Browsing by Author "Severt, Denver E."
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- The Customer's Path to Loyalty: A Partial Test of the Relationships of Prior Experience, Justice, and Customer SatisfactionSevert, Denver E. (Virginia Tech, 2002-04-23)The service sector is the fastest growing segment of the economy, responsible for 75% of the GNP, and still growing. Its success is important to the global economy. Nonetheless, throughout the 20-year evolution of services marketing literature, research that guides theory, methodology, and practice for service success has remained underrepresented. Published research regarding the effect of customers' justice perceptions on customer satisfaction is primarily experimental and focuses only on service recovery after a service failure, providing insufficient information about how the justice experienced in a service encounter affects a customer's satisfaction level. Proactive and reactive service recovery research abounds; service failures have overshadowed service success. This is the first empirical research to investigate across service outcomes the effects 1) of interactional, distributive, and procedural justice on overall justice and customer satisfaction and 2) of overall justice on customer satisfaction. The theoretical model of the customer's path to loyalty adapts previous models of the service profit chain, customer satisfaction with service failure and recovery, and complaint handling relationships. It is a simplified version of the author's in-work conceptual model. The theoretical model has conceptual and practical value to researchers and service company executives. It considers all possible service encounter types and the heterogeneity of outcomes. It is supported by attribution and equity theories (the underpinnings of customer's justice judgments) and by behavioral intentions research. A cross-sectional written survey was used to gather data relevant to the eight hypotheses proposed and shown on the measurement model. Sixty percent of the 302 respondents recalled satisfying service encounters and 40% recalled dissatisfying service encounters. MANOVA testing supported the hypothesis of a positive relationship for extant prior experience to each of the justice constructs. The tested path analysis model showed direct and positive effects for the justice constructs on overall justice and customer satisfaction and for overall justice on customer satisfaction. When providers fairly address the people, outputs, and processes in service transactions, expectations are more likely to be met, delight is possible, and trust and commitment, possibly even loyalty, may arise. Disappointment and disconfirmation resulting from gaps in performance expectations can lead to non-attritive defection and lost profits. This research provides practical information that can lead to a better understanding of customers' evaluation methods and be used to guide the formation of improved service strategies that provide justice, a key to satisfaction.
- The Evaluation of Service Quality by Socially Responsible CustomersWattanakamolchai, Somyot (Virginia Tech, 2008-03-17)The socially responsible customer segment is growing. Increasingly, customers are concerned about social, political, and environmental issues. These concerns have been shown to affect their attitudes towards the quality of goods and services as well as their buying behaviors. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of empirical research in the service literature on socially responsible customers. This study investigates the role that social responsibility plays in measuring service quality. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used in this study. Focus group and in-depth interviews were conducted to develop a scale measuring the social responsibility dimension in the evaluation of service quality. Confirmatory factor analysis and a multiple regression method were then utilized to test four hypotheses postulated in the study. The social responsibility scale consisted of eight items and was shown to be highly reliable. This scale along with the 22 items from the perception part of SERVQUAL formed the Socially Responsible Customer (SRC) SERVQUAL instrument used in this study. A total of 803 respondents completed the survey. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that social responsibility was a salient dimension of service quality and highly socially responsible customers used the concept of social responsibility more pronouncedly than the others when evaluating service quality. The social responsibility dimension alone significantly explained the variance in service quality. However, after accounting for the existing five SERVQUAL dimensions, the social responsibility dimension does not add a significant increment to the variance explained by the service quality regression model.