Highlighted in this paper, is the extent to which a technological interface that enables customers to produce a service outcome, independent of direct service-employee involvement, is used by hotels of various categories in France. Extant literature has, to date, devoted more attention to the use of interpersonal buyer-seller interactions in the process of creating service outcomes. This paper aims to fill this void by contributing to existing knowledge on customer interactions with technologybased self-service delivery options. An exhaustive sample of 240 hotels located across 120 cities in France constituted the empirical setting. A one-way ANOVA that tested differences between means was used to assess the impact of hotel category (independent variable) on response time (dependent variable) among hotels in France. The findings show that there is significant dissimilarity in responsiveness across the hotel categories. A major implication of these findings for management is that the speed with which enquiries from current and potential customers are responded to is most likely a prelude to providing good quality technology-based buyer-seller interactions to create positive service outcomes using the Internet/e-mail. Major concepts in customer relationship management include the response speed of firms to questions and problems during the service encounter. The main contribution of this study is that it builds on existing literature on interpersonal and technological interfaces.
This study focuses on the concept of customers' complaining behaviour in the mobile telephone company sector. The mobile telephone company in Uganda is competitive and being a service sector, it is complex in nature. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was used. Primary data were collected using questionnaires from Makerere University mobile telephone subscribers who were students, academic staff, administrative staff and support staff. Stratified random sampling was used and the study used cross sectional survey method. A sample of 384 was used in the study where a response of 332 was attained, with 86% response rate. A pilot study was done. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlations and regression analysis. The results of the study revealed that customers' complaint behaviour influences customer loyalty. Further, the results revealed that service quality directly influences customer loyalty and also has a positive significant relationship with customers' complaint behaviour. The study has made contribution to theory, policy and practice in relation to customer complaint behaviour and to marketing in general. The study offered further clarification into the relationship between customers' complaint behaviour, service quality and customer loyalty. The limitations of the study included the selection of the study variables which was not exhaustive. On the one hand, the cross-sectional survey research design was used where the study was carried out at a specific moment in time and, as a result, causality can only be inferred from these data.
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