Customer Satisfaction,Service Quality and Perceived Value: An Integrative Model

The present study examines the relationships among customer satisfaction, service quality and perceived value. These variables are increasingly recognised as being sources of competitive advantage. However, little empirical research has been conducted to examine these variables simultaneously and their relationships with post-purchase behaviour. The present study was therefore designed to develop an understanding of the relationships among these variables and their influence on postpurchase behaviour. An integrative model was developed and tested using data collected from customers in the restaurant industry. The results reveal that customer satisfaction and perceived value significantly influence post-purchase behaviour. Implications of the findings and areas for future research are discussed.     

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.     

Information Technology and Customer Orientation: A Study of Direct,Mediated, and Interactive Linkages

This study investigates whether and how information technology (IT) is linked to a firm's ability to understand and fulfil customer needs, i.e. customer orientation. IT alone or in tandem with other strategic resources may enable businesses to process market intelligence and coordinate organisational responses to meet evolving buyer preferences. Based on a survey of senior marketing managers and PLS path model analyses, we learned that greater IT capabilities are associated with higher customer orientation but in mediated and interactive ways with marketing information quality and organisational trust. These and other findings largely supported the conceptual model. An implication is that while IT capabilities can help firms be more customer-focused, other critical resources must also be present.     

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.     

Antecedents of Perceived Quality in the Context of Internet Retail Stores

This study investigates specific antecedents of perceived service quality in the Internet environment for trust to a retail store, experience with e-commerce, Internet familiarity, excitement with e-commerce, extent of using e-commerce, frequency of purchases from a company, in addition to exploring the reasons for shopping on line: such as price discounts, convenience, product availability, and purchase conditions. The results indicate that perceived e-service quality is comprised of four key dimensions: information, user friendliness, interaction / adaptation and aesthetics. Moreover, the study reveals that different dimensions of perceived e-service quality are influenced by diverse antecedents. For instance, whilst customer trust to a company influences all four dimensions, Internet familiarity has an impact solely on user friendliness. This picture remained when the type of store, either pure dot. com versus hybrid retailer, was tested as a moderator variable. Implications for practice, the limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Measuring and Managing Employer Brand Image in the Service Industry

In competitive labour markets, the challenge for service-based organisations is to differentiate themselves in order to successfully attract and retain talented staff. Recently, the notion of branding the firm to potential and existing employees has been evoked in the marketing literature. In an empirical study, we measure aspects of this 'employer brand' image among potential recruits and recruiters during the recruitment process. The managerial implications of developing a more consistent employer brand image in the recruitment market are discussed. We conclude the paper by highlighting the contribution of our research, its limitations and areas for further research     

Benchmarking the RAE Returns of Marketing Professors' Journal Publications

Publishing in refereed journals is an acknowledged requirement for successful academics. In the UK, a rise in benchmarking activities, such as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), has brought concerns about the relative quality of different journals to the fore. This paper reviews publication data from the RAE (2001) for full professors in marketing. Four ranking schemes are used to benchmark the quality of the journals included in the RAE. The findings highlight the difficulties which UK academics, including the established leading names, continue to face in publishing in the top North American marketing journals. The reasons for these difficulties are explored and future publication strategies are considered. The paper is intended to put into perspective the apparent requirement to publish in the top few US journals. The paper presents some suggestions for achieving this, but also raises the spectre of whether this really is either the right focus or a feasible one.     

Determining Consumer Satisfaction and Commitment Through Self-Service Technology and Personal Service Usage

This paper expands research into self-service technology in the service encounter. Self-service technology is where customers deliver service themselves using some form of a technological interface. There is still a great deal unknown about self-service technology, in particular its impact on consumer satisfaction and consumer commitment. With that in mind, this empirical study explores the relative impact of self-service technology on consumer satisfaction and on a multidimensional measure of consumer commitment containing affective commitment, temporal commitment and instrumental commitment. The results reveal that in a hotel context personal service still remains very important for assessments of satisfaction, and affective and temporal commitment. What is particularly interesting is that self-service technology, while impacting these constructs, also impacts instrumental commitment. This suggests that positive evaluations of self-service technology may tie consumers into relationships with hotels. A discussion and implications for managers are provided on these and other results, and the paper is concluded with further potential research.     

Improving Customer Orientation Within the Fresh Meat Supply Chain: A Focus on Assurance Schemes

Eighty percent of primary food producers are currently involved in assurance schemes (McDougal 2000), the largest group of which belong to assurance labels sponsored by producer-led groups (e.g. Quality Meat Scotland, English Beef & Lamb Executive). Originally designed to enable producers to provide assurances of meat safety and animal welfare to consumers, this paper evaluates the extent to which producer-led assurance groups have adopted a true market orientation. Both in-depth, semi-structured interviews and a postal questionnaire with Scottish meat consumers were carried out. Subsequently, using structural equation modelling techniques, causal influences upon producer-led assurance label purchase behaviour were determined. The results conclude that producer-led logos are the preferred assurance labels to be purchased by consumers and that the most significant influences upon purchase behaviour are attitudes, past behaviour, assurance label knowledge and personal identity traits. Moreover, weaknesses are identified in terms of producer-led groups' marketing communication strategies to consumers. Implications of those weaknesses in relation to improving market orientation are then discussed.     

The Tourism Workforce and Policy: Exploring the Assumptions using Crete as the Case Study

The size of the tourism workforce has grown rapidly to the extent that today, travel and tourism is considered to be the world's largest employer. The potential of tourism for generating jobs in areas where there are few other alternatives for employment has resulted in many governments electing to expand their tourism industry. Nevertheless, tourism has been criticised for creating part-time, seasonal, low quality and informal jobs often occupied by migrants and females. This paper sets out the main characteristics of the tourism workforce as reported by academic papers, identifies whether the same characteristics are evident on the island of Crete (Greece), and discusses the issues surrounding tourism policy formulation in relation to the tourism workforce of Crete. The conclusion is that very often jobs in tourism are judged, and responses formulated, on a normative (value laden) basis (an ideal) without full consideration being given to the actual (technical) underpinnings and implications.