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.     

Valuing customers for social network services

In the current Internet environment, many online service companies based on community factors (networks) produce and sell new types of digital products. For example, SNS (social network service) companies now sell customers digital decorative products for the adornment of online avatars. Not only do individual customers consume these digital products, but they also exchange them as gifts in their local neighborhoods. While previous studies on customer valuation (e.g. CLTV, RFM, etc.) focus on some important issues for identifying valuable customers, the literature does not resolve issues related to the effects on customer value of products purchased as gifts for another person. This study attempts to verify empirically the effects of two representative social network properties (tie strength and the number of ties) on customer monetary value.This study selects 2615 customers from a South Korean SNS website who enrolled on the site on the same day. Data include diverse purchase-related information, social network properties in terms of gift-giving for six months, and demographic information. The primary results of this study are as follows. First, the proposed model, which includes social network properties, has a great deal more explanatory power than the baseline model — the RFM-based customer value model. Second, tie strength and the number of ties in a gift-giving network increase customer value. Third, tie strength has a more profound impact on customer value than does the number of ties. The results of this study theoretically expand the domain of customer valuation studies due to the inclusion of social network properties, and suggest important practical implications for some online SNS companies in their efforts to find valuable customers and improve customer value.     

“Do not impose on others what you desire.” Research on the influence of service Personnel's interactive orientation on customer comfort

Comfort carries many positive consequences, and a vital issue is how to stimulate it. Because service personnel are direct service providers, which means they have a significant impact on the customer. Apparently, it is critical to improve customer comfort from the perspective of service personnel. Based on the Service Encounter theory and Regulatory Fit Theory, this paper explores how service personnel's interactive orientation, including interaction orientation, task orientation, self-orientation, influences customer comfort and examines the mediating role of perceived control and the moderating role of self-construal. We analyzed the data collected from 257 consumers using a self-reported survey using SEM with SPSS17.0 and AMOS21.0. The results show that interaction orientation has a significant positive effect on customer comfort, self-orientation has a significant negative impact on customer comfort, and task orientation has no significant impact. Perceived control plays a mediating role in the relationship between service personnel's interactive orientation and customer comfort. The moderating effect of self-construal is significant. We discussed the implications of the findings for academics and managers.     

Managing Complaints to Improve Customer Profitability

In this study, the authors aim to understand whether, to what extent, and under what circumstances, organizational responses to customer complaints improve customer profitability. To do so, they build upon the congruence approach and propose a contingency framework in which the effectiveness of three organizational responses to customer complaints (timeliness, compensation and communications) in improving customer profitability is contingent upon the strength of the relationship and the type of failure. The framework is tested empirically in the financial services industry applying latent class techniques to longitudinal data for a sample of complaining customers. The results reveal that: (1) different complaint-handling initiatives affect customer profitability differently for each of the four segments of complaining customers that are obtained; (2) these heterogeneous responses to complaint handling are explained by differences in the orientation of the relationship and in the failure context; and (3) complaint-handling initiatives are more (less) effective at improving customer profitability when the benefits they offer strongly (poorly) match the benefits sought by customers in each segment to recover from the failure. These results contribute to a better theoretical understanding of customers’ heterogeneous responses to complaint handling and offer managerial recommendations to allocate marketing resources across alternative complaint-handling strategies to improve profitability.     

Managing social media recovery: The important role of service recovery transparency in retaining customers

This research examines the influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness to retain customers in the context of service recovery via social media. We propose that customer forgiveness mediates the effect of service recovery transparency on switchover intentions. We further posit that the effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is moderated by two additional recovery strategies, i.e., apology and explanation. The results of two studies, i.e., a survey and a scenario-based experiment, show that service recovery transparency acts to elicit customer forgiveness, which subsequently negatively affects switchover intentions. Furthermore, both apology and explanation moderate the effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness. The positive effect of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is attenuated when an apology/explanation is absent.     

The golden mean: Research on the mechanism of customer participation in employee service innovation

Service innovation is of importance in achieving business success. This study aims to understand how customer participation affects employees' service innovation through zhongyong thinking and verify the moderating role of leadership empowerment in the service section. Data were collected through a paired questionnaire survey with 352 valid frontline employees and their superiors in the starred hotel industry. Multiple linear regressions and bootstrap analysis were performed to examine the hypotheses. The results indicate that customer participation is positively related to zhongyong thinking and service innovation, and zhongyong thinking partially mediates the main effect. In addition, service innovation is more substantial when leadership empowerment is high, and customer participation has a weaker impact on zhongyong thinking when leadership empowerment is low. This study contributes to the employee service innovation literature by confirming that customer participation and employees' zhongyong thinking play vital roles in the Chinese service context. This study also helps service managers understand that empowering their subordinates can facilitate employees' service innovation.     

Investigating the service brand: A customer value perspective

Despite considerable interest in the nature and role of marketing using a service perspective [Vargo S., Lusch R. Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. J Mark 2004; 68 (1): 1-17] there is limited research about branding. Research to date tends to be qualitative [e.g., Berry L. Cultivating service brand equity. J Acad Mark Sci 2000; 28: 128-137; de Chernatony L., Segal-Horn S. The criteria for successful services brands. Eur J Mark 2003; 37 (7/8): 1095-1118] rather than quantitative. This research closes this gap by developing and testing a theory of the influence of the service brand on the customer value-loyalty process. The model includes the traditional influence of brand image plus three additional influences that more fully reflect the broader service perspective (company image, employee trust, and company trust). Using survey data of a sample of 552 airline customers, the analysis shows there is a direct influence of all the aspects of the brand on customers' perceptions of value. In addition brand image, company image and employee trust have a mediated influence on customer value through customers' perceptions of service quality. Finally the analysis shows that a service brand does not have a direct influence on customer loyalty but rather its influence is mediated through customer value. This paper concludes with a discussion of the managerial and research implications.     

Planning and implementing effective service guarantee programs

This article highlights different types of service guarantees, explains the benefits of service guarantees to consumers and service providers, examines why service guarantees are so rarely used, and describes the characteristics of effective service guarantee programs. We seek to motivate additional service providers into offering service guarantees (when appropriate), to improve the effectiveness of service guarantee programs, and to spur additional research that can reduce the gap between academic research and industry practices relating to service guarantees. Properly planned, implemented, and controlled service guarantees can benefit service providers by serving as a signal of quality to customers, focusing on consumer expectations, developing specific performance standards, providing reliable data on service failures, determining weak points in the service-delivery process, and regaining customers who would otherwise be lost. Despite these benefits, service guarantees are not commonly used by service providers for a variety of reasons. We study and evaluate these impediments as well as describe characteristics of effective service guarantee programs from both the consumer's and service provider's perspectives.     

Understanding the user satisfaction and loyalty of customer service chatbots

The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is emerging as a significant corporate customer-facing application, potentially increasin customer service efficiency while reducing costs. However, little work has sought to assess the quality of service they provide consumers. This study applies the e-service quality by incorporating conversational AI quality to predict users' satisfaction and loyalty to customer service chatbots. The proposed model was empirically evaluated using survey data collected from 219 users responding about their perceptions of customer service chatbots. The findings indicate that AI chatbot service recovery quality and AI chatbot conversational quality significantly influence user satisfaction. On the other hand, core AI chatbot service quality and satisfaction significantly influenced chatbot user loyalty. This study contributes to researchers and practitioners by proposing and evaluating a more comprehensive chatbot e-service quality that combines both fundamental (core service and service recovery qualities) and human-like (conversational quality) aspects of e-service. The results are of value in devising future AI chatbot services and related strategies.     

Development of a service continance model with IT service antecedents

This study make provides service marketers, particularly those delivering information technology (IT) related service, with insight to the factors that consumers use when evaluating IT services. We develop a service continuance model that includes the antecedents of the consumer׳s decision to continue using information technology (IT) related services in a B2C service environment. Using data from the smart phone service consumers, a covariance-based structural equation modeling analysis is used to test the research model. Results from our empirical study suggest that the association between service usefulness and service continuation intention is fully mediated by service satisfaction. Though both system-service quality and customer-service quality are positively associated with service satisfaction, consumers of IT related services attach greater importance to system-service quality than to custom service quality. Likewise, the indirect path to service continuation intention is stronger in system-service quality than in customer-service quality. Our findings have practical implication for growing market share in IT related services by recognizing the importance of system-service quality in technology service delivery.     

Investigating the impact of service line formats on satisfaction with waiting

In this paper, we examine whether the format of service lines affects customers’ satisfaction with their queuing experience. Using a goal-theoretic approach, and data from a series of experimental studies, we show that the duration of the wait moderates the psychological tradeoff between the initial queue length and its rate of movement, such that customers prefer a single line format for shorter waits but a multiple line format for longer waits. We also show that satisfaction declines with an increase in the number of stages in service lines. This adverse effect of multi-staging can be mitigated by using information devices as well as orienting customers away from local, stage-specific, sub-goals towards the overall goal of receiving service and exiting the system. We synthesize these findings about the psychophysics of queuing to generalize a model of satisfaction with waiting that accounts for the effect of service line formats and can represent customers’ utility functions in models of queuing systems.     

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.     

ASP effects in the small-sized enterprise: the case of the Bizmeka service from Korea Telecom

An application service provider (ASP) is a business model providing information technology (IT)-enabled solutions to customers over the Internet. Utilizing an ASP model, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can acquire affordable IT solutions. Korea Telecom (KT), a leading IT company in Korea, provides an ASP service called Bizmeka to SMEs. In this study, we identify factors influencing the perceived benefits of Bizmeka usage. We also examine the relationship between the perceived benefits of Bizmeka usage and customer satisfaction. Based on the results of our survey, we found the following factors to be important in determining customer satisfaction with ASPs: cost and time impact, maintenance impact, and security risks.     

Competitive advantage through service differentiation by manufacturing companies

This paper examines the relationship among the complexity of customer needs, customer centricity, innovativeness, service differentiation, and business performance within the context of companies that have made a service transition from pure goods providers to service providers. A survey of 332 manufacturing companies provides the basis for the empirical investigation. One key finding is that a strong emphasis on service differentiation can lead to a manufacturing firm's strategies for customer centricity being less sensitive to increasingly complex customer needs, which can increase a firm's payoff for customer centricity. In contrast, the payoff from innovativeness appears to be higher if the firm focuses its resources on either product or service innovation; that is, a dual focus does not work well. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for researchers and managers.     

Customer value and customer loyalty: Is competition a missing link?

This study is aimed at providing an insight into the effects of competition on customer value delivery for customer loyalty. Data were collected using a questionnaire on dyads of service employees and customers. The techniques of ANOVA, ordinary least squares, and logistic regression were used to analyze the dyad data in terms of research purposes. Results show that competition is a moderator of the relationship between customer value and customer loyalty from the consumer perspective. Also, competition is a predictor of customer loyalty from the employee perspective. Insights into this asymmetry in the view on competition between employees and consumers are found. Findings of the moderating effects of competition on the customer value-customer loyalty relationship suggest the significance of competition in the service encounter. In addition, this study found that the predictive validity of the loyalty model for consumers is significantly higher than that for employees. This finding suggests that the factors driving customer loyalty are better captured from the consumer perspective. Findings of the impact of competition on the consumer’s experience of different types of value provide insights as to where to invest in generating customer value to achieve desired customer loyalty. This study also suggests to managers how service employees could be recruited and managed to achieve a service competitive advantage. This study extends our understanding of the customer value–customer loyalty relationship by uncovering the significant role of competition from a dyadic viewpoint.     

物业服务质量对顾客价值及顾客忠诚的影响:居住档次的调节作用

在竞争日益加剧的市场环境中如何提供高质量的服务,提升顾客感知价值以及顾客忠诚度是企业获取竞争优势的关键所在.本文以物业服务行业为研究背景,建构服务质量各维度对顾客价值和顾客忠诚的影响机制模型,并检验居住档次对该模型的调节效应.研究结果表明:与其他行业的服务质量维度构成不同,物业服务质量由实体环境、专业保障、服务效率和人文关怀四个维度构成;实体环境对顾客忠诚产生正向显著影响,而专业保障、服务效率、人文关怀三个服务维度虽然对顾客忠诚没有显著的直接影响,但均通过顾客价值对其产生间接影响;顾客价值是解释服务质量影响顾客忠诚的重要中介变量;居住档次部分调节了实体环境、专业保障、服务效率和人文关怀对顾客价值及顾客忠诚的影响.     

The impact of service failure on brand credibility

Recent studies have examined the consequences of brand credibility, with the majority of works embedded in physical goods. Despite the growing attention service branding receives, little is known about how service failure and recovery efforts impact on brand credibility in service organisations. The purpose of this study is to examine how brand credibility is affected by service failure and an organisations recovery efforts. An online self-completion survey of airline consumers (n=875) was employed to test the relationships between the focal constructs. The results show that a service firm’s effective complaint handling positively impacts satisfaction with complaining, overall satisfaction and service brand credibility. The study also finds that the higher the perceived magnitude of failure, the more difficult it is to satisfy a customer. These results demonstrate that it is possible to maintain service brand credibility during a service failure, provided brand managers develop and implement effective complain handling procedures.     

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.     

Why does service inclusion matter? The effect of service exclusion on customer indirect misbehavior

In recent years, there has been much conceptual work calling for research on transformative service, and service inclusion in particular. However, quantitative studies focusing on service inclusion are scant, and little is known about customer responses to the opposite of service inclusion, i.e. service exclusion. Taking a transformative research perspective, this study advances the service inclusion literature by focusing on service exclusion and its downstream consequences. We first build the causal link between service exclusion (vs. inclusion) and customer indirect misbehavior, reveal the underlying mechanism, and further identify negative reciprocity beliefs as a boundary condition. The results of three studies suggest that customers who experience service exclusion (vs. inclusion) are more likely to engage in indirect misbehavior (Study 1), and that this effect is mediated by perceived need threat (Study 2). Moreover, the basic effect holds true only for customers with strong negative reciprocity beliefs (Study 3). The findings of this research not only contribute to the literature on transformative services, service inclusion, and social exclusion, but also have managerial implications for marketing practitioners in terms of creating an inclusive service system.     

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.