of expectations – ‘desired' and ‘adequate’ – and that customers use these two types of expectations as a comparison standard in evaluating bank services. The findings reveal that young customers have a narrow zone of tolerance with regard to the services provided by the banks. The results with respect to gap analysis reveal that there was a shortfall in the service quality provided by the banks in the sample, with the largest gap being found in tangibles and empathy of service quality dimensions. The results of exploratory factor analysis reveal that the SERVQUAL model is found to be uni-dimensional in this study. The results, managerial implications, and future research implications are discussed in detail.     

Framework for the classification of service standardisation

Literature on services refers to standardised services without describing what a standardised service is. This becomes problematic when attempting to apply a practice suited to standardised services to services that may not be standardised. A framework is developed to assess if a service is standardised or not. The methodology used is to use literature and apply examples to each dimension of the framework to give guidelines in assessing the level of standardisation of the individual dimensions and thus the overall service. The outcome is a qualitative framework with guidelines related to each dimension in improving the assessment of a service’s level of standardisation. This framework is applied to a case study to illustrate the application of the dimensions. The dimensions used as the basis of the framework are shown to be relevant as dimensions that describe the level of service standardisation.     

Exploring the effects of international sourcing on manufacturing versus service firms

As the extent of international sourcing rises and the number of functional activities spreading across-national borders increases, there is a call for a better understanding of its impact on structural change. In this work, we explore the effects of international sourcing comparatively and look for differences between manufacturing and service firms. This study is based on a unique Slovenian data set that links the recently conducted Eurostats survey on international sourcing with a detailed financial firm-level data. The results from the matching methodology suggest that service firms involved in international sourcing gain an improvement in the quality and technological learning, resulting in the employment growth and development. This is not the case for manufacturing firms driven primarily by cost cutting. In our view, a better understanding of these effects is vital for both manufacturing as well as service firms that are influenced by this new trend.     

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.     

提升高新企业自主创新能力的对策探讨

高新技术企业是湖北省自主创新的主力军,只有尽可能提升高新企业的自主创新能力,才能推进湖北省的整体自主创新示范。为此,必须完善产权激励机制,深化企业产权制度改革,充分发挥企业家的领军作用和技术团队的集成创新效应,营造社会产权意识,让利益相关者都来关心支持自主创新。     

商业模式创新视角下的现代服务业发展分析研究——以宜信集团为例

在竞争激烈的市场经济时代,商业模式之争已成为企业取胜市场的关键;商业模式创新作为实现可持续竞争优势的最佳途径,也已成为新的竞争焦点和学者研究的热点。本人通过文献回顾来构建自己的理论框架以及阐述商业模式创新理念的内涵,并通过对宜信集团商业模式的案例研究得出相关结论,最后概述我国现代服务业的发展前景。     

江苏省信息服务业现状调查与发展策略研究

随着信息时代的到来,信息服务业愈发重要。本文通过对江苏省信息服务业现状的调查,认为作为中国经济大省,江苏实施了一系列措施促进信息服务业的快速增长。深入探讨江苏省信息服务业的现状和发展策略,对于优化产业结构、转变经济发展方式具有重要作用。     

自主创新要突出技术战略与品牌战略的结合

本文认为,自主创新的主体是企业,最重要的载体是企业竞争力,最终的标志是经济竞争力的实现,自主创新需要有一种强烈的内在冲动和有效的制度支持。自主创新能力的提高不仅体现在科研水平的提高和技术能力的提高上,更重要的是体现在产业竞争力的提高上。从研究能力→研究成果→一种生产方式→一种稳定的生产能力→产品的销售能力,最后再到企业竞争能力,每一个环节都蕴含了大量的智慧,需要企业和技术拥有者努力,需要制度保障,需要政策支持,才能成功实现这种转换。文章提出,自主创新应注意以下几个问题:第一,技术战略一定要与品牌战略和市场扩展战略相结合;第二,技术创新一定要有很好的制度创新来保障;第三,重视文化力因素对技术创新的作用和影响;第四,充分激发国民内在的创新激情。