Search results

The preliminary purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) practices and service oriented organizational citizenship behavior (SO-OCB). The current study’s focus is on three HRM practices namely training, fair reward and promotion opportunity. Second, the study examines the mediating role of impersonal trust on the aforementioned relationship through the use of social exchange theory.

Data has been collected through purposive sampling technique from service employees of 39 private commercial banks of Bangladesh and was analyzed by using structural equation modeling-partial least square method.

Findings of the study comply with the theory of social exchange. All three HRM practices significantly predict SO-OCB. Additionally, impersonal trust positively mediates the relationship between HRM practices and SO-OCB.

As private commercial banks are growing rapidly in Bangladesh, this sector is facing enormous competition which makes frontline employees SO-OCB a competitive advantage. Due to the limited researches in the field of SO-OCB, this study provides a new avenue of knowledge for the researchers and practitioners on how to develop such behavior in a service setting. Further, no prior study tests the mediation of impersonal trust. Earlier, most of the studies focus on interpersonal trust. The current study contributes to the literature by offering a comprehensive framework that explains the mediation effect of impersonal trust on the association between HRM practices and SO-OCB.

This paper aims to discover how consumers process an innovative set of systematically varied service trial offers and how this affects their learning and interaction as precursors to customer engagement.

The research uses experiments that manipulate pricing, type of service and delivery method. A repeated-measures design was used with a sample of 396 participants.

Free (as opposed to cost or full price) service trials were more likely to be accepted, with perceived truthfulness of the trial offer and perceived obligation mediating the relationship. Credence service trials generate higher levels of perceived obligation than experience service trial offers, while personal services are more likely to lead to trial adoption.

The research can be extended to well-recognized brands and further mixed service contexts.

Trial offers of new services are best targeted at buyers who are in the likely buyer group. The trial offer may accelerate time to purchase and relieve perceived risks. The trials of credence services need further signals of quality in the trial itself for consumers to adopt the full service. With personal service trials, skeptical consumers need assurance as to what will happen after the trial experience. Free trials may actually devalue a service, threatening engagement.

Uniquely, service trial offers are systematically manipulated using experience versus credence and personal versus impersonal trials to determine their effect on acceptance of the trial offer and the full service. Additionally, the study compares free, cost price and full price trial offers.

Posits that companies offering services that directly compete with products are particularly interested in whether the form of the offering ‐ service or product ‐ affects the behavior of consumers. Compares in two tightly designed and rigorously implemented experiments, consumers’ information search behavior for services that compete with products. Finds that: the critical difference between services and products is not that personal sources are used more for services but that impersonal sources are used less; there are similarities between products and services in search patterns; and with greater knowledge about the service, product and service search does not look very different. Finally discusses implications of these findings for managerial action.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers respond to a service provider’s invitation to share responsibility for the experience of an “impersonal” service that is not customized but available to all customers on an equal footing; specifically to assess the extent to which the tendency to psychological reactance moderates their responses.

Four studies investigate the effects of such invitations on perceptions of shared responsibility, the mechanism underlying that process, the effect of trait reactance on susceptibility to an invitation, and the extent to which a predisposition to reactance moderates the effect of an invitation on willingness to share blame for service failure.

Service customers are more likely to feel a sense of shared responsibility and less likely to experience reactance in response to a “reciprocal” invitation to participate in “co-creation” of the experience than to a more “unilateral” invitation. That heightened perception of shared responsibility was restricted to low-reactance individuals, who were also more willing to share the blame for service failure in response to a unilateral invitation and even more so when it was reciprocal. The willingness of high-reactance individuals was unaffected by the type of invitation.

Whereas the relevant literature has focussed mainly on person-to-person service transactions, the studies reported here show how customers may be converted into active partners in an “impersonal” service encounter.

To investigate customer satisfaction with service encounters characterized by an over‐attentive level of service, and the contextual and individual factors moderating the resulting satisfaction scores.

The first of three formal experiments tests the prediction that consumer reactions vary with the margin between actual and expected levels of service. The second examines the influence of the tendency to psychological reactance on participants’ responses to excessive service. The third assesses the effect of a predisposition to suspiciousness on satisfaction scores, in scenarios which, respectively, specify that extremely over‐attentive service or “normal” service are directed at participants personally or is offered to all customers unselectively.

The first experiment found moderately excessive service to be acceptable to most participants but unexpectedly over‐attentive service to affect satisfaction negatively. The second found the negative impact of extremely over‐attentive service to be limited to participants with a greater tendency to psychological reactance. The third found that a high predisposition to suspicion resulted in lower satisfaction levels whether the scenario specified extremely over‐attentive service that was personal or on offer to all, whereas the satisfaction scores of participants with a lower predisposition to suspicion were not affected in those scenarios.

Whereas the relevant literature has focussed on customer reactions to service that falls below expectations, this paper studies service encounters in which it surpasses them. It hypothesizes a counterproductive effect on customer satisfaction and identifies contextual and individual factors that explain and predict that outcome.

The first of a two‐article series addressing important factors in the pricing of services. Success at garnering a high price and margin on a service hinges on important variables. Mistakes in the delivery and pricing of services can have far‐reaching “residual damage” effects quite different from those associated with the delivery of a “tangible” product. Examines a host of issues important in the pricing and sale of services including the differences in the product versus service purchase decision. Discusses factors influencing the acceptable price and purchase decision; customer need fulfilment and satisfaction; elements of risk as well as the importance of the risk for services versus products. Argues that prompting a sale of service at any price depends on a heavy weighing of certain variables of great import to the customer. Provides background information important in the pricing of services. Focuses on how one might maximize perceived favourable attributes of services to influence price favourably. Examines the importance of “residual damages” resulting from errors in delivery of services.

Trust and impersonal trust, in particular, are of significant importance both for organizations and for innovative personnel, who are regarded human assets to organizations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents and consequences of impersonal trust in organizations.

The population of this study constituted the managers, specialists and personnel of a pharmaceutical company in Iran. Out of a total of 200 questionnaires having been administered, 187 were returned; and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for data analysis.

The findings of the study indicate that personal learning has a significant positive effect (β = 0.64) on impersonal trust, that interpersonal communication has a significant positive effect (β = 0.14) on impersonal trust, and that organizational justice perception, also, has a significant positive effect (β = 0.14) on impersonal trust. In addition, the findings show that impersonal trust has a significant positive effect both on job satisfaction (β = 0.47) and on innovation (B = 0.42) and job satisfaction has a significant positive effect (β = 0.39) on innovation. Moreover, impersonal trust, through job satisfaction, has a significant indirect effect (β = 0.18) on innovation; and personal learning, through organizational justice perception, does not have a significant indirect effect (β = 0.014) on impersonal trust.

This study is among only a few studies having investigated the antecedents and consequences of impersonal trust together. Also, in a developing country like Iran, impersonal trust has rarely been studied.

The main purpose of the study is to identify the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and impersonal trust. The study focuses on five HRM practices, namely training, fair reward and promotion opportunity, employment security and performance appraisal and impact of those on impersonal trust.

Data for the study have been collected from 384 front line service provider female employees of 39 private commercial banks through non-probability judgmental sampling technique and analyzed by applying structural equation modeling-partial least square (SEM-PLS) method.

The findings of the study reveals that all the five HRM practices, namely training, fair reward and promotion opportunity, employment security and performance appraisal, are positively and significantly related with impersonal trust.

Private commercial banks in Bangladesh are rapidly growing and facing huge competition to improve the competitive advantage of employees. Impersonal trust of employees is required for achieving competitive advantage. Due to the lack of research and scanty of knowledge in that field, the study offers a new avenue of existing knowledge to the stakeholders and researchers on how to develop impersonal trust with necessary recommendations.

During the last several decades, logistics has increasingly emerged as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. This article incorporates recent work in services marketing on customer information acquisition, with research on industrial buying behavior to help logistics service providers understand and manage their customers’ information acquisition and purchase activities for logistics services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the involvement levels and the information search activity of consumers purchasing credence services, in terms of the extent of the search and the information sources used.

A survey was undertaken (n=400) examining consumers ' information search practices for a range of credence services in comparison to non-credence services (search and experience services).

Involvement in the search process is high in terms of importance but not interest. Somewhat surprisingly, consumers of credence services do not undertake a more comprehensive information search than non-credence service purchasers in terms of the use of external sources of information. They do, however, depend more on the opinion of salespeople, the experience of friends and the content of consumer reports.

The results of this study differ from similar work that was previously undertaken with students and also in the USA. It would be useful to establish more strongly whether age and culture have an impact on information search.

This is the first time that the information search patterns of consumers of credence services have been undertaken for a wide range of common purchases in the UK. It is also original in this area of research in that it utilises a cross section of the population and not students. Its findings are important to the providers of credence services when considering their marketing communications campaigns because it reveals which marketing communication tools are considered by the consumer to be influential.