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In Australia, the child care industry has experienced substantial growth since 1991 resulting in a proliferation of child care centres throughout the country, to the point where supply of child care places is now in excess of demand. As a result, child care marketers now compete within a turbulent environment where it is vital to satisfy and retain customers in order to survive. Seeks to increase our knowledge of child care services consumption behaviour, and assist the child care marketer to understand their consumers and the difficulties they face as they interact with a service that they do not experience first hand. A self‐administered survey instrument was developed and administered to a sample of child care service switchers. The results indicate significant findings within, and between choice, switching, and post‐switching dimensions. The exploration of decision‐making areas provides a number of practical implications not only for the child care marketer, but also for government policy makers, child care consumers, and service providers in general.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of retailers’ consumer communications in prompting the choice of an in-stock alternative to an out-of-stock first-choice product.

Four between-subjects experiments assessed the extent to which the likelihood of a retail customer switching to a similarly-priced alternative when a first choice was out-of-stock was affected by messages concerning stockout status (Studies 1a and 1b). They further examined the interaction effects on participants’ preference of messages comparing the available versus unavailable options and stating stockout status (Study 2) and those giving information on the reasons for the stockout and on its status (Study 3).

Participants maintained their original preference for an out-of-stock product unless an external restriction on choice prompted them to forsake it or they perceived a strong reason to opt for an in-stock alternative. There was a greater tendency to switch if the alternative offered a potential “gain” or the reasons given for a stockout were irrelevant to product performance, whether the participant was expecting imminent re-stocking. Switching was triggered when the available alternative was directly comparable to the original or the retailer’s explanation related to an attribute judged trivial, but only if short supply was expected to continue.

The studies add to current understanding of how shoppers respond to unavailability of a first-choice product by examining the effect on switching behavior of messages about the stockout situation that are communicated deliberately or inadvertently by retailers.

Theoretical assumptions for explaining travel behaviour changes are frequently limited to disciplinary boundaries. By combining the occurrence of key events with attitudinal dimensions in the ROA model and, furthermore, drawing on the model of cognitive dissonance, an integrated theoretical framework is presented.

We review several streams of research in different fields of travel behaviour research and develop a theoretical framework for guiding future empirical work on travel behaviour research.

The theoretical framework proposes that due to a key event a window of opportunity opens for behavioural change and adaptation processes of attitudes and behaviour.

Further empirical research will have to show the validity and usefulness of the theoretical framework developed. A panel data analysis is proposed with attitudinal variables before and after a certain key event.

This study was performed to examine the relationship between dynamic traffic information and driver's route choice behavior when non-recurrent events cause traffic jams. To enhance the effectiveness and applicability of the information system as a traffic control measure, it is important to investigate the influence of the software aspects of a dynamic traffic information system; these software aspects include information content and the timing of information delivery. This study was undertaken to investigate whether providing drivers with dynamic traffic information might relieve traffic jams and improve travel time reliability. A questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain data regarding the respondents' attitudes to detours and their stated preference (SP) of route choice behavior. These data are used to analyze the characteristics of drivers who show negative and positive attitudes to detours, including driver information usage and knowledge about the alternative routes. Also, this study analyzes the relation between the way to provide drivers with information and driver's decision-making on route using the SP data. Especially, the analytical attentions are paid to the influences of both timing and contents of information provided upon the respondent' route choices.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations represented in religious motivation and customer equity (CE) drivers, respectively, and switching costs (SCs), on customer’s retention to conventional banks and their switching intention (SI) to Islamic ones in the context of the Egyptian banking sector.

Based on the literature, a theoretical model is proposed and examined using structural equation modeling (AMOS) 24. Data were obtained using an intercept sample of 273 conventional bank customers in two major cities in Egypt, namely, Cairo and Giza.

The results supported the positive effect of CE and SCs on customer retention (CR) to conventional banks. Value equity has direct positive effect on CR. In addition, SC significantly mediated the relationship between relationship equity (RE) and service encounter employee’s equity (SEEE) and CR. Finally, religious motivations positively and significantly influence customers SI to Islamic banks.

CE, including all its drivers, namely, value, brand, relationship and SEEE, are the best force of CR in the Egyptian banking sector. The mediating role of SC in the relation between RE and SEEE and CR is perceived as a barrier to switch, instead of reflecting real desire from customers to stay tuned to their conventional banks. In addition, religious motivation should be considered while planning banking services because of its significant direct effect on customers SI from conventional banks to Islamic ones. Finally, both utilitarian extrinsic motivation and hedonic intrinsic ones are influencing customer’s retention and SI, respectively.

This paper develops and adds a fourth driver to previously examined and validated CE drivers, namely, SEEE. Further, it provides empirical analysis to the effect of religious motivation and CE drivers on SCs, CR and SI in a developing and Islamic dominating context, namely, Egypt. Moreover, it introduces a framework that could be examined and validated in other Islamic contexts to further comprehend bank customers' switching behavior. Yet, the current research focused on the Egyptian banking sector only, where the individual customers represent the sampling unit.

Purpose – To provide a behavioural perspective on the relationship between transport and climate change.

Methodology/approach – The factors influencing travel behaviour and the elements critical to behaviour formation are reviewed. The importance of behaviour change measures to reduce the impact of transport on climate change, and the application of behaviour change measures to increase the sustainability of transport, are examined.

Findings – There have been a range of travel behaviour measures implemented, such as individualised marketing programmes and travel plans, which have demonstrated some behavioural change impacts, in turn affecting climate change emissions, although they tend to be localised and small-scale.

Social implications – There is a real challenge to encourage individuals within society to exhibit more sustainable travel behaviour.

Originality/value – A range of behavioural issues still need to be resolved in terms of the relationship between transport and climate change, including a need to influence attitudes, to bridge the gaps between attitudes and both behaviour and intention, to make an impact at points of transition for individuals, to use cognitive dissonance as a way of harnessing social norms, and to understand more fully social pressure and group influence.

The study aims to explore how segmentation as a methodology can be adapted to the healthcare context to provide a more nuanced understanding of the served population and to facilitate the design of patient-centric services.

The study was based on a collaborative project with a national healthcare organization following the principles of action design research. The study describes the quantitative segmentation performed during the project, followed by a qualitative interview study of how segments correspond with patient behaviors in an actual healthcare setting, and service design workshops facilitated by segments. A number of design principles are outlined based on the learnings of the project.

The segmentation approach increased understanding of patient variability within the service provider organization and was considered an effective foundation for modular service design. Patient characteristics and life circumstances were related to specific patterns of health behaviors, such as avoidance or passivity, or a persistent proactivity. These patterns influenced the patients' preferred value co-creation role and what type of support patients sought from the care provider.

The proposed segmentation approach is immediately generalizable to further healthcare contexts and similar services: improved understanding of patients, vulnerable patients in particular, improves the fit and inclusivity of services.

The segmentation approach to service design was demonstrated to be effective in a large-scale context. The approach allows service providers to design service options that improve the fit with individual patients' needs for support and autonomy. The results illuminate how patient characteristics influence health and value co-creation behaviors.

The price war and intense competition in Indian banking industry have exposed banks to one of the major threat of switching. Consumers are now more price and service conscious in their financial services purchasing behaviour. They are more prone to change their banking behaviour as banking products and services are nearly identical in nature. The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight of the drivers that lead a customer switch from one service provider to another in Indian banking industry using exploratory design.

The impacts of the influencing factors have been studied and tested empirically using exploratory factor analysis. Quantitative data have been collected by means of questionnaire employed from Clemes et al. and administered to 296 banking customers of Rajasthan utilizing convenience sampling.

Results reported that price, reputation, responses to service failure, customer satisfaction, service quality, service products, competition, customer commitment and involuntary switching have their significant effect on customers’ switching behaviour.

The findings of present study can be used by the Indian banks for their product and service designing strategies, marketing strategies and customer services practices in order to reduce customer switching. It would help them in improving their service operations and also in increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty by understanding the banking behaviour of their customers.

The originality lies in the fact that this study is one of few which have focused on the drivers leading to the switching intentions of Indian banking customers.

This study aims to investigate the factors that influence South African customers to potentially switch from one bank to another. Instead of using established models and survey techniques, the research measured social media sentiment to measure threats to switch.

The research involved a 12-month analysis of social media sentiment, specifically customer threats to switch banks (churn). These threats were then analysed for co-occurring themes to provide data on the reasons customers were making these threats. The study used over 1.7 million social media posts and focused on all five major South African retail banks (essentially the entire sector).

This study concluded that seven factors are most significant in understanding the underlying causes of churn. These are turnaround time, accusations of unethical behaviour, billing or payments, telephonic interactions, branches or stores, fraud or scams and unresponsiveness.

This study is unique in its measurement of unsolicited social media sentiment as opposed to most churn-related research that uses survey- or customer-data-based methods. In addition, this study observed the sentiment of customers from all major retail banks across 12 months. To date, no studies on retail bank churn theory have provided such an extensive perspective. The findings contribute to Susan Keaveney’s churn theory and provide a new measurement of switching threat through social media sentiment analysis.

To investigate the determinants of behavioural brand loyalty amongst dissatisfied customers in the business‐to‐business (B2B) services sector.

A qualitative study was conducted, with 28 personal interviews undertaken with managers who are involved in the choice of service providers. The respondents belonged to 24 organisations located in Australia. Template analysis and eyeballing were techniques used to analyse the data collected.

Assessment of the reasons why dissatisfied customers stayed with the service providers resulted in six categories. The categories were found to be, in order of decreasing frequency, impact of alternative providers, switching costs (18), others (17), inertia (14), investment in relationships (13), and service recovery (13). The results not only confirmed factors found in the literature, but also uncovered 11 other factors.

The sample size, whilst appropriate for qualitative research, should be considered adequate only for exploratory analysis and a further quantitative study is needed to validate the study.

This study is important for those firms who have many prospective switchers because it is important to understand why these customers stay, and to what extent such firms can discourage such customers from leaving in both positive and negative ways. For those service firms that are attempting to attract these prospective switchers, an understanding of why they do not switch is important, as it will enable them to develop strategies to overcome these switching barriers and gain market share.

This research is the first study to investigate in a single model a range of barriers to switching in a B2B services context. The results that confirmed categories found in the literature also discovered 11 other factors not evident in the extant literature.