Consumer cheating on service guarantees

Fear of opportunistic customers is an important reason why firms are reluctant to implement service guarantees. This article empirically tests potential drivers of cheating. Potential material gain and repeat purchase intent were tested across three studies, whereas satisfaction, ease of invoking the guarantee, morality, shame, self-monitoring, and Machiavellianism were each tested in a subset of the three studies. The results for potential material gain and repeat purchase intent were consistent across all three studies: potential material gain had no effect on consumer cheating, but repeat purchase intent reduced that tendency. Other findings suggest that high levels of satisfaction, morality, and self-monitoring reduce cheating, whereas high levels of Machiavellianism increase cheating. Furthermore, two three-way interaction effects were encountered. Specifically, Machiavellianism interacted with gain and ease of invocation, and with gain and repeat purchase intent. In both cases, individuals with high Machiavellianism took advantage of certain situational constellations. Jochen Wirtz (bizwirtz@nus.edu.sg) (Ph.D., London Business School) is an associate professor of marketing and academic director of the Asia-Pacific Executive MBA (APEX-MBA) Program, and academics co-director of the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Program at the NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. His research focuses on service managementrelated issues including service guarantees, customer satisfaction, customer feedback systems, and revenue management. His recent work has been published in theCornell HRA Quarterly, theJournal of Business Research, theInternational Journal of Service Industry Management, theJournal of Consumer Psychology, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Services Marketing, andPsychology and Marketing. He is also a coauthor of the fifth edition ofServices Marketing (with Christopher Lovelock, Prentice Hall) andServices Marketing in Asia—Managing People, Technology and Strategy (with Christopher Lovelock and Hean Tat Keh, Prentice Hall). In recognition of his excel-lence in instruction, he has received several teaching awards, including the university-level Outstanding Educator Award 2003, the business school-level Outstanding Educator Award 2002, and the Award for Excellence in Instruction from the MBA Alumni. Outside academia, he has been an active management consultant working with a number of consulting firms in Asia and Europe, including Accenture, Arthur D.Little, and KPMG. Doreen Kum (doreenk@nus.edu.sg) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Marketing, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on consumer behavior issues such as categorization and branding strategies, as well as service guarantees. Her research has been published in theGeneral Management Review andJournal of Services Marketing.     

Implications of loyalty program membership and service experiences for customer retention and value

Companies that offer loyalty reward programs believe that their programs have a long-run positive effect on customer evaluations and behavior. However, if loyalty rewards programs increase relationship durations and usage levels, customers will be increasingly exposed to the complete spectrum of service experiences, including experiences that may cause customers to switch to another service provider. Using cross-sectional, time-series data from a worldwide financial services company that offers a loyalty reward program, this article investigates the conditions under which a loyalty rewards program will have a positive effect on customer evaluations, behavior, and repeat purchase intentions. The results show that members in the loyalty reward program overlook or discount negative evaluations of the company vis-à-vis competion. One possible reason could be that members of the loyalty rewards program perceive that they are getting better quality and service for their price or, in other words, “good value.” Ruth N. Bolton is Ruby K. Powell Professor of Marketing in the Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. Her current research is concerned with high-technology services sold to business-to-business customers. Her most recent work in this area studies how organizations can grow the value of their customer base through customer service and support. She previously held positions at the University of Maryland, GTE Laboratories Incorporated, the University of Alberta, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University of British Columbia. Her business experience involves a variety of consulting projects addressing services marketing, customer satisfaction, and quality management issues in the telecommunications and information services industries. Her earlier published research investigates how organizations' customer service and pricing strategies influence customer satisfaction and loyalty. She received her B.Comm. with honors from Queen's University at Kingston and her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University. She currently serves on the editorial boards of theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, theJournal of Marketing Research, and theJournal of Service Research. She has published articles in these and other journals. P. K. Kannan is Safeway Fellow and Associate Professor of Marketing in the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University. His research and teaching interests are in electronic commerce, and marketing research and modeling. His research on competitive market structures, consumers' loyalty, variety seeking, and reinforcement behaviors, and the effects of promotions on competition have appeared inMarketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Business Research, andInternational Journal of Research in Marketing. His current interests center on the marketing of information products such as market research, software, and data products using electronic channels such as the Internet covering issues of strategy, pricing, and product reliability. Articles focusing on these issues have appeared or are forthcoming inCommunications of the ACM, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and theHandbook of Electronic Commerce. He is a member of the American Marketing Association, the Institute of Management Science, and the American Statistical Association. He has corporate experience with Tata Engineering and Ingersoll-Rand and has consulted for companies such as Frito-Lay, Pepsi Co, SAIC, and Fannie Mae. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, he was on the faculty of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Matthew D. Bramlett is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and a faculty research assistant in the Department of Marketing at the University of Maryland, College Park. His dissertation is an event history analysis of the effects of children on the stability of marriages and cohabitations. His current research focuses on high-technology services sold to business-to-business customers. His other research interests include the commodification of sports and the exploitation of the consumer in professional sports, and the fertility effects of family planning programs in developing countries over time. He is a member of the Population Association of America and a member of the Family, Sociology of Population, and Race, Gender, and Class sections of the American Sociological Association. His work on the exploitation of the consumer in the National Football League will be published as a chapter in the forthcoming bookConsumers, Commodification and Media Culture: Perspectives on the New Forms of Consumption, edited by Mark Gottdiener, University of New York at Buffalo.     

Consumer and provider expectations and experiences in evaluating professional service quality

Providers of professional services have recently awakened to consumer challenges, competition and the realities of marketing. Looking at the expectations and experiences of providers and consumers can provide special insight into the services evaluation process and perceived service quality. By evaluating both professionals’ and consumers’ perspectives, differences in perceptions can be identified and characterized. Inconsistencies in perceptions between two parties to an exchange may result in dissatisfaction, while positive consistencies in these assessments aid in building on-going relationships.     

Conservation or energy development: Consumer perceptions of alternate solutions to the energy crisis

The purpose of this study was to identify segments of the population on the basis of what they believe would ensure energy for the future—conservation or energy/technological development. To the extent that technology is perceived to be the solution, a potential danger exists that consumers will not commit to an energy-conscious lifestyle except as required by increasing energy costs. The respondents were 692 systematically sampled residents of Alabama. A follow-up survey of 73 non-respondents indicated that nonresponse bias was absent in terms of demographic and social-psychological characteristics, perceptions of the energy crisis, and level of energy use. Distinct differences emerged among the segments (energy development, conservation, or neutral) which indicate that policy makers must be concerned with emphasizing that technological breakthroughs are not the solution to the energy crisis. Note This study was funded by a grant from the Energy Assessment Program, School of Mines and Energy Development, the University of Alabama.     

Consumer responses to generic products

Plain-label generic products consisting of food and household staples and cigarettes have made significant inroads into the market shares previously held by the national brands of manufacturers and the private brands of wholesalers and retailers. Although the small number of published research studies analyzing purchasers of generic products have described the user as a member of an upscale professional, college-educated household, the research reported in this paper analyzed both demographic and lifestyle characteristics of generic users, non-users, and aware nonusers. Purchase behavior, product evaluation variation, and purchase probabilities for the three segments are examined. Acceptance of generic products appears to adversely affect the sales of national brands more than private brands, since most generic product purchasers had previously purchased national brands.     

Consumer response to physicians’ advertisements

Although the Federal Trade Commission has initiated a number of rulings to reduce professional societies’ prohibitions against advertising in order to stimulate competition, there is little research regarding the subject. Certainly, this is true of the potential effects of doctors’ advertising. In this study, subjects received illustrative physicians’ advertisements with varying levels of price, service, and competency. In analysis with various attitudinal and intentional measures as dependent variables, these factors were shown to have statistical significance.     

Consumer inputs to public policy programs

Consumer advocates and federal agency administrators suggest that consumer interests need greater emphasis in public programs. However, both groups often fail to specify how and where consumers can have input on public policy. Contributions by consumers must be available in the early stages of the program planning process. The challenge to consumers is to take an active role in the programming activities of federal agencies. In addition, federal agencies must implement procedures for consumers to effectively participate in public policy formulation.     

Consumer reliance on intangible versus tangible attributes in service evaluation: the role of construal level

The services marketing literature has traditionally characterized intangibility as the most critical distinction between services and goods, but in practice service production and consumption often involve both intangible and tangible elements. While prior research has examined and debated service intangibility from the firm’s perspective, what is missing is an understanding of how consumers weigh the relative importance of intangible versus tangible attributes in their service evaluation. Drawing on construal level theory, the authors propose that consumers with a high (vs. low) construal level rely more on intangible (vs. tangible) attributes in service evaluation. Furthermore, the effect of construal level on service evaluation is mediated by imagery vividness, with service type (e.g., experience vs. credence services) serving as a boundary condition. The authors conduct two field studies and two lab experiments and find that under a high construal level, consumers rely more on intangible attributes in their service evaluation and choice formation; under a low construal level, consumers rely more on tangible attributes in their service evaluation and choice. The findings not only offer new insights to help reconcile the disparate perspectives on service intangibility in the literature but also have practical implications on service firms’ positioning strategies that vary across time (e.g., advance selling vs. on-site selling) and space (e.g., near vs. distant outlet), as well as which attributes to emphasize in their marketing communications.     

社会资本促进产业集群升级机制研究

在产业集群从基于规模经济,到柔性专业化生产,再到模块化生产这种价值创造方式的升级过程中,社会资本起到了巨大的推动作用。社会资本的作用机理在于它的两个方面——关系资本和制度资本,受产业集群内企业目标一致性的调节,通过互补作用增加其自身的存量,最终影响集群价值创造方式的升级。     

Consumer response to design variations in pay-what-you-want pricing

Recent literature has identified consumers’ fairness and image concerns as the primary drivers of payments under pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing. Consequently, managers have employed a variety of design variations to invoke/alleviate these concerns to attract more customers and increase payment magnitudes. We develop a theoretical approach that combines both prosocial and self-interested motives to examine consumers’ four possible responses to design variations in PWYW exchange: (1) opt-out, (2) free-ride, (3) default to recommendation, or (4) other payment. We confirm model predictions using an empirical approach that jointly estimates the multipartite customer response. We report findings pertaining to four managerially controllable variables namely, ‘payment visibility’, ‘information on payment recipients’, ‘timing of payment’, and ‘explicit price recommendations’ using both secondary data and controlled experiments. We show that design variations have a heterogeneous effect on different types of consumer responses leading to countervailing effects on revenues. We derive several actionable managerial recommendations.

     

金融消费者保护(AEA2011年会哈佛论文,上)

近期的金融危机使得很多人开始质疑企业在提供服务方面的表现,而对于消费者金融市场中存在的问题,监管机构的处理能力也同样受到质疑.本文论述了消费者金融监管问题,重点对市场失灵的监管、金融决策中有限消费理性的监管进行全方位深入地探讨.本文引用了三个案例:按揭市场、发薪日贷款以及退休消费融资,通过案例分析来说明监管的必要性及有限性.我们认为,只有当监管是针对具体问题所设定,并以监管干预的有效性评估研究为辅助,那么此项监管才会是有益的.     

论商业银行消费信贷发展障碍及对策

近年来,在国家扩大内需、刺激经济发展的宏观经济背景下,各商业银行纷纷将消费信贷业务作为新的效益增长点。此项业务开展取得了一定的效果,但仍面临许多制约该业务快速发展的难点。我们要从加快经济发展,加强信息沟通,扩大社会宣传,积极开发与培养目标客户群体,提高科技水平这些方面来引导和鼓励人们使用消费信贷。     

我国个人消费信贷问题分析与对策思考

本文对我国个人消费信贷的发展现状作了简单的概括,着重从个人消费信贷利益双方--消费者和银行的角度对制约我国个人消费信贷发展的需求约束和供给约束作了分析和探讨,并提出了相应的对策建议.     

提高消费率是扩大消费需求的关键

积累率偏高、消费率偏低是导致我国消费需求不足的根源和影响我国经济发展的痼疾。因此，应从提高居民收入、完善社会保障体系、加快城市化步伐、调整产业结构等方面入手，提高消费率，扩大消费需求。     

消费者对产品风险信息的反应及营销启示

探求消费者对产品风险信息反应的影响机理对企业营销活动意义重大。但是,国内相关理论研究的文献几近空白。通过对国外相关研究的主流理论脉络进行梳理,可提出针对我国营销实践的建议,并可对未来研究方向进行预测。     

国内导游服务质量提升探讨

导游服务质量影响着旅游业的发展。目前我国导游人员存在文化素质偏低,业务能力较差,个性化不强,看重旅游购物等问题,造成这些问题的原因是多方面的,但导游自身的问题占主要方面。因此要提高导游服务质量,必须从源头抓起,通过提高导游考试门槛、增加导游对职业的归属感和紧迫感、保障导游正常合理收入等措施来提高导游服务质量。     

零售企业战略性企业社会责任与消费者响应

企业社会责任活动应当服务于企业的战略目标。文章以零售企业所面临的环境保护主题为背景,探讨了顾客中心和利润中心两种战略性企业社会责任的消费者响应。结果表明,顾客中心的企业社会责任与利润中心的企业社会责任相比,能够使顾客对企业产生更积极的企业社会责任联想,形成更好的态度,并提高其惠顾意愿。同时,从顾客价值的不同角度,消费者的企业社会责任支持对于顾客中心的企业社会责任的消费者响应具有正向或反向调节作用。     

Consumer satisfaction as a function of personal competence/efficacy

Few studies have examined the potential effects of personality upon consumer's judgments of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with their purchases. This paper presents evidence that consumer satisfaction with household appliances is related to their sense of personal efficacy. Implications for policy making and future theoretical directions for satisfaction research are discussed.     

Consumer response to advertisements for legal services: An empirial analysis

In the near future, advertisement of professional services will become a reality. This is especially true of the legal profession. On June, 27, 1977, in a historic though confusing decision, the Supreme Court lifted a ban on the advertising of legal fees and routine services. While several theoretical arguments may be advanced favoring professional advertising, there is a scarity of empirical studies supporting these claims. This study represents one modest attempt to rectify this lack of empirical research regarding the impact of advertising upon the demand for legal services.