Over the past two and a half decades services marketing has emerged as a well established area of inquiry in the marketing discipline. In many ways, its growth and acceptance in the academic arena are indeed noteworthy. A question arises, however, concerning the direction that services marketing as a field of study should take in the future. This article reports and content‐analyzes the insights of ten leading services scholars regarding that question. That group comprises Leonard Berry, Mary Jo Bitner, David Bowen, Stephen W. Brown, Christian Gro¨nroos, Evert Gummesson, Christopher Lovelock, Parsu Parasuraman, Benjamin Schneider, and Valarie Zeithaml. Recurring themes and provocative observations among the services experts’ comments are related and discussed. Concluding remarks are offered.
Purpose -The purpose of this article is to establish the efficacy of jazz improvisation as a useful metaphor to understand and implement features that contribute to excellent service performances. Design/methodology/approach -The paper begins by presenting services as performances that often require flexibility and adaptability in their enactment. It then offers the metaphor of jazz improvisation as a means to comprehend and communicate the dynamics of such flexibility and adaptability. Jazz elements are used to illustrate their application to service delivery issues. Practical implications -Similar to jazz, services deal with complex and real time delivery circumstances; this makes services prone to uncertainty at the service encounter. Lessons from jazz offer service managers guidelines for improvisation by each player in their ensemble that can enable them to adapt to customers and produce a coherent and cohesive performance. Originality/value -The jazz improvisation metaphor offers a template and guidelines to comprehend and enact principles pertaining to adaptability in services contexts that may be useful for managers in designing service delivery and training frontline service employees.
PurposeThis paper aims to model the effect of advertising spending on brand loyalty by examining the simultaneous effects of advertising spending, store image, perceived quality and satisfaction on brand loyalty.Design/methodology/approachA proposed model is compared with three competing models of the relationships amongst, and impact of, independent variables on brand loyalty. Data from the banking and discount store services in South Korea are used to examine the indirect effects of customer perceptions of advertising spending on brand loyalty.FindingsResults elucidate the complexity of advertising spending effects on brand loyalty, with mediating roles played by store image, perceived quality and satisfaction. Significant results obtained in both banking and retail services differing in firm‐customer relationships suggest that the findings are robust.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research might test the proposed research model in other cultures and conduct cross‐cultural comparisons. Other variables such as brand associations, brand trust, advertising recall might uncover additional cognitive and attitudinal structural relationships with brand loyalty.Originality/valueThe paper compares competing models of the variables of interest, which has not been done before, and indeed seen quite infrequently in scholarly research in marketing. Unlike in previous studies, this paper examines the simultaneous relationships and the mediating roles of store image, perceived quality and satisfaction in the impact of perceptions of advertising intensity on brand loyalty.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the temporal effects of perceptions of information obtained from social networks (SNS) on online shopping behavior using trust as a mediator. The model adopts the two dimensional view of trust: cognitive and affective trust. The direct effects and indirect effects of information perceptions on behavioral intentions are empirically explored using a longitudinal approach. Specifically, we investigate the comparative roles of cognitive and affective trust on the influence of perceptions of information from SNS on online shopping behavior. Design/methodology/approach – The study was fielded at two points in time (T and T+1) that were approximately 14 months apart. The survey (T) was distributed via e-mail to 1,484 prospects. From this mailing, 297 prospects who had not replied and another 145 with missing data were removed, leaving 1,042 respondents. In all, 14 months later, the survey (T+1) was e-mailed to these 1,042 respondents who took part in the survey at time point T. At time point T+1, only 341 respondents from the original sample responded. After excluding those with missing values, the final sample included 313 respondents. Findings – The results show significant carryover effects from time T to time T+1 in perceptions of information obtained from a social network, in behavioral intentions and in both dimensions of trust. Furthermore, the study revealed that over time, the influence of affective trust is greater than that of cognitive trust, both in its effect on behavioral intentions as well as in its mediating role between information perceptions and behavioral intentions. Originality/value – The study contributes to the literature on the mediating roles of cognitive and affective trust in the development of behavioral intentions on over time in the social network environment.
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