Consumer social voice in the age of social media: Segmentation profiles and relationship marketing strategies

Service failures, once handled quietly by customer service departments, are now played out on a highly public social media stage. These failures can result in not only the loss of a loyal consumer but also can negatively affect relationships with those watching the dialogue between disgruntled customers and organizations. The phenomenon of seeking resolution to service failures online is distinct from both traditional word-of-mouth and voice behaviors. This article introduces social voice: public complaining behavior that aims to change the behavior of the organization. A qualitative methodology defines eight dimensions of social voice and categorizes them by the strength of the relationship to the organization. Results indicate that appropriate response strategies differ based on social voice segment.     

How personal costs influence customer citizenship behaviors

Many customers engage in customer citizenship behaviors, such as restocking unwanted items, helping other customers, or putting shopping carts back. Although previous research has investigated a variety of antecedents of customer citizenship behaviors, it has not yet considered the personal costs that might inhibit the decision to engage in those behaviors. Using social exchange theory and tested with three experimental studies, this research demonstrates that customers consider their personal cost/benefit trade-off prior to engaging in customer citizenship behaviors. Specifically, perceived self-sacrifice reduces intention to engage in customer citizenship behaviors while awareness of public self-image increases intention. Furthermore, this cost/benefit trade-off between self-sacrifice and public self-image is influenced by peer norms and perceived consequence to the firm.     

网购认知与顾客抱怨行为的关系研究

在网络购物过程中,顾客会因各种产品质量问题而感到不满意,从而产生抱怨行为。基于此,文章在网络购物背景下,分析顾客抱怨行为的影响因素,通过层级回归方法,重点探讨网购认知与顾客抱怨行为的关系。研究发现网购认知与顾客抱怨行为倾向之间存在正向关系,网购认知越高,顾客抱怨行为倾向越高。并且网购认知对向卖方抱怨、私下抱怨以及向第三方机构抱怨等三类抱怨行为均存在较大影响。因此电子商务企业应加强顾客抱怨管理,提升顾客满意度。     

New perspective on customer orientation of service employees: a conceptual framework

Customer orientation of service employees (COSE) refers to the capacity and skills of employees to (1) identify, understand and satisfy their clients’ needs, and (2) act to that end. The COSE model has been used extensively to assess customer orientation of service employees within different settings. However, minimal modifications from the original have been presented so far, and the proposed settings were unrelated to highly relational services such as private banking (PB). PB is defined as the services specifically designed to satisfy the financial needs of high net worth individuals (HNWI); they are usually delivered by only one contact person – the private banker. Thus, PB is based on a personal and long-lasting relationship between the private banker and the client. Drawing on the literature regarding customer orientation and PB, trust, loyalty and word of mouth are identified as the potential consequences of COSE, improving on previous models. These new propositions are accompanied by a conceptual framework of COSE that is able to address the PB particularities by considering some moderating variables that are inherent to the PB service (customer segment and type of banking firm). Further avenues for research are then charted in light of the new conceptual framework developed.     

The Role of Public and Private Complaining in Satisfaction with Problem Resolution

The results of a two-phase panel study were used to investigate the relationships among satisfaction with complaint resolution, reports of public and private complaining, and hypothesized antecedents of complaint behavior. Path analysis of a theoretical model of complaint behavior suggested that the degree of public complaining was positively related to satisfaction with the eventual outcome of the problem while the extent of private complaining had a significant negative relationship. Analysis of the antecedents showed that only monetary cost associated with the problem was positively related to both public and private complaints, underscoring the difficulty of predicting complaining from personal characteristics.     

Using Information as a Basis for Segmentation and Relationship Marketing: A Longitudinal Case Study of a Leading Financial Services Firm

An important concern for service businesses is how to develop an appropriate segmentation and relationship marketing strategy that is tied to the value contribution of the customer base. This article presents a case study of the relationship marketing strategy for a division of a leading, worldwide financial services provider. The case firm segments customers into three tiers, using a framework similar to the one established by Berry and Parasuraman. Potential revenue from the customer is the primary segmentation variable used to assign customers to one of the three tiers, while the customer service response is tailored for each tier based upon customer information capabilities and needs. Although information is normally thought of as a supplemental service, rather than a core service, this case study shows how information is central to providing effective customer service and is a key to relationship marketing. The study also demonstrates how social and structural bonds can be used to refocus a customer's thinking from a cost perspective to a value perspective.     

Group service recovery strategies effectiveness: The moderating effects of group size and relational distance

The extant service recovery literature focuses on consumers' responses to individual failures. However, group service failures are in fact common, but they have received insufficient research attention. This study contributes to theory and practice by applying social impact theory to explain the social nature of group failures. Findings from two studies show that group size and relational distance substantially affect consumers' response to group service recovery strategies. Specifically, private economic recovery creates less consumer satisfaction as group size increases, whereas consumers with a distant social relationship are more satisfied with public recovery for both economic recovery and social recovery. However, consumers with close relationships are more satisfied with public economic recovery and private social recovery. Apart from offering practical insights, this study expands the theoretical understanding of service failures, suggesting that they occur in a complex social ecology instead of relatively simple dyadic interactions between service providers and consumers.     

Investigating the Impact of Firm Size on Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Review

The impact of smaller firm size on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is ambiguous. Some contend that small businesses are socially responsible by nature, while others argue that a smaller firm size imposes barriers on small firms that constrain their ability to take responsible action. This paper critically analyses recent theoretical and empirical contributions on the size–social responsibility relationship among small businesses. More specifically, it reviews the impact of firm size on four antecedents of business behaviour: issue characteristics, personal characteristics, organizational characteristics and context characteristics. It concludes that the small business context does impose barriers on social responsibility taking, but that the impact of the smaller firm size on social responsibility should be nuanced depending on a number of conditions. From a critical analysis of these conditions, opportunities for small businesses and their constituents to overcome the constraining barriers are suggested.Jan Lepoutre is a PhD candidate in Applied Economics at Ghent University, Belgium. His dissertation focuses on the competences associated with small business social responsibility.Aimé Heene is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Ghent University, Belgium. He teaches strategic management for private and for public organizations and currently focuses his research on (competence-based) management in public and social profit organizations.     

Extending customer relationship management into a social context

Informed by the resource-based view, this study draws on customer relationship management (CRM) and value co-creation literature to develop a framework examining the impact of social networking sites on processes to manage customer relationships. Facilitating the depth and networked interactions necessary to truly engage customers, social networking sites act as a means of enhancing customer relationships through the co-creation of value, moving CRM into a social context. Tested and validated on a data set of hotels, the main contribution of the study to service research lies in the extension of CRM processes, termed relational information processes, to include value co-creation processes due to the social capabilities afforded by social networking sites. Information technology competency and social media orientation act as critical antecedents to these processes, which have a positive impact on both financial and non-financial aspects of firm performance. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed accordingly.     

Distinguishing between the impact of social media public and private compliments on customers’ future service recovery expectations

We seek to explore whether customers’ levels of service recovery expectations differ across customers who, prior to the service failure, publicly complimented the firm on social media and customers who, in advance of the service failure, privately complimented the firm on social media. We explore these differences in terms of satisfaction with the service provider and willingness to go back to the service provider. We conduct an experiment to test the research hypotheses. Our study results show that customers who complimented the service provider publicly (relative to privately) on social media in advance of a service failure require a higher level of service recovery to be satisfied with the service provider and go back to the service provider. Further, these effects are partly moderated by customer loyalty and social media usage intensity.     

Employee encouragement of self-disclosure in the service encounter and its impact on customer satisfaction

In the service encounter, the employee must often encourage customer self-disclosure (i.e., revealing of personal information) to be able to match the customer's needs with what the firm has to offer. This study uses an experimental approach to manipulate employee encouragement of self-disclosure (low vs. high) to explore its impact on the customer. It was found that encouraging self-disclosure enhanced customer perceptions of customization, employee effort, own effort, privacy concerns, and employee humanness, and that these responses influenced customer satisfaction. In addition, because many firms are beginning to replace human employees with various forms of virtual agents (and it has been argued that we humans may find it less threatening to self-disclose to such agents), the identity of the employee (virtual agent vs. human employee) was manipulated, too. The identity factor, however, did not influence customers' responses.     

Customer satisfaction,corporate image,and service quality in professional services

This study explores the impact of corporate image and service quality on customer satisfaction in the professional service industries. Data were collected on audit firms, sending a questionnaire to financial executives of leading Italian companies. The results show that the most important variable explaining customer satisfaction was the apparent effectiveness of the audit firm. In relation to service quality, managers' satisfaction was primarily driven by their perception of audit firm's work as a useful value-adding service. The length of audit firm–auditee relation, the location of the auditor's office, and the financial executive's personal characteristics were also significant drivers of customer satisfaction.     

Social Media for Socially Responsible Firms: Analysis of Fortune 500’s Twitter Profiles and their CSR/CSIR Ratings

The instrumental benefits of firm’s CSR activities are contingent upon the stakeholders’ awareness and favorable attribution. While social media creates an important momentum for firms to cultivate favorable awareness by establishing a powerful framework of stakeholder relationships, the opportunities are not distributed evenly for all firms. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CSR credentials on the effectiveness of social media as a stakeholder-relationship management platform. The analysis of Fortune 500 companies in the Twitter sphere reveals that a higher CSR rating is a strong indicator of an earlier adoption, a faster establishment of online presence (followers), a higher responsiveness to the firm’s identity (replies and mentions), and a stronger virality of the messages (retweets). Incidentally, the higher CSIR rating is also found to be associated with the stronger virality. Our findings also suggest that socially responsible firms can harvest proactive stakeholders’ participation (user-driven communication) without investing more resources (firm-driven communication). As the first study that conceptualizes the social media as a proponent of CSR, this paper contends that “being socially responsible” makes more practical sense for firms with the rise of social media.     

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。     

Investigating mediators between corporate reputation and customer citizenship behaviors

Recent corporate reputation research focuses on customers as an important stakeholder group for whom firm reputation matters. The authors hypothesize that customer-based corporate reputation (CBR) may affect customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) and that both commitment and loyalty mediate the CBR-CCB relationship. The tests of the hypotheses use a sample of 583 service customers who evaluate the reputation of service firms. These results suggest that commitment and loyalty mediate the relationship between CBR and one type of CCB, that is, helping the company. The authors discuss the implications for marketing research and practice.     

Influence of Personal Values and Value Congruence on Unethical Practices and Work Behavior

The study examines whether (a) personal and organizational values differ in private and public sectors, and (b) personal values and value congruence – the extent of matching between personal and organizational values – influence unethical practices and work behavior. Three hundred and forty middle-level managers from four manufacturing organizations rated 22 values as guiding principles to them to identify their personal values. In order to index organizational values, 56 top-level managers of the same organizations rated how important such values were to the organization. Results revealed that the important shared values among managers of private and public sectors are product quality and customer service. Congruence between personal and organizational values is found to be higher in the private sector compared to the public sector. Middle-level managers in the private sector shared the organizational values more than the managers in the public sector. Irrespective of the type of organizations and age of managers, personal values more potently and consistently decreased unethical practices and increased work behavior compared to value congruence. Hiring managers emphasizing personal values can demote unethical practices and promote work behavior.     

Gendering the voiced complaining behavior of customers in small restaurant environments: A case of college students in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Understanding gender-related nuances connected to customer complaining behavior in a valuable market segment in a low-income economy is strategically important to customer relationship management practitioners in the hospitality industry. Using customer complaining behavior taxonomies and Eagly’s social role theory, this quantitative study examines how selected demographic variables, attitude toward complaining, customer loyalty, and likelihood of success affect the verbal complaining behavior of a sample of college students in Zimbabwe in restaurants contexts. The findings revealed that all the proposed predictors had statistically significant effects on voiced complaining. In addition, the gender variable moderated the influence of the non-demographic predictors. Interestingly, the likelihood of success variable had a negative influence on the respondents’ propensity to complain verbally. Based on this evidence, it is concluded that gender is integral to how college students react to service failure in restaurant environments. Consequently, marketers of related services should implement customized gender-sensitive customer complaint handling and service recovery strategies.     

Does high supply chain integration enhance customer response speed?

The capability of customer response speed is commonly employed by firms that wish to strengthen their relationship with customers in order to maintain a high level of service in a hypercompetitive environment of rapidly changing technology. Improved customer response speed also helps manufacturers respond more rapidly to satisfy customer needs. However, does high level of supply chain integration with customers have positive impact on customer response speed? This study proposes a conceptual model to examine antecedents to better firm performance, with customer response speed as a mediator. The conceptual model was empirically tested using data collected from 809 manufacturing companies in the Greater China Region. The results show that the nature of the relationship between customer integration and customer response speed may vary substantially from one area to another. Also, customer response speed mediates between customer integration and firm performance in China and Taiwan.