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1 – 9 of 9Natalia Velikova, Lisa Slevitch and Kimberly Mathe-Soulek
Practitioners and researchers are persistently trying to identify critical product/service attributes that generate greater customer satisfaction, which in turn yields multiple…
Abstract
Purpose
Practitioners and researchers are persistently trying to identify critical product/service attributes that generate greater customer satisfaction, which in turn yields multiple positive outcomes for the business. However, traditional measuring of attribute performance does not account for a non-linear nature of the relationship between attribute performance and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to apply an alternative method – penalty-reward contrast analysis (PRCA) grounded in Kano model – to a wine festival setting and to estimate the effects of each attribute on the overall satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
The aim of the study is to use a self-administered survey distributed to attendees of a large wine festival in the USA, resulting in a sample of 250 festival attendees.
Findings
Personnel and entertainment were considered “must-be” or basic factors for wine festivals. Failing to deliver on these dimensions will lead to attendees’ frustration and is likely to outweigh positive impact of other factors. Wine was considered to be a linear, or performance, factor with symmetrical positive and negative impact on satisfaction. Food and facilities were non-significant in predicting customer satisfaction.
Practical implications
Given that most wine festivals operate with rather scarce resources in a competitive environment, using an approach that helps determine how limited resources are best deployed to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction is beneficial for the industry. The study provides new insights to wine festivals managers as to how drivers of satisfaction may vary according to attributes of both the festival and the attendees.
Originality/value
The study adopts the novel approach of the PRCA in its application to wine festivals, making the study unique and noteworthy. It brings new knowledge about quality components of wine festivals and adds support to the new evaluation tool.
Details
Keywords
Lisa Slevitch, Kimberly Mathe, Elena Karpova and Sheila Scott‐Halsell
The purpose of this paper is to address issues of performance optimization through accounting for asymmetric responses of customer satisfaction to different types of product or…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address issues of performance optimization through accounting for asymmetric responses of customer satisfaction to different types of product or service attributes: core, facilitating and “green” (eco‐friendly). The primary research inquiry was to explore how these attributes affect customer satisfaction and account for interactions among them in order to identify an optimal combination that would maximize customer satisfaction in lodging industry settings.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental design and a web‐based survey were used to collect data from a convenience sample of faculty and staff of two US universities. Univariate and regression analysis were two primary methods of data analysis.
Findings
The findings confirmed non‐linear nature of customer satisfaction response and indicated that “green” attributes impact customer satisfaction similarly to facilitating attributes but differently from the core type of attributes in the context of lodging industry.
Research limitations/implications
Generalizability of the findings is bounded by convenience sampling technique. Additionally, only limited number of hotel attributes was examined.
Practical implications
The current findings help to solve the problem of performance optimization and allow creating hotel offerings that yield maximum levels of customer satisfaction and optimal resource allocation.
Originality/value
The study provides additional knowledge about factor structure of customer satisfaction and points on the place and role of “green” attributes in formation of CS in the context of lodging industry.
Details
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Kimberly Amato and Karen Moranski
This article is not intended to provide an exhaustive history of the Oxford English Dictionary nor does it delve into such technical aspects of the CD‐ROM format as installation…
Abstract
This article is not intended to provide an exhaustive history of the Oxford English Dictionary nor does it delve into such technical aspects of the CD‐ROM format as installation and hardware specifications. Instead, this article examines the advantages and problems of electronic access to the Dictionary through the medium of CD‐ROM, as well as public service implications within the context of a reference department in a research‐oriented library. In addition, the article describes the merits of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which was published in Spring of 1989.
Actors of territories faced with new managerial innovations have to develop new knowledge and behaviours to seize these innovations and create a vision of the territory. This is…
Abstract
Purpose
Actors of territories faced with new managerial innovations have to develop new knowledge and behaviours to seize these innovations and create a vision of the territory. This is part of what we call governance learning: the ability of individuals to create new knowledge and behaviour for collective action within the territory. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this concept.
Methodology/approach
Drawing from a case study of a periurban territory in France, we analyse how the board members of a Community of Communes can learn to work together, articulating organisational learning theories, actor-network theory and the concept of organisational myths.
Findings
We explore the enrolment process necessary to ‘build’ the network and interest them in using the innovation; identify three types of governance learning that turn the network into a collective: sensemaking, instrument-seizing and sensegiving; show how these myths are necessary to turn collective knowledge into organisational knowledge.
Research limitations/implications
With both a behavioural and evolutionary approach to governance, we show that power, relationships and learning processes are tightly intertwined within the governance networks. Our use of organisational learning theory also demonstrates how it can be used in a more systematic way to describe the learning processes witnessed in governance situations.
Originality/value
This research brings new light to the understanding of how territorial governance can be developed and how managerial innovations can provoke learning situations and more specifically how stakeholders learn to define common goals and a shared vision of their territory to enable collective action.
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This paper aims to discuss and test the claim that user‐based tagging allows for access to a wider variety of viewpoints than is found using other forms of online searching.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to discuss and test the claim that user‐based tagging allows for access to a wider variety of viewpoints than is found using other forms of online searching.
Design/methodology/approach
A general overview of the nature of weblogs and user‐based tagging is given, along with other relevant concepts. A case is then analyzed where viewpoints towards a specific issue are searched for using both tag searching (Technorati) and general search engine searching (Google and Google Blog Search).
Findings
The claim to greater accessibility through user‐based tagging is not overtly supported with these experiments. Further results for both general and tag‐specific searching goes against some common assumptions about the types of content found on weblogs as opposed to more general web sites.
Research limitations/implications
User‐based tagging is still not widespread enough to give conclusive data for analysis. As this changes, further research in this area, using a variety of search subjects, is warranted.
Originality/value
Although proponents of user‐based tagging attribute many qualities to the practice, these qualities have not been properly documented or demonstrated. This paper partially rectifies this gap by testing one of the claims made, that of accessibility to alternate views, thus adding to the discussion on tagging for both researchers and other interested parties.
Details
Keywords
Successful leaders can recognize and handle the reality of random and chaotic influences that send others headlong into disaster.
EVERY reader who ever served in the forces of the Crown will know that charge those footsloggers were convinced was the Sergeant's delight: Dumb Insolence. This was brought…
Abstract
EVERY reader who ever served in the forces of the Crown will know that charge those footsloggers were convinced was the Sergeant's delight: Dumb Insolence. This was brought against a man who failed to reply when spoken to. (We must admit that if you did answer, he might find another charge or at least bellow at you “SHUT UP!”.)
ONE effect of sharing a common language with America is the imposition of a surfeit of books on matters like work study, in which our own literature is modest indeed. The almost…
Abstract
ONE effect of sharing a common language with America is the imposition of a surfeit of books on matters like work study, in which our own literature is modest indeed. The almost simultaneous publication of two books with a common subject is therefore very unusual. They both deal with work measurement, one in forty‐seven chapters and the other in fifteen. Since books are not judged by a quantitative standard this is no guide to their respective merits.