Service failure and recovery: The impact of relationship factors on customer satisfaction

This research investigated how customers' relationships with a service organization affect their reactions to service failure and recovery. Our conceptual model proposed that customer-organizational relationships help to shape customers' attributions and expectations when service failures occur. The empirical results showed that customers with higher expectations of relationship continuity had lower service recovery expectations after a service failure and also attributed that failure to a less stable cause. Both the lower recovery expectations and the lower stability attributions were associated with greater satisfaction with the service performance after the recovery. These effects appeared to be key processes by which relationships buffer service organizations when service failures occur. Ronald L. Hess Jr. (ron. hess@business.wm.edu) (Ph.D., Virginia Tech) is currently an assistant professor of marketing at the College of William & Mary. His research interests include customer responses to service and product failures; organizational complaint handling; and customer assessments of satisfaction, loyalty, and service quality. He has published his research inMarketing Letters and several conference proceedings. Shankar Ganesan (sganesan @bpa.arizona.edu) (Ph.D., University of Florida) is an associate professor of marketing and Lisle and Rosslyn Payne Fellow in Marketing at the Eller College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona. His research interests focus on the areas of interorganizational relationships, buyer-seller negotiations, service failure and recovery, new product innovation, and E-marketing. He is the author of several articles that have appeared in leading academic journals, including theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theJournal of Applied Psychology. He currently serves on the editorial review board of theJournal of Marketing Research and theJournal of Marketing. Noreen M. Klein (nklein@vt.edu) (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is currently an associate professor of marketing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research interests include consumer decision making and the behavioral aspects of pricing, and her research has been published in the theJournal of Consumer Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making, and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science.     

Size Does Matter: Technical and Scale Efficiency in Indian State Tax Jurisdictions

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to measure tax efficiency in 15Indian states from 1980/81 to 1992/93. Tax efficiency is shown to be conditional on state gross domestic product (SDP), agriculture's share in state SDP,and a poverty index. The considerable remaining efficiency differences areattributable to the small size of some tax jurisdiction rather than to technical inefficiency. Multilateral Malmquist tax indices show that six of the states were consistently efficient, while three were consistently inefficient. Tax efficiency grew at an average annual rate of 3.9% until 1986/87, but growth ceased after that date for all but two states.     

Workplace Spirituality Facilitation: A Comprehensive Model

This article specifies a comprehensive model for workplace spirituality facilitation that integrates various views from the existing research on workplace spirituality facilitation. It outlines the significance of workplace spirituality topic and highlights its relevance to the area of ethics. It then briefly outlines the various directions the existing workplace spirituality research has taken. Based on this, it indicates that an integration of the elements from various existing research works on workplace spirituality facilitation into a comprehensive workplace spirituality facilitation model could make relevant contributions to the existing workplace spirituality research. It then indicates that there are various points of focus in workplace spirituality conceptualization and facilitation views. It outlines various views from the existing research on workplace spirituality facilitation. Drawing on the elements of these various workplace spirituality facilitation views, it specifies a comprehensive model of workplace spirituality facilitation. It outlines how the various parts and linkages depicted in the comprehensive model of workplace spirituality facilitation are consistent with and are supported by the various views of workplace spirituality facilitation that it seeks to integrate. It then outlines how the comprehensive model specified can guide the future research in the area of workplace spirituality and how it can provide inputs to leadership and organization development (OD) efforts for workplace spirituality facilitation.     

Mobile Marketing: A Synthesis and Prognosis

Mobile marketing refers to the two- or multi-way communication and promotion of an offer between a firm and its customers using a mobile medium, device, or technology. We present the conceptual underpinnings of mobile marketing and a synthesis of the relevant literature. We identify and discuss four key issues: drivers of mobile device/service adoption, the influence of mobile marketing on customer decision-making, formulation of a mobile marketing strategy, and mobile marketing in the global context. We outline research directions related to these issues and conclude by delineating the managerial implications of mobile marketing insights.     

Perspectives and problems of development in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper analyses the initial conditions for development facing post-colonial African nations, outlines alternative development strategies followed by different groups of countries and assesses the consequences for growth and poverty alleviation. On the basis of this diagnosis the paper outlines a number of policy priorities for the future including greater research, extension and infrastracture support for smallholder agriculture, an improvement in the overall structure of incentives in favour of agriculture, a more realistic urban formal sector wage structure to reduce rural—urban migration and foster a more internationally competitive manufacturing sector, and greater emphasis on surplus generation through government budgets and parastatal enterprises.     

Will Consumers Purchase Stevia as a Sugar Substitute?: An Exploratory Study on Consumer Acceptance

Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, commonly known as Stevia, is an ancient sweet herb native to Paraguay. The plant, especially the leaves, has a sweetening effect 300 times sweeter than saccharose. Malaysia has taken a particular interest in promotion of Stevia derivatives as a precautionary measure to combat chronic diseases. This study aims to investigate factors that influence the acceptance of Stevia-based products by consumers. Face-to-face interviews were conducted using a structured questionnaire with 900 consumers from Klang Valley areas. The results revealed that most of the respondents were willing to use Stevia-based products as a substitute for sugar. There was also a significant relationship between level of education and consumer’s willingness to change for Stevia-based products. Health benefits, promotion, availability, and price were found to be the most influential factors toward acceptance of Stevia-based products by consumers. An effective promotion is necessary to increase consumer’s awareness toward a more healthy diet.     

Bayesian spatial probit estimation: a primer and an application to HYV rice adoption

Increasingly, spatial econometric methods are becoming part of the standard toolkit of applied researchers in agricultural, environmental and development economics. Nonetheless, applications in discrete‐choice settings remain few and despite its appeal, applications of the Bayesian paradigm in these settings are still fewer. We provide a primer to the Bayesian spatial probit with the objective of making accessible to non‐users a class of iterative estimation methods that have become fairly routine in Bayesian circles, offer an extremely powerful addition to applied researchers toolkits, and are essential in Bayesian implementation of spatial econometric models. We demonstrate the methods and apply them to estimate the ‘neighbourhood effect’ in high‐yielding variety (HYV) adoption among Bangladeshi rice producers. We estimate the strength of this relationship using a standard, spatial probit model and compare the policy conclusions with and without the neighbourhood effect included.