Customer defections have been linked to service encounter failure in service organizations. This study embraces the idea of improving customer retention through proactively promoting the important role of the interpersonal service encounter to build long-term service relationships between customers and service organizations. More specifically, this study determined the critical relational attributes in the face-to-face service encounter that were most influential in the formation of a service relationship from the business traveler’s perspective. Five critical relational attributes were selected and tested in a high interpersonal service context; namely, a hotel reception encounter. Through factor analysis, the number of factors (critical relational attributes) was reduced from five to four. The results from multiple regression analysis revealed that hotel guests perceived personalization, social bonding, reliability, and familiarization to be most influential in the relationship formation process in that order of significance. Based on the findings, management could develop proactive relationship-building strategies to build customer loyalty and thus reduce the need to use recovery strategies by focusing on the psychological needs emulated in the critical relational attributes.

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The slow diffusion of self-service banking technologies (SSBTs) into the mature consumer market necessitates research to better understand this growing section of the population and the diversity that exists within this market. This research analyses the 50+ market through a segmentation approach based on the level of use of SSBTs. Three segments were identified: non-users, low users and medium-to-high users of SSBTs, and are profiled by frequency of use and demographic variables. Members of the medium-to-high user segment embrace a range of SSBTs and use credit card to facilitate their financial activities. Non-users and some low users prefer the customary way of conducting transactions and enjoy the personal interaction with the bank employee. These two segments do, however, have a moderate level of credit card use.Finally, a low level of replacement and disenchantment discontinuance was evident among the participants in this study.

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