The moderating effects of gender on customer satisfaction and continuance intention in mobile commerce: a UTAUT-based perspective

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study is to investigate the moderating effects of gender on proposed model relationships. In order to test the moderating effects of gender on the relationships of the model developed, multi-group SEM was applied. Performance expectancy was found to be the strongest predictor of satisfaction and comparative value was identified as the main driver of continuance intention. In addition, significant difference in attitudes between women and men were confirmed in the case of three out of ten effects. The originality of the study is its measurement of the moderating effects of gender on user satisfaction in relation to m-commerce and continuance intentions.     

Patient care,satisfaction and service quality in health care

It is becoming increasingly important in the healthcare setting to treat patients as consumers and measure their satisfaction with medical services rendered. As such, patient satisfaction should be considered an important output of a country's healthcare system, basically reflecting the stage of its development. The conducted study tested students’ satisfaction with the quality of service provided by student polyclinics. In particular, the study has analysed the impacts of personal relationships, promptness and tangibility on student satisfaction. The findings imply that all three factors significantly affect patient satisfaction, with personal relationships having the strongest impact. Such results suggest that healthcare providers should encourage their doctors to devote more time to their patients and show genuine concern for patients’ problems if they wish to improve overall satisfaction of their patients with the delivered services.     

Going for gold as a leisure tourism continuum: clustering motivations for gold panning revisit intention

The way in which people use their spare time differs. Leisure activities and tourism are among the most common of these. Gold panning is a rather unusual niche leisure and tourism activity. Despite some differences, leisure and tourism are generally interrelated in many ways, thus gold panning, is a good example of the leisure tourism continuum. In this study, gold panning is considered as a set of leisure activities within the context of tourism. The aim of the paper is to determine the profile of a gold panner based on their motivations. Therefore, respondents are clustered by means of motivation into two homogenous groups defined as ‘nature seekers’ and ‘true gold panners’. The results suggest that the clusters differ significantly with regards to age, education and marital status, but also in terms of the degree of interest in gold and revisit intention. The originality of the research lies in the fact that gold panning as a leisure activity has seldom been explored under the guise of a leisure and tourist context within existing literature, especially through the means of quantitative research.     

RISE OF THE FIDUCIARY STATE: A SURVEY OF SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND RESEARCH

We survey the literature documenting the rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), which, with assets under management of over $5.4 trillion at year‐end 2014, are a major force in global finance. Research papers have analyzed the evolution of SWFs from stabilization funds to stand‐alone wealth management funds; we both survey this research and show that more than 25 countries have launched or proposed new SWFs since January 2008. The most salient and controversial feature of SWFs is that they are state‐owned; we survey the existing literature on state ownership and discuss what this predicts about the efficiency and beneficence of government control of SWF assets. We discuss the documented importance of SWF funding sources (oil sales revenues versus excess reserves from export earnings) and survey the normative literature describing how SWFs should allocate funds. We then summarize the empirical literature studying how SWFs actually do allocate funds—across asset classes, geographically, and across industries. We document that most SWF equity investments in publicly traded firms involve cross‐border purchases of sizeable minority stakes (median around 20%) in target firms, with a strong preference for investments in the financial sector. Next, we assess empirical studies examining the impact of SWF stock investments on target firm financial and operating performance, and find universal support for a positive announcement period stock price increase of 1–3%. This, however, is significantly lower than the 5% abnormal return documented for stock purchases by comparable privately owned financial investors in recent studies, indicating a “sovereign wealth fund discount.” We conclude by summarizing the lessons of SWF research and pointing out unresolved issues.     

Investigating the Impact of SERVQUAL Dimensions on Customer Satisfaction: The Lessons Learnt from Serbian Travel Agencies

Despite the rise of online travel booking services, it seems that traditional travel agencies remain an intractable part in the process of making travel arrangements for most travelers. Nevertheless, the question remains as to what triggers travelers' satisfaction with travel agencies. In order to explore this, we focused on Serbian travel agencies and researched the impact of the five individual SERVQUAL dimensions on travelers' satisfaction. Results revealed that four SERVQUAL dimensions (reliability, responsiveness, empathy and tangibility) had a significant influence on customer satisfaction. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.