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Organizations must base success on consumer retention predicated on the consumer's desire to repurchase. Some organizations, such as those providing emotionally charged and complex services in the performing arts, find this difficult. Knowledge of the role of emotions in customer judgments is negligible. The relationship of core service quality and peripheral quality on repurchase intent is also understudied. This paper aims to model and test the interrelationship of these constructs in predicting repurchase intention in a performing arts context.

A survey instrument tailored to the performing arts was administered to a sample of 250 past and present performing arts audience members, with responses examined using structural equation modeling.

Results indicate repurchase intention is largely based on satisfaction mediated by perceived value. Core service quality, appraisal emotion and peripheral service quality influence perceived value for time and money, with core service quality and peripheral service quality in turn influencing appraisal emotion. Appraisal emotion directly affects customer satisfaction but has no direct relationship to repurchase intention. Peripheral service quality, however, directly affects repurchase intention.

Evidence suggests expansion of the strategic focus to include peripheral services in order to maximize repurchase. Core service quality, (the act) affects repurchase intent through an indirect path mediated by appraisal emotion, which does not directly influence repurchase intent. Appraisal emotions are influential in determining perceived value.

This is the first known paper combining this system of relationships including the influence and role of appraisal emotion in the performing arts context.

This research investigated the relationship between three elements – core service quality, relational service quality‐ and perceived value – and customer satisfaction and future intentions across four services. The results revealed that core service quality (the promise) and perceived value were the most important drivers of customer satisfaction with relational service quality (the delivery) a significant but less important driver. A direct link between customer satisfaction and future intentions was established. The relative importance of the three drivers of satisfaction varied among services. Specifically, the importance of core service quality and perceived value was reversed depending on the service. A major conclusion was that both perceived value and service quality dimensions should be incorporated into customer satisfaction models to provide a more complete picture of the drivers of satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to acknowledge the potential complexities in conventional notions of e-government service environments, which have earlier been conceptualized as a two party interaction system where the government is the service provider and other entities such as businesses, citizens, etc. are the service recipients. In this regard, the authors extend their attention to a core service context and identify the existence of “credence-based” service setting that may involve more than two parties such as government, citizens, and third-party institutions (TPIs).

An in-depth literature review is performed to build a conceptual foundation for the proposed service environment. A case of an Indian context is exemplified to understand the credence-based service setting and advocate the suitability of broader dimensions of service quality assessment, and propose a preliminary model of service quality assessment in the given context. The case study approach is adopted for gathering and analyzing the data. The data are collected from government web sites, semi-structured interviews with government officials, and students.

The paper finds that the existence of TPIs changes the nature of normal government to citizen (G2C) service interaction. Service quality conceptualization for this particular kind of e-government setting is bi-dimensional in nature which involves two separate but interdependent constructs quality of information, and quality of service Interaction that collectively contributes to service quality and empowerment of the recipients.

The present work attempts to differentiate the service context of credence-based e-government setting with the traditional conceptualizations of e-government service environments.

The main aim of the paper is to study the causal relationship between two constructs, perceived quality and satisfaction, in the particular case of multiservice organisations. These organisations offer a range of services to their customers, so that evaluation of perceived overall quality and of satisfaction is more complex than that of a single service. The study centres on two publicly‐owned multiservice organisations: hospitals, and universities. The particular nature of multiservice organisations is that, when dealing with the influences of the dimensions of perceived quality, it is necessary to take into consideration not only the perceived quality of each of the services, but also the perceived overall quality of the multiservice organisation and the overall satisfaction with it.

The aims of this paper are to examine the antecedent and mediation effects of core, relational and tangible service quality on rapport and customers' overall satisfaction.

A survey has been conducted on 212 bank customers to validate the conceptual model. Structural equation modeling is used by AMOS for data analysis.

Results show that relational service qualities have significant antecedent and mediation impact on the rapport-satisfaction relationship. Core quality has only antecedent influence on rapport, whereas none of the relationships is found significant in the case of tangible service quality.

The study has been conducted on one single country and focused on one type of services – banking services. Therefore, future research endeavors may consider different countries as well as a variety of services.

Providing individual attention to each customer and understanding their specific need are the most important steps required from service employees for building successful rapport with customers. Keeping promises and offering flawless services are also more significant for customers than the tangible features of a bank. Management should consider these issues to develop effective rapport because it has a direct and strong effect on customers' overall satisfaction.

The paper reveals the importance of relational service quality for developing customer rapport and satisfaction. It also identifies the antecedent role of core service quality for rapport.

The effect of different formats of message delivery has received little theoretical and empirical examination. This research focuses on the effect of written relational communication formats used by service providers. This study aims to answer three questions: Do different formats of written communications (i.e. handwriting and print) influence customer perceptions (i.e. feelings of warmth) of service firms? What are the mediators of these influences (i.e. perceived effort and psychological closeness)? And under what conditions do they occur (i.e. what is the contextual factor)?

One field study and three laboratory studies were conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of format in written communication.

Handwritten messages are more effective than print messages in building relationships in a service context because they elicit stronger feelings of warmth because of both the perception of greater effort and feelings of greater psychological closeness to the service provider. However, the presence of handwriting fails to deliver feelings of warmth when the quality of core services is low.

Service providers can effectively use handwritten communication to signal effort and create psychological closeness for relationship building with their key customers only when the quality of core services meets customer expectations.

First, the research differentiates the formats of written relational communication (handwritten vs print), and links communication formats with feelings of warmth, which is an important factor for impression and relationship formation in the practice of services marketing. Second, based on cognitive-experiential self-theory, this research demonstrates the dual mediators underlying the effect of handwriting (vs print) on warmth: perceived effort and psychological closeness. Third, it identifies the quality of core service as a boundary condition for the effect of handwritten communication.

This paper describes a modelling process the objective of which was to make the highly abstract concept of core competence practical. The aim is to identify competences through the use of a service-process model by analyzing what they reflect – the service quality. Core competence is defined, and a conceptual model is presented. Competences are classified on three levels in a corporate setting and the connections drawn to service quality. Empirical evidence is provided by a case in the health-care sector in which competences are identified through the use of the service-process model in high-performance, professional services. The service-process model in surgical medical services is presented. Critical elements in the service-quality experience are identified and core competences are identified based on service quality as a reflection of them and their management.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how team identification and country influence professional baseball team spectators’ evaluations of service quality factors, perceived value and future behavioral intentions.

Data were collected online from sports consumers of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in Taiwan (n = 600) and Major League Baseball in the USA (n = 460). A regression-based estimation method (PROCESS) and structural equation modeling approach were used to assess the relationships.

Both direct and indirect (via perceived value) effects of most service quality factors (schedule convenience, economic consideration, game amenities, ticket service and venue quality) on behavioral intentions are stronger for lowly than for highly identified CPBL fans. The indirect effect of home team on behavioral intentions is stronger for the lowly identified CPBL fans. The direct effect of game amenities and the indirect effect of venue quality (via perceived value) on behavioral intentions are stronger for the highly identified MLB fans. The indirect effect of opposing team and economic consideration is stronger for the lowly identified MLB fans. The positive relationship between venue quality and perceived value is stronger for the USA than for Taiwan fans. The relationships between game amenities and perceived value and between perceived value and behavioral intention are perceived to be invariant between fans from the two countries. Taiwan fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be directly and indirectly affected by service quality factors, whereas US fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be indirectly affected by service quality factors.

The study provides empirical evidence of the moderating role of team identification associated with the relationships between separate service quality factors, perceived value and behavioral intentions among consumers of a professional spectator sports in two different countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediation impacts of core, relational and tangible service-quality features on the relationship between customer–frontline employee rapport and customer dependency in an emerging market context. The study examines the moderating effects of relationship age and frequency of customers’ physical visits.

Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling was used to analyse data from a survey of 290 financial services customers in Dhaka, Bangladesh using the convenience sampling technique.

Results show that relational service-quality features had the largest mediation impact on the rapport–dependency relationship, followed by core and tangible service-quality features. Relationship age was not found to be a significant moderator for any relationship. However, the moderation effect of the frequency of customers’ physical visits to the service premises was significant, but only for the link between relational service-quality features and customer dependency and not for the other two types of service-quality features.

Data collected from several other emerging markets would provide more rigorous findings: this is recommended as an avenue for further research.

Practitioners can manipulate specific relational or tangible service-quality features to increase customer dependency on their firms, thus ensuring longer-term customer retention.

This study is the first one to examine the relative significance of the impacts of relational features vs tangible features of services on customer dependency in the emerging market context, with rapport serving as an antecedent.

This study is a micro-level perspective of value co-creation in spectator sport. By examining sport through the value co-creation lens, the dual role of the customer as both a contributor to and a beneficiary of value is acknowledged and the importance of stakeholder interactions is emphasized. This study analyzes the extent to which two theoretically and managerially important factors—attendance frequency (i.e. first-time attendee vs repeat attendee) and resident type (i.e. local resident vs domestic traveler)—impact value creation in the recurring live sporting event setting.

Data were collected from spectators who attended a National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) sanctioned racing event. Multigroup structural equation modeling was performed to examine the proposed pathways, and multigroup t-tests were used to compare the model across both groups for each moderating variable. Corresponding path coefficients were then compared using Chin's (2004) recommended equations and procedures.

The study found organization-related value propositions to be the more common antecedents of value, while customer appearance had a strong negative association with hedonic value, and attendance frequency and resident type influenced certain value perceptions. Sport organizations should consider the expectations and motivations of various customer groups and provide offerings designed to meet the specific needs of different fan segments based on the spectator's experience with the sport product and the distance traveled to attend the sport event.

This paper advances the authors’ understanding of value creation in sport by showing how customer perceptions of value associated with the sport organization and other customers can be moderated by certain behavioral and geographic factors.