PurposeMeasuring service quality in higher education is increasingly important for attracting and retaining tuition‐based revenues. Nonetheless, whilst undergraduates have received substantial academic exposure, postgraduate‐based research has been scant. Consequently, the objectives of this paper are threefold: first, to identify the service factors used by postgraduates in their quality evaluations. Second, to analyse the appropriateness of importance‐performance analysis (IPA) in the measurement of service quality and, final, to provide a working example of IPA's application in a UK‐based university.Design/methodology/approachConvergent interviews were used to elicit attributes of service that were deemed important by taught postgraduate students. These findings were then tested using an online survey. Exploratory factor analysis was used to group the service attributes into latent “service factors”. Each service factor was then tested for service quality using Martilla and James's IPA technique.FindingsAbout 20 service attributes were educed from the qualitative stage. From these, four service factors emerged; being, academic, leisure, industry links and cost. Using IPA in a UK university, the findings suggest that the “academic” and “industry links” aspects of service quality are the most critical to postgraduates. The paper's conclusions suggest that IPA is an appropriate tool for measuring service quality in postgraduate education.Practical implicationsThrough the application of the IPA framework presented in this research, practitioners can successfully identify areas of service priority and thus allocate appropriate resources to encourage continuous service improvement.Originality/valueThis research provides a valuable insight into the service quality needs of the UK postgraduate segment and also a potential conceptual framework for policy makers to use when evaluating their service delivery.
Purpose-This study aims to investigate how attributes associated with local food (intrinsic product quality; local support) motivate purchase behaviour. Previous research assumes heterogeneity in consumer motivation, but this has never been formally assessed. As such, the influence of local food attributes in motivating product use is integrated into a model in which consumer values and personal characteristics/situational variables are specified as moderators. Design/methodology/approach-Eight hypotheses are tested using data collected from a quota sample of respondents recruited via an online panel of 1,223 shoppers. A three-stage analysis is used using structural equation modelling. Moderation effects are tested using both latent interactions and multiple-group analysis. Findings-Shoppers purchase local food more frequently as a consequence of local support rather than intrinsic product quality. Unpicking these relationships reveal that local support has an amplified effect when local identity is higher, and when the shopper is either female or of an older age (55 years plus). Surprisingly, the influence of intrinsic product quality is equivalent by gender, age and location (rural/urban). Practical implications-Marketers promoting locally produced foods should focus on both the intrinsic attributes of local food as well as the role it plays within the local community. The latter is more likely to be successful with communications aimed at women and older consumers. Originality/value-With previous studies focusing on how local food attributes influence favourable consumer behaviours, the current study unpicks these relationships by examining
Research Highlights• This concluding paper draws together current themes related to power in business, customer, and market relationships.• The evaluations of the contributions to this special issue seek to rationalize the context of power, from its origins and contributions to the story, current theory, and practice of power in industrial markets.• Future directions for the theory and practice of power in business markets are postulated.
4The current situation and future conceptualization of power in industrial markets
AbstractThis article offers overview of research on power in industrial and business markets, conducted through the 10 articles in the special issue. These contributions are catalysts for defining the history, context, current situations, and future developments and prospects for power in the business world. Therefore, this article presents a conceptualization and understanding of power, using the special issue as a lens through which to view past antecedents, present understanding, and future directions. In addition to studies that mine past and present academic and practical rationales for power, the empirically based contributions test and explore power. This article identifies and thematically draws out and labels the principal manifestations across these contributions, to link origins with current principal foci and identify the most likely emphases of theory and practice for the future business-tobusiness arena.
The paper presents a Multiple Indicators and MultIple Causes (MIMIC) model for explaining the relationships between buyer-seller power, buyer trustworthiness and supplier satisfaction / performance. The model draws on an organizational supply chain perspective of power and is verified using data relating to dairy farmers' relationships with their main buyer in Armenia. The analysis indicates that buyers are more trustworthy where there is greater competition for supplies. Buyer trustworthiness is also positively correlated with both the size of a supplier, as well as a supplier being a member of a marketing cooperative. Buyer trustworthiness has a positive impact on suppliers' satisfaction (regarding their relationship with their main buyer) and enhances the quality and quantity of suppliers' output.
AcknowledgmentsWe wholeheartedly thank Catherine Hedler for her expert wizardry in assisting with the development of our controlled stimuli in Photoshop. Furthermore, we would like to thank Elena Osadchaya, whose complaint about guest photographs detracting from the appeal of hotels helped spark the underlying idea of this research.Tourists searching for information about destinations on online review sites are concurrently exposed to two different photograph aesthetics, professional (produced by destination managers) and amateur (generated by travelers). While the former is glossy and sharp, the latter is often grainy and overexposed. Although aesthetics are important factors in tourist decision-making, the effects of the exposure to both types of photo aesthetics remain largely unexamined. This research investigates how both types of aesthetics, either singularly or in combination, affect a destination's visual appeal and tourists' booking intentions through four controlled experiments (N = 1282). Our results show that despite the 'messy' beauty in amateur aesthetics, photos with professional aesthetics make a depicted destination appear more visually appealing, ultimately driving booking intentions. However, the negative effects of amateur aesthetics are mitigated when (i) viewed by risk-averse tourists, (ii) presented alongside positive reviews, and (iii) accompanied by a greater number of professional photos.
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