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The purpose of this study is to contrast the effects of four exit barriers on word of mouth activities. Monetary, service loss, social and convenience exit barriers are compared. The differential effects of these four barriers on the valence of word of mouth (positive, negative), the type of word of mouth recipient (weak tie, strong tie) and the motives (catharsis, company sabotage) for spreading word of mouth are studied.

The data for empirically addressing a set of hypotheses were collected from 185 consumers. The hypotheses were analyzed using ANOVA models along with post hoc tests.

The results suggest that the type of exit barrier matters. Exit barriers, with respect to word of mouth activities, seem to fall on a continuum. On one extreme, the most detrimental barriers are monetary hurdles, and on the other end, the least detrimental barriers are convenience hurdles. Monetary barriers are responsible for the most negative word of mouth and company sabotage. Social and convenience barriers lead to significantly less.

The implications for erecting exit barriers are discussed. In particular, the value of monetary barriers is questioned. The benefits of such involuntary customer retention methods may be offset by the sabotage they invite through negative word of mouth.

The paper provides insights into word of mouth activities of dissatisfied customers that are trapped by various exit barriers. The word of mouth activities investigated include valence, recipient type and motives. The study contrasts monetary, service loss, social and convenience exit barriers.

The purpose of this study is to provide insights into mechanism by which environmentally friendly initiatives positively affect a service firm's revenue stream. First, it explores attributes consumers associate with green services. Second, it affirms the mediating role of warm emotions in connecting green services to satisfaction and customer loyalty. Third, it investigates a set of amplifiers of warm emotions. These are the green tendencies of the consumer and perceived motives for adopting environmentally friendly practices.

This research involved two studies. A critical incident study was used to tap into the consumer's perspective on green services. A total of 262 attributes of green services were categorized into overarching themes. A quantitative study addressed the mediating relationships and amplifiers of warm emotions. Pooled across three services, a total of 846 observations were analyzed.

The findings reveal that a consumer views a service as environmentally friendly if it exhibits green attributes in either the core service, service delivery process, service environment or peripheral service activities. The results of Study II affirm that warm emotions mediate the relationship between perceptions of the environmental friendliness of a service and customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty. The study findings suggest that positive emotions are further strengthened by the level of greenness of the consumer and by a firm's money saving motives as well as environmental preservation motives the consumer attributes to the adoption of green practices.

This study advances the authors' understanding of what attributes consumers associate with service greenness. This research expands on the service greenness and positive emotions connection by including an initial set of amplifiers of positive emotions to include the greenness of the consumer and motives for adopting green practices.

Despite the common understanding of what interestingness is, few people can explain what makes something interesting. The purpose of this paper is to explore the theoretical foundation of interestingness and test if it has merit in the branding context. It aims to help practitioners understand how to make a brand interesting and what outcomes to expect from it.

Three preliminary studies (Studies 1, 2 and 3) provide proof of concept. Study 4 tests the antecedences and outcomes of brand interestingness (BI) across 66 brands by accounting for individual and brand variations. Study 5 examines the moderating effects of brand use and brand familiarity on BI and its outcomes.

A broad literature review reveals that interestingness is an emotion and is, therefore, an affective state. The findings from two exploratory studies show that customers naturally associate interestingness with specific brands and interesting brands are associated with novelty. Study 3 demonstrates that from all affective states arising from the evaluation of a brand (i.e. easiness, pleasantness, interestingness, challenge and difficulty), BI has the highest effect on purchase intention (PI). Study 4 demonstrates that the antecedents of BI are the novelty associated with the symbolic and functional aspects of a brand, and also the ability to cope with those novelty components. Two positive outcomes of BI are PI and word of mouth (WOM). Study 5 demonstrates that brand familiarity and brand use moderate the effect of BI on purchase intent and WOM. The research concludes with an operational definition of the BI concept and future research suggestions.

The research introduces the interesting concept in the brand context. Based on a broad literature review and several studies, it identifies the antecedents and outcomes of BI. It helps practitioners understand how they can increase the interestingness of brands and what outcomes to expect.

Recent research illuminates the important contribution of organizational culture and market orientation to organizational effectiveness. In an attempt to increase the conceptual and empirical body of knowledge, explores the links between organizational culture, market orientation, and marketing effectiveness in the context of strategic marketing alliances. Analyzes responses to self‐administered questionnaires returned by 128 such organizations. The findings suggest that organizational culture significantly affects marketing effectiveness, although the individual dimensions of organizational culture have varying degrees of influence upon the dimensions of marketing effectiveness. Among mechanistic or non‐adaptive cultural dimensions, increased internal culture enhances an internal market effectiveness dimension, whereas increased external culture enhances an external market effectiveness dimension. This internal/external alignment is not found for the organic or adaptive cultural dimensions. This same internal/external alignment is found, however, when examining the relationship between market orientation and market effectiveness. Internal aspects of market orientation enhance an internal market effectiveness dimension, whereas increased external orientation enhances an external market effectiveness dimension. Discusses managerial implications.

The purpose of this paper is to reassess the properties of the hierarchical service quality model (HSQM) – a previously introduced service quality assessment tool. The HSQM views service quality as a three‐tiered concept with interaction quality, outcome quality, and physical environment quality as initial sub‐dimensions. The study aims to apply HSQM to two new service contexts and to further investigate the relationship between service quality, as measured by this instrument, and satisfaction and customer loyalty. To this end, five hypotheses are to be submitted to empirical tests.

The data for empirically re‐assessing the scale's properties and for testing the proposed hypotheses were collected from convenience samples of 250 customers of hairdresser/barber services and 300 customers of local phone service subscribers. The measurement model of the HSQM was re‐assessed using confirmatory factor analysis. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results confirm the HSQM as predictor of satisfaction and loyalty. However, the results suggest that the significance of various service quality dimensions differs depending on the type of service.

From a managerial perspective, the HSQM is useful for assessing service quality at various levels. It allows firms to recognize problems in their delivered interaction quality, outcome quality, or the physical service environment.

The paper provides further evidence for the validity and reliability of the HSQM service quality measure.

The aim of this paper is to challenge the assumption that the relationship between service quality attributes and customer satisfaction follows a classic linear path. It suggests the existence of a threshold level after which the strength of the relationship between the two constructs, for some service attributes, adjusts. Depending on the type of adjustment, service attributes can be classified as satisfier or dissatisfier. Each requires a distinct managerial action.

The data were collected via self‐administered questionnaire from customers of three service industries (i.e. banking service, hairdresser service, phone service). The type of impact of nine individual service quality attributes on customer satisfaction was investigated using multiple regression models with interaction terms.

The empirical findings provide evidence for the existence of satisfiers and dissatisfiers. Satisfiers exhibit initially no relationship with satisfaction, but after the acceptable level of quality (i.e. inflection point) has been reached, become positively related. Dissatisfiers follow initially a positive relationship path with satisfaction but after the inflection point exhibit no relationship, or at best a significantly weakened one, with satisfaction. The relationship patterns were found to be service attribute as well as service type dependent.

The findings suggest that, for dissatisfiers, increasing service quality ad infinitum may not be the most prudent approach. Here, gains in satisfaction can no longer be achieved after the acceptable quality level has been reached. However, for satisfiers, service firms must leap over the threshold before gains in satisfaction can be realized. This may require large investments in quality improvements.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it aims to provide a review of the Net Promoter© Index (NPI), the evidence of its ability to predict financial performance, and the evidence of its superiority to other voice of customer metrics. Second, it seeks to investigate the nomological validity of the Net Promoter question. It aims to view the NP question as an alternative to the traditional word-of-mouth measure, which is one of the components of customer loyalty. The nomological validity of NP was evaluated in a model including customer satisfaction as an antecedent and repurchase intention as a consequence.

The data for empirically addressing a set of hypotheses related to the nomological validity were collected via self-administered questionnaire. A total of 159 participants completed questions for banking services, 153 individuals completed questions for hairdresser/barber services, and 132 completed questions for cell phone services. The hypotheses were tested using partial least square analysis.

The results provide evidence for the nomological validity of the NPI question; albeit, the traditional word-of-mouth measure seems to perform equally as well or even better.

A set of pros and cons related to NPI are developed. The paper recommends including the NPI in a portfolio of voice of customer metrics but not as a standalone diagnostic tool. Further, given the present state of evidence, it cannot be recommended to use the NPI as a predictor of growth nor financial performance.

The paper provides further insights into the validity of the Net Promoter Index as a measure of customer loyalty.

The vacation market is segmented based upon the images held by non‐residents of a tourism destination. These images were assessed via self‐administered questionnaires, returned by more than 900 survey participants. A posteriori segmentation – performed based upon similar perceptions of natural, cultural, recreational and climate amenities – identified four market segments with distinct images. The market segment expressing the most favorable image also stated the highest intent to visit; conversely, the segment expressing the least favorable image stated the lowest intent to visit. For each segment a demographic profile is established and managerial implications, both short‐term and long‐term, for targeting these segments are discussed.

The successful standardization of service quality in the telecommunication industry across multiple nations demands, as a precondition, that the countries in question expose similar service quality dimensions and that the importance of these dimensions to overall satisfaction with the service is also similar. Investigates if these conditions are met in the telephone services sector of the telecommunication industry in the USA and Germany. Confirmatory factor analysis results of various alternative dimensionalities provide the best support for a five‐dimensional conceptualization in both countries. However, the two countries differ in their respective importance evaluations of particular service quality dimensions, which make it difficult to provide a standardized service quality solution. Briefly discusses implications of these results in terms of effective service quality design and delivery for global competitiveness.