Exploring Managers' Views About Brand Saboteurs

This paper explores the relationship between employee behaviour and service brand performance. Current literature emphasizes the importance of employee behaviour in delivering a strong service brand, and suggests that employees can be clustered according to their degree of support for the brand. Twenty in-depth interviews were undertaken with HR and Marketing managers in financial services and grocery firms. In the context of employees as brand builders, we explore whether managers have recognized variations in the level of employee support for the brand. Specifically, we surface managers' views about negative performers, or 'Brand Saboteurs'     

The Role of Perceptions in Predicting Donor Value

Explores the role of donor perceptions in predicting the value of a donor, both to the voluntary sector as a whole and to specific organisations. Three classes of perceptual variable are examined; perceptions of the performance of the voluntary sector/specific organisations, perceptions of any exchange benefits that might accrue and in cases where a relationship already exists, perceptions of the quality of service quality provided. Drawing on results of an empirical study of 5000 donors to ten large national charities, the paper concludes that all three classes of perceptual variable have the capacity to influence donor value.     

From E-Channel to Channel Mix and Channel Integration

Based on longitudinal research, this paper elucidates the evolution of the e-channel. The results show that that the e-channel is still of limited importance in many areas, when measured by market share. However, the new channel is an important source of information boosting both consumer power and capability. Another important result is that firms, as well as consumers, still perceive the e-channel as promising. One reason is that today's time-pressed consumers are increasingly in need of affordable services to make their everyday life easier, which puts pressure on firms for developing an e-channel capable to perform cost efficient services. An additional result is that the e-channel and the physical channel do, in fact, complement each other rather than only compete. Therefore, to utilise the potential of the e-channel, a service provider strategy of channel mix and channel integration is suggested.     

Branded lives: The production and consumption of meaning at work

Over the last number of decades, as a result of regulatory, technological and changing consumer dynamics, many service organisations operate in an increasingly competitive and dynamic external environment. These changes have led to service companies trying to both recruit and retain profitable customers. In order to compete effectively, do companies focus on transaction and relationship marketing activities only or on the balanced delivery of both? Apart from a small body of work (Brodie et al. 1997; Coviello et al. 1997; 2002), the literature has treated transaction and relationship marketing in an isolated and non-integrated fashion. In particular there has been limited consideration of the pertinent issues facing service organisations trying to integrate these two perspectives in practice. This article describes an in-depth study of a service organisation's transaction and relationship marketing activities. In this study theory was used in the development of a conceptual model. This model was used as a framework to guide the study and data collection using one retail bank case. The data were analysed in relation to the transaction and relationship marketing focus and activities of the bank. The findings indicate that resource investment in some aspects of transaction and relationship marketing activities, in practice, was unbalanced compared to the resource investment in a wide range of support activities. The study has implications for research and theory and to those attempting to deliver both transaction and relationship marketing in the context of dynamic and competitive environments.     

The meaning of commitment in professional service relationships: a study of the meaning of commitment used by lawyers and their clients

Several authors have identified the importance of commitment in successful business relationships. However, few studies have considered the meaning of commitment, especially within the context of customer-supplier relationships.

Most studies of commitment within the marketing literature use existing conceptualisations developed within the psychology and organisational behaviour literatures. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of commitment in a customer-supplier relationship context, and to compare this with traditional conceptualisation of commitment.

This study investigates the meaning of commitment used by both lawyers and their clients, within the context of their relationship. The findings show that the meaning of commitment used in professional relationships may be more complex than its traditional conceptualisation and should be extended to include at least three additional components including: 'partnership commitment', 'impression management commitment' and 'personal commitment'. It is argued that it is inappropriate to 'borrow' the conceptualisation of the construct of commitment from other disciplines, without considering the market-based context in which it is used. Implications for professional service relationships include that professionals and clients would benefit from sharing a similar meaning of commitment and this meaning may be influenced by the culture, systems and processes of their organisation.     

Customers' Responses to Retail Brand Extensions

This paper considers the relationship between a core brand built around retail operations and an extension built around financial services operations. The fundamental question that underlies the paper asks whether a successful/unsuccessful implementation of financial services brand extension impacts positively/negatively on the core retail brand. Findings from over 1000 responses indicate that the retailer brand extensions under investigation do have a significant impact on the core brand. Further analysis, using customers who have experienced the brand extension versus those that have not, reveals that this impact can be negative as well as positive. That is, where a customer perceives the brand extension to be implemented poorly the relationship between the customer and the original brand is compromised.     

Measurement of Service Quality in Internet Banking: The Development of an Instrument

Service quality measurement in Internet banking services is an area of growing interest to researchers and managers. Building on a synthesis of the extant literature on service quality in traditional services and that of Internet delivered services, this study develops a battery of measures that can be used to measure customer service quality in e-banking services. The study shows that service quality in e-banking can be measured using twenty-one parsimonious measures spread across five dimensions, namely, access, Website interface, trust, attention and credibility. The article discusses the importance of these findings for practitioners and for future research on service quality in Internet delivered services.     

Diluting Negative Country of Origin Stereotypes: A Social Stereotype Approach

The increase in global trade has prompted the need for managers to control the impact of negative country of origin (COO) effects on consumers' product evaluations. Yet, extant research in the area is limited and findings are mixed. This study empirically tests whether theories from the social stereotype change literature, known as subtyping and conversion theories, are effective in diluting consumers' negative country-oforigin stereotypes. Additionally, it examines the specific conditions under which dilution may take place. Two experiments were conducted utilizing mall intercept methodologies in the United States. Evidence suggests that conversion theory is an effective COO stereotype change agent. The results imply that international marketers may be able to reduce negative country-oforigin beliefs merely through exposing their consumers, under particular conditions, to disconfirming product information.     

Academy of Marketing Conference "2001: A Marketing Odyssey"

This study examines the mediating influence of consumer expertise on the antecedents and consequences of Affect within a professional services market context. Whilst there is increasing evidence to suggest an empirical link between Affect evoked and satisfaction within such contexts, previous research has largely ignored the role of consumer expertise as a mediating influence. Using a scenario based approach, the objective of the study was to test for multigroup invariance among competing structural models based on the ability of the respondents to form expectation and performance assessments about the service they are receiving. The results indicate that it is important to examine different levels of consumer expertise in detail to better understand how certain characteristics such as experience and qualifications influence the priority and functionality attached to service attributes when making satisfaction judgments within a professional service context. This may in turn have broader implications for our contextual understanding of services.     

Complex services and choice criteria: an example from the life assurance market

This study analyses customer choice criteria in the context of a complex service, more specifically, endowment life assurance policies. The study draws upon previous literature which has suggested that service complexity may have implications for consumer behaviour in general and customer choice criteria in particular. A quantitative study is employed to investigate the relative importance of choice criteria in endowments and differences in importance with respect to various demographic and related factors. Findings indicate that the consumer's choice of institution is most often influenced by use of an existing service with that firm, followed closely by choosing on the basis of recommendation or family relationship. Factors such as performance and charges are shown to be relatively unimportant choice criteria. In addition, differences in the importance of choice criteria with respect to gender, class, household income, educational attainment, age and financial maturity are apparent.