The effects of a monetary incentive and the ethnicity of the sponsor's signature on the rate and quality of response to A mail survey

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of a monetary incentive and the ethnicity of the sponsor's signature on the rate and quality of response to a mail survey. Six hundred subjects were randomly assigned to four groups. One group received a mail survey from “Leroy Jefferson,” apparently a Black individual, with a 25% monetary incentive included. Group two also received a questionnaire from “Leroy Jefferson,” but without the monetary incentive. Groups three (25 ϕ included) and four (no monetary incentive) were sent questionnaires from “John Richardson,” an ethnically unidentifiable sponsor. The questionnaire was a 16-item attitudes towards Black scale. The results of the study demonstrated the value of a monetary incentive in increasing the rate of response. The name of the sponsor, however, did not affect either the rate of response or the quality of response (i. e. the scores on the attitude scale). The authors wish to thank Manhattan College, School of Business, for the grant which made this study possible.     

How sales controls affect job-related outcomes: the role of organizational sales-related psychological climate perceptions

In this study, the authors propose a theory that incorporates the mediating effects of three important organizational sales-related psychological climate perceptions (e.g., the organization’s customer orientation, sales innovativeness, and sales supportiveness) to explain how sales force controls affect sales-related outcomes. Based on a survey of 293 salespeople and using path analysis, the authors find that the inclusion of these psychological climate perceptions allows for explanatory improvement in linking sales controls to salesperson job satisfaction and performance. These results complement previous studies in that formal controls were found to affect outcomes directly. However, they also provide important insight into the indirect effects of sales controls—through salespeople’s perceptions of managerial commitment to making the salespeople effective (i.e., the sales-related psychological climate).     

The influence of involvement and product class quality on consumer choice sets

The study findings suggest that the level of response involvement (high versus low) and the variability of product class quality (high versus moderate versus low) influence the size of the consumer’s choice set. By manipulating product class quality the authors show that as the variability in product class quality increases, consumers reduce the number of brands they will consider purchasing (evoked set) and increase the number of brands they won’t consider (inept set). They also use the response involvement variable a priori to categorize the (sample) population. The results indicate that, as the variability in product class quality increases, the high response involvement groups form smaller evoked sets and larger inept sets than the low response involvement groups.     

我国人口普查的质量检查及其评价

我国人口普查的质量检查,通过抽取容量不足1‰的调查小区样本,然后比较同一样本调查小区的普查个人记录和质量检查个人记录,确定普查个人记录与质量检查个人记录的误差。在省内,直接根据所有样本调查小区个人误差数计算个人在人口普查中的遗漏率、年龄和性别差错率。这种做法至少存在两方面的不足:一是样本量太小;二是有关误差率的计算不符合抽样调查理论的要求。     

Customer experience quality: an exploration in business and consumer contexts using repertory grid technique

This study proposes a conceptual model for customer experience quality and its impact on customer relationship outcomes. Customer experience is conceptualized as the customer’s subjective response to the holistic direct and indirect encounter with the firm, and customer experience quality as its perceived excellence or superiority. Using the repertory grid technique in 40 interviews in B2B and B2C contexts, the authors find that customer experience quality is judged with respect to its contribution to value-in-use, and hence propose that value-in-use mediates between experience quality and relationship outcomes. Experience quality includes evaluations not just of the firm’s products and services but also of peer-to-peer and complementary supplier encounters. In assessing experience quality in B2B contexts, customers place a greater emphasis on firm practices that focus on understanding and delivering value-in-use than is generally the case in B2C contexts. Implications for practitioners’ customer insight processes and future research directions are suggested.     

Gratitude works: its impact and the mediating role of affective commitment in driving positive outcomes

After studying the effects of Louisiana’s post-hurricane “thank you” campaigns, the researchers find expressions of gratitude significantly improve perceptions of Louisiana in the midst of its recovery. Through a national survey conducted November 2006, they find that those who saw or heard a thank you advertisement have more positive attitudes toward the state and its people, a greater willingness to pay a premium for its products, services and travel to the state, and spread positive word-of-mouth, thus justifying the use of public funds to support the campaign. The authors investigate the role of participation on the effectiveness of expressions of gratitude and identify the mediating role of affective commitment in driving the positive results attributed to expressions of gratitude.     

会计专业人士担任独立董事的效果研究

考察了独立董事的独立性与会计专长特征对上市公司财务报告质量的影响,结果显示:具有高校及研究机构、金融机构、事务所和企业背景的会计专业人士担任独立董事与盈余管理水平负相关,有政府背景的会计专业人士不仅没有抑制盈余管理,反而提高了盈余管理水平;会计专业背景的独立董事越多,公司聘请"十五大"或"四大"事务所的概率就越高;具有...     

Price and brand name as indicators of quality dimensions for consumer durables

Delivering quality products requires an understanding of the critical dimensions and cues that consumers use to judge quality. To that end, this article addresses two fundamental research issues. Using a qualitative study, the authors first develop a generalizable typology of quality dimensions for durable goods that includes ease of use, versatility, durability, serviceability, performance, and prestige. Second, the authors conduct a process-tracing laboratory experiment to examine how key marketing variables—price, brand name, and product attributes—affect consumers’ judgment processes and inferences about how products perform on the six quality dimensions. Results of the experiment indicate that consumers use price and brand name differently to judge the quality dimensions, searching for price and brand name much more frequently when evaluating prestige than when evaluating any other quality dimension. Results suggest that managers must determine the relevant quality dimensions for a product category and the cues that are salient for judging those dimensions. Merrie Brucks is a professor of marketing at the University of Arizona, where she also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. She received her Ph. D. in marketing from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research first received scholarly recognition in 1984, when she won the Robert Ferber Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of consumer behavior. Since that time, she has published extensively in consumer psychology, focusing on memory, information search, judgment, and decision-making processes. In other research she has examined a variety of public policy issues related to advertising. Valarie A. Zeithaml is a professor and area chair at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is also a Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Scholar at that institution. She obtained an MBA and doctorate from the University of Maryland and has devoted the past 20 years to researching and teaching the topics of service quality and services management. She is the author ofDelivery Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations and ofServices Marketing, a textbook now in its second edition. She has won numerous teaching and research awards, including the Ferber Award from theJournal of Consumer Research, the Maynard Award from theJournal of Marketing, the Jagdish Sheth Award from theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and the O’Dell Award from theJournal of Marketing Research. Gillian Naylor is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She obtained a doctorate from the University of Arizona in 1996. Her research interests are within the consumer judgment and decision-making domain, with specific interest in postpurchase processes and services marketing.     

Examining the effect of salesperson service behavior in a competitive context

While few scholars debate the importance of doing things to improve the quality of the buyer–seller relationship, little is known about what salespeople can do after the point of the initial sale to enhance customer satisfaction and trust. On the basis of extensive exploratory interviews across professional selling domains, this research develops a set of behaviors, referred to here as “salesperson service behaviors.” Using data gathered from 358 customers, the authors empirically demonstrate the effect of these behaviors on customer satisfaction and trust and, ultimately, on an objective measure of customer share of market. The authors develop a competitive model that uniquely features customer evaluations of competing sales representatives. The results indicate that these salesperson service behaviors are important in building trust and customer satisfaction, which in turn lead to increases in customer share of market.     

Assessing response styles across modes of data collection

Cross-mode surveys are on the rise. The current study compares levels of response styles across three modes of data collection: paper-and-pencil questionnaires, telephone interviews, and online questionnaires. The authors make the comparison in terms of acquiescence, disacquiescence, and extreme and midpoint response styles. To do this, they propose a new method, namely, the representative indicators response style means and covariance structure (RIRSMACS) method. This method contributes to the literature in important ways. First, it offers a simultaneous operationalization of multiple response styles. The model accounts for dependencies among response style indicators due to their reliance on common item sets. Second, it accounts for random error in the response style measures. As a consequence, random error in response style measures is not passed on to corrected measures. The method can detect and correct cross-mode response style differences in cases where measurement invariance testing and multitrait multimethod designs are inadequate. The authors demonstrate and discuss the practical and theoretical advantages of the RIRSMACS approach over traditional methods. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Crises in business markets: implications for interfirm linkages

In the global economy, firms link with customers and suppliers through a complex nexus of strategically critical interfirm relationships. Due to the diversity of environments and networks involved, these linkages are increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic disruptions, also referred to as “crises.” The authors offer an advanced conceptualization of crises and explicate the interplay of crises and interfirm relationships. On the basis of literature and qualitative data from 27 interviews with executives in 13 firms, the authors develop a process model of crisis that consists of five phases: (1) awareness and acknowledgment, (2) sensemaking, (3) response design, (4) response implementation, and (5) reconciliation in the aftermath. In discussing the model, the authors emphasize the influence of crisis on interfirm relationships and conversely highlight the role of the interfirm relationships in crisis management. The authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically.     

Developing a deeper understanding of post-purchase perceived risk and behavioral intentions in a service setting

Researchers and service providers have realized that a disproportionate share of a firm’s sales and profits come from a relatively small number of loyal customers that repeatedly purchase the firm’s services. In many service settings, such as health care, repeated interactions between the service provider and the client are necessary for service delivery. While service quality is certainly important, it is also important that customers’ perceptions of perceived risk are taken into account and that customers perceive a degree of control over the services provided. We develop a conceptual model of linkages between the physical environment of the service, perceived control over the service and service quality and, demonstrate through two empirical studies, how these factors affect perceived risk and post-purchase behavioral intentions. Both studies were conducted in health care settings. In the first study, we collected data using a mail survey of 192 patients after their treatment from a regional hospital. In the second study, survey data were collected from 101 patients of a specialized clinic providing alternative therapies within a major hospital. Our results provide confirmation that the favorable physical environment of the service setting enhances perceived control and perceptions of service quality. Moreover, perceived control and perceived quality of the service provider reduces post-purchase perceived risk. Finally, post-purchase perceived risk reduces behavioral intentions, while perceived quality of the service provider enhances behavioral intentions. Authors contributed equally to the research.     

Customer relationship management and firm performance: the mediating role of business strategy

As managers and academics increasingly raise issues about the real value of CRM, the authors question its direct and unconditional performance effect. The study advances research on CRM by investigating the role of critical mechanisms underlying the CRM-performance link. Drawing from the sources → positions → performance framework, the authors build a research model in which two strategic postures of firms—differentiation and cost leadership—mediate the effect of CRM on firm performance. This investigation also contributes to the literature by drawing attention to the differential impact of CRM in diverse industry environments. The study analyzes data from in-depth field interviews and a large-scale, cross-industry survey, and results reveal that CRM does not affect firm performance directly. Rather, the CRM-performance link is fully mediated by differentiation and cost leadership. In addition, CRM’s impact on differentiation is greater when industry commoditization is high.     

Perceived marketing–sales relationship effectiveness: a matter of justice

There is a compelling need to improve the relationship between managers in marketing and sales departments. This paper argues that one critical way of enhancing individual managers’ perceptions of relationship effectiveness between these departments is to view the issue as a matter of justice and suggests that perceived marketing–sales relationship effectiveness is positively influenced by managers’ perceptions of organizational justice. Furthermore, it proposes that interfunctional communication has the potential to enhance the proposed positive effects of justice and hence needs to be considered and effectively managed when looking at marketing–sales relationship effectiveness. Data drawn from a survey of 203 marketing and sales managers in 38 consumer packaged goods companies are used to empirically test these predictions. The authors find that perceived sales–marketing relationship effectiveness is influenced by perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional justice. Greater interfunctional communication is found to further enhance the positive effects of distributive and procedural justice on perceived relationship effectiveness, but it does not contribute to the already strong positive effects of interactional justice. Furthermore, results reveal important differences in the effects of justice on perceived relationship effectiveness across the marketing and sales departments.     

Customer response capability in a sense-and-respond era: The role of customer knowledge process

An organization’s customer response capability, its comptence in satisfying customer needs through effective and quick responses, is critical for sustained success. In this article, the authors examine how customer knowledge process influences customer response capability. They highlight two dimensions of customer response capability, customer response expertise and customer response speed. It is observed that apart from its direct positive association with customer response expertise and speed, the customer knowledge process also diminishes the positive association between risk propensity and these dimensions of customer response capability. The influence of customer response expertise and speed on performance is also examined. The hypotheses are tested using survey data collected from a sample of retailing firms and the findings triangulated using qualitative data collected through depth interviews with managers. The results highlight the importance of customer knowledge in enhancing customer response capability. Satish Jayachandran is with the Department of Marketing at the University of South Carolina. His research interests are in the area of marketing strategy, specifically market responsiveness of firms and the impact of organizational performance on subsequent managerial and firm behavior. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He was a recipient of the Harold H. Maynard award for 2001 from theJournal of Marketing. Kelly Hewett is with the Department of Marketing at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on the management of relationships between buyers and sellers, as well as between headquarters and foreign subsidiaries in managing the marketing function globally. Her research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of International Business Studies, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theJournal of International Marketing, among others. Peter Kaufman is with the Department of Marketing at Illinois State University. His research focuses on buyer-seller relationships, retailing, and distribution issues. He received an Honorable Mention in the Marketing Science Institute’s 2003 Alden G. Clayton Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Competition.     

Technology use on the front line: how information technology enhances individual performance

This study explores and tests a new model that links different types of technology usage to individual-level outcomes. The primary objective of this study is to examine the effects of efficient use (routinization) and effective use (infusion) along with the traditional measure of usage—namely, frequency of use—on two dimensions of individual-level outcomes: information technology-enabled administrative performance and information technology-enabled salesperson performance. To maintain consistency with the existing literature, the authors examine the effects of predeployment attitude toward or acceptance of technology and pre-deployment intended use of technology. The authors discuss managerial implications and provide directions for future research.

北京市公共服务满意度指数调查研究

借鉴政府职能理论和国内外顾客满意度理论研究成果和测评方法,结合北京市的实际发展情况,对公共服务的内涵、满意度测评、以及公共服务满意度测评指标体系、调查问卷、调查方案、数据处理与分析等进行一系列的研究。调查研究结果表明,本套评价体系,比较符合北京市的实际情况,指标体系和问卷设计合理,调查方法和质量控制可靠,计算出来的公共服务满意度指数基本属实,可为公共服务部门提供参考依据。     

论市场调查拒绝率问题

随着市场调查业的发展,美国调查业正面临着这样一种趋势:每年被调查者拒绝参加调查的拒绝率越来越高。对中国市场调查业来说,需要阐明CMOR关于拒绝率的定义,分析造成拒绝率上升的六种原因:即市场调查业本身为了取悦顾客而愿意为顾客做任何事;公众对隐私的担心;形形色色打着市场调查幌子的商业推销活动对市场调查业的负面影响;公众对电话调查的反感及公众缺少对市场调查方法的选择;访员素质不高薪水较低;被调查者没有得到物质补偿等,并从中找出对中国市场调查业的启示。     

长沙市城管执法公众评价体系的构建与应用

城管执法作为公众关注的热点问题之一，对其进行综合评价具有非常重要的实践价值。基于长沙市城管部门定位不清、执法人员素质偏低的现状，从公众角度出发构建一套包括认知度、感知度和满意度三个维度15个具体指标的城管执法评价指标体系，利用综合评价方法进行问卷调查和实证测算，结果表明：长沙市城管执法总体评价偏低，公众对城管执法认识模糊，城管对与居民生活相关活动的执法效果较好，城管执法公众满意度低。应完善城管相关立法，使其执法有法可依；加强城管人员管理力度，督促城管文明执法。     

浅谈我国上市公司的碳信息披露

碳信息披露项目（CDP）从2000年成立至今,经过10年的持续发展,CDP的调查范围已经扩展到50多个国家或地区的企业样本和两个行业的企业样本（电力和交通运输）。全球有上千家的企业回应了CDP调查,其中,绝大部分地区的回复率都在50%以上,包括同样是今年新增的拉美、荷兰和西班牙。中国的回复率是项目中最低的之一。从2008年及2009年《碳信息披露项目中国报告》可以看出,上市公司对CDP调查的反馈率和信息质量明显提升,但是还存在很多问题,我们要加大CDP项目宣传,提高上市公司对碳信息披露的认识。