Effects of physical environment and locus of control on service evaluation: A replication and extension

As a replication and extension, this study empirically tested Bitner's (1990, Journal of Marketing 54, 69–82) model of consumer service evaluation using Singaporean subjects. It investigated the effects of a service failure, physical environment, and attribution on customer evaluation of and satisfaction with the service. The experimental findings showed that consumers engaged in causal inferences when they evaluated the service. Specifically, in cases of service failure, consumers were more dissatisfied when they perceived that the service firm had more control over the cause, and when the failure was recurring vis-à-vis a rare event. Consumers also tended to attribute service failure to a lack of control on the part of the service firm when the failure occurred in a more pleasant environment. The results also showed that satisfaction with the service resulted in perception of higher service quality. Although the physical environment affects perception of service quality, it was mediated by attribution and satisfaction.     

顾客参与对顾客满意和顾客公民行为的影响研究

在服务的生产传递过程中,顾客参与使顾客不再是独立于服务组织之外的单纯消费者。作为服务的共同生产者,顾客不仅会影响组织的生产效率和服务质量,还会影响自身的心理结果和行为结果。文章选取顾客满意和顾客公民行为作为顾客心理和行为结果的衡量指标,构建了顾客参与对顾客满意和顾客公民行为影响的理论模型,并以团队游为例进行了实证研究。研究表明：顾客参与的人际互动和信息分享两个维度对顾客满意有正向影响;顾客满意对顾客公民行为各维度均有正向影响;顾客参与对顾客公民行为有显著正向影响,且顾客满意在顾客参与对顾客公民行为的影响关系中存在部分中介效应。     

An integrative model of consumer satisfaction in the context of e‐services

This research examines how customer satisfaction affects its antecedent and outcome variables such as expectation, performance, disconfirmation, word‐of‐mouth, brand loyalty, attribution and repurchase. This research also takes the important integrative step of understanding the consumer behavioural constructs of consumer satisfaction. Although researchers have focused on the antecedents of consumer satisfaction, our integrative model has extended the outcomes of consumer behaviour on consumer satisfaction. Furthermore, this model strongly suggests a positive view of the inter‐relationships between the antecedent variables and outcome variables of satisfaction. In particular, our model is not consistent with Oliver's attribution models in which satisfaction is a consequence of attribution processing. All hypothesized variables were supported by our empirical study. The findings present a variety of guides to formulating marketing strategies for both practitioners and academics.     

企业支持行为有利于顾客参与价值创造吗?——来自在线定制行业的实证分析

企业支持行为对顾客参与价值共创作用的研究主要聚焦于企业支持行为对顾客参与共创水平的影响,而对顾客参与和服务结果之间关系的作用分析较少,也忽视了在线共创情景中顾客对服务结果贡献归因的差异。本研究以归因理论为基础,探讨在线价值共创过程中企业支持行为的作用,通过322份在线定制行业的顾客问卷分析,得出结论:在线共创情景中,顾客参与通过增强体验价值来提高服务满意度;感知企业支持在顾客参与和体验价值之间有显著负向调节作用;顾客对自身参与表现的满意程度和感知企业支持在顾客参与和体验价值之间有显著的联合调节效应,即顾客对自身参与表现的满意程度弱化了感知企业支持的调节效应。     

Organisational Perception of Customer Satisfaction: Theories and Evidence

Do managers in service organisations believe that the struggle matters more than the triumph? This paper proposes a model of organisational perception of customer satisfaction which posits that, given a lack of first-hand information on customer responses, organisations tend to adopt a process-based approach of evaluating the level of satisfaction of their customers. This evaluation process depends not on the assessment of actual outcomes such as sales revenue and customer complaints, but instead on the organisational efforts involved in satisfying the needs of customers. The propositions are tested by surveying 150 e-banking service providers and the data supports the hypotheses.     

Implementation and Outcomes of Customer Value: A Dyadic Perspective

This study examines the concept of customer value based on the views shared by service firms and their consumers. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, the study reveals customer satisfaction and retention as outcomes of front-line service employees' value delivery practices. Our results suggest that service employees' efforts to deliver customer value, even when based on a dyadic view, do not necessarily lead to customer retention. Rather, customers become more loyal when the value provided by service employees is matched by consumers' satisfaction. In other words, satisfaction is an important and necessary mediating variable between employees' efforts and customer retention.     

The impact of staff empowerment and communication style on customer evaluations: The special case of service failure

Empowering front-line staff to deal with service failures has been proposed as a method of recovering from service breakdown and ensuring greater customer satisfaction. However, no empirical study has investigated consumer responses to empowerment strategies. This research investigates the effect on customer satisfaction and service quality of two employee characteristics: the degree to which the employee is empowered (full, limited, and none), and the employee's communication style (accommodative–informal and personal, and underaccommodative–formal and impersonal). These employee characteristics are studied within the context of service failures. Subjects were shown videotaped service scenarios, and asked to complete satisfaction and service quality ratings. Results revealed that the fully empowered employee produced more customer satisfaction than the other conditions, but only when the service provider used an accommodating style of communication. Fully empowered and nonempowered employees were not judged differently when an underaccommodating style of communication was adopted. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The journey from customer participation in service failure to co-creation in service recovery

Customer participation is growing into a widespread phenomenon in the service context. Despite the inherent significance of customer expectations to service failures in the high-participation service context, scant research exists on studying the links among customer participation, customer expectation of service recovery, and service outcomes (e.g., word-of-mouth or WOM). Even more pressing is the lack of research on the type of service recovery that can countervail the inflated customer expectation of service recovery and restore service outcomes. This research demonstrates that high contribution of customers in the beginning of service provision procedure leads to high recovery expectations and low satisfaction. The results also support that co-created service recovery (CCS-R), as contrasted to firm and customer recoveries, has a greater positive effect on satisfaction. Further, the contrasting impacts of each service recovery type on positive and negative WOM are presented. An experiment was conducted using service failure and recovery scenarios. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The current research has some important implications for scholars and managers who wish to effectively recover failed high-participation service encounters.     

Gender-Based Differences in Customer Perceptions of Frontline Employee Performance

Abstract

This study investigates which aspect of a service (core or relational) is more instrumental in inducing higher customer satisfaction and more positive behavioral outcomes among male and female bank customers. A large-scale survey of the customers of a national bank in New Zealand serves as the study setting. Results are presented and their implications to induce greater customer satisfaction and favorable outcomes are discussed. Avenues for future research are offered.     

Customer participation in service recovery: a meta-analysis

Research on customer participation in service recovery is surging, yet empirical examinations provide mixed results. A meta-analysis of 30 independent samples reported in 21 studies (N?=?7872) shows that the effect sizes for the relationships between customer participation in service recovery and customer outcomes are rather weak. We also find that customer participation in service recovery has an indirect effect on satisfaction with service recovery via distributive justice and procedural justice, but not via interactional justice. Conversely, customer participation in service recovery has an indirect effect on overall satisfaction via distributive justice and interactional justice, but not via procedural justice. Finally, the effectiveness of customer participation in service recovery is stronger when customers participate in the outcome of the recovery and for customers with an Eastern cultural background, but weaker when additional compensation is offered and in online settings.     

Service provider responses to anxious and angry customers: different challenges, different payoffs

Anxiety and anger, two frequently experienced emotions during service consumption, arise from different appraisals of the eliciting event, i.e., attribution to uncontrollable circumstances and low coping potential for anxiety versus attribution to providers and high coping potential for anger. These appraisal differences were hypothesized to impact the occurrence of supportive provider responses (higher for anxiety than for anger), and the value given to supportive responses by anxious versus angry customers (higher evaluation for anxiety than for anger). It was also hypothesized that, although evaluation of provider response would mediate the relationship between the intensity of both anger and anxiety and satisfaction with the service encounter as a whole, the power of this mediating effect would be stronger for anxiety than for anger. Hypotheses were confirmed in a survey of air travel passengers reporting episodes of anxiety and anger. Implications of these results for challenges and payoffs involved in the development of adaptive response strategies to anxious and angry customers are discussed.     

Predicting satisfaction and intentions to use online food delivery: What really makes a difference?

ABSTRACT

Online food delivery (OFD) is no longer a new concept for the majority of Americans. Large food delivery companies make millions in revenues and those numbers are expected to increase. This study was conducted to investigate customer intentions to use OFD services through the evaluation of satisfaction, food quality, and OFD service quality. The OFD service quality was assessed via e-SELFQUAL dimensions, and included perceived control, service convenience, customer service, and service fulfillment. The study determined that food quality, control, customer service, and service fulfillment affect customer satisfaction in online food delivery services. Customer satisfaction showed a strong positive impact on behavioral intentions to use OFD.     

Boundary conditions of the effect of customer coproduction: the case of service failure

Research on the relationship between customer coproduction and satisfaction has produced mixed results even after accounting for the role of attribution. This paper extends prior research on boundary conditions and examines the role of customer participation readiness (PR) during encounters that end with service failure. Based on congruence and zone-of-tolerance theories, the two empirical studies suggest that (a) increasing levels of coproduction combined with increasing levels of PR escalates dissatisfaction and weakens attitudinal loyalty; (b) psychological reactance and expectancy disconfirmation mediate these relationships; (c) increasing levels of coproduction combined with increasing levels of external attribution reduce dissatisfaction and mitigate the adverse effect on attitudinal loyalty; and (d) PR interacts with customer coproduction to influence how customers make attributions. Future research should consider the role of PR in service failures. Where feasible, managers should gather and utilise individual-level PR data in order to predict customer attributions and dissatisfaction.     

Service failure and recovery in using technology-based self-service: effects on user attributions and satisfaction

This study examines service failure and recovery in using technology-based self-service (TBSS) systems to determine the effects of a variety of relevant factors on negative customer/user attributions to the service provider, to employees who try to help in recovery, and to the technology itself, as well as the effects on customer/user satisfaction with the failure/recovery experience. The findings show that immediate recovery of TBSS failures reduces negative attributions and increases customer/user satisfaction with the experience, as does a low-anxiety environment around the kiosk. Technology error (as opposed to user error) decreases user satisfaction. Employee assistance decreases negative attributions to the employee but increases negative attribution to the technology. Some interactions were found among the experimental factors that are also meaningful.     

Physical attractiveness of the service worker in the moment of truth and its effects on customer satisfaction

This study assesses if the service worker's physical attractiveness has an impact on customer satisfaction in the moment of truth. An experimental approach, involving two different service settings (visiting a bookstore and traveling with an airline), was used to manipulate the level of the service worker's physical attractiveness. The results, for both experiments, show that a high level as opposed to a low level of physical attractiveness of the service worker produced a higher level of customer satisfaction. In addition, the results indicate that exposure to an attractive service worker set in motion a process in which an attractiveness appraisal affected the attitude toward the service worker, which in turn had a positive impact on customer satisfaction.     

Is “proof” the Eighth “P” of Service? A Conceptual Model and Propositions

The article aims at making a conceptual contribution to services marketing literature by proposing an eighth “P” called “proof.” Proof is a simple operational measure or an intuitive indicator that helps the customer quickly assess the efficacy of a service. The article discusses services marketing literature and develops propositions that underscore the importance of proof as the eighth P. When proof is provided about a service to the customer, it affects all service outcomes (i.e., service evaluation, purchase intent, customer satisfaction, and repurchase intent). Though conceptual, the article provides practical implications as well.     

The attribution of service failures: effects on consumer satisfaction

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of the attribution of service failures on consumer satisfaction. We analysed direct effects as well as indirect effects through cognitive processes and variables such as quality perceptions and overall quality evaluation. Basing the analysis on the attribution theories and information processing theories, four hypotheses are suggested. These are tested on a sample of 293 service encounters in which some type of failure is present (attributed to the firm or to some environmental factor). The results show that the attribution of the failure to the service firm causes a systematic reduction in all of the quality perceptions (even in service aspects not linked to the failure). But attribution also shows direct effects on satisfaction beyond the effect through perceptions. Attitude-based processes as well as attribute-based processes are affected by attribution.     

Customer perceptions of frontline employee service delivery: A study of Russian bank customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions

This study examines the nature of relationships between customer perceptions of frontline employee service delivery (core and relational), satisfaction and selected behavioural intentions by using customers of a commercial retail bank in Russia as its setting. Contrary to findings from North American-Western research, the study findings show that relational service delivery only significantly impacts customer satisfaction for Russian males whereas core service delivery only impacts this affective outcome for Russian female customers. Implications of the results are discussed and future research avenues are offered.     

Measuring Satisfaction with Services when the Customer Is Not the Consumer

Typically, nonprofit and public institutions offer their customers services as opposed to manufactured, marketed, tangible products. Marketers in the not-for-profit and public sectors must be aware of the ways in which traditional, product-bound marketing tools must be changed to accommodate the unique nature of services. This paper considers how measures of customer satisfaction are inadequate to capture satisfaction with services especially in the situation typical to nonprofits where the customer (purchaser) of the service, is a different person from the consumer (user) of the service. This customer-consumer differentiation is necessary because it appears that in the case of high involvement services in which the customer is not the consumer, inflated satisfaction ratings occur when conventional measures are applied. It is argued that these ratings may be caused by a desire to avoid dissonance or by a faulty attribution process, but whatever their cause, new measures of satisfaction need to be developed to accommodate the special nature of these services.     

Between a rock and a hard place: Seizing the opportunity of demanding customers by means of frontline service behaviors

Service businesses are increasingly facing more demanding customers as a result of a shift in power from the service providers' side to the customers' side. Related literature predominantly examines the negative side of this ongoing trend, while overlooking the positive side. The major aim of this paper is to examine how frontline employees — investment account managers — deal with the ongoing increase in customer demandingness. To address this, we draw on adaptability performance theory to test the facilitating effect of frontline employees' post-transaction service behaviors (SBs) — diligence, inducements, information communication, sportsmanship, and empathy — as a means of adaptation to higher levels of customer demand. Findings indicate that frontline employees adapt most of their SBs' intensities to match customers' demands. The results show that some SBs actually increase the effectiveness and efficiency of frontline employees' service performance, leading to an increase in customer value and satisfaction. Customer value is found as a mediator in some of the relationships between SBs and customer satisfaction. Contrary to the conception of the negative outcomes of customer demandingness, service firms need to consider taking advantage of customer demandingness by stressing the role of frontline employees in adapting to customers’ demands.