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This research investigates employee and guest satisfaction, guests’ perceptions of value and their intention to return. Considered are hotel workers’ job satisfaction, how job satisfaction impacts guests’ satisfaction with the service experience and with the physical attributes of the hotel and how these variables affect perceived value and intention to return.

Structural equation modeling is used to analyze data from a large global hotel chain.

Guest satisfaction with service and the physical attributes of the hotel differentially impact guest outcomes of intention to return and perceptions of value. Key findings are guest satisfaction with the physical attributes of a hotel is significantly more strongly linked to guests’ intention to return than is satisfaction with service received. Staff job satisfaction is significantly linked to guests being more satisfied with the service experience and their return intentions. Of all the factors directly contributing to guests’ return intentions, guest satisfaction with the physical attributes of the hotel was largest in impact. In contrast guest satisfaction with service is linked to guests’ perceptions of value, whereas satisfaction with the physical aspects is not significant. Guests’ perceptions of value do not impact intention to return.

The research was conducted within one global hotel chain, which due to its cross-sectional nature may possibly be a limitation. However, its single organizational nature does not diminish the importance of the findings.

Hotel managers need to consider the importance of the physical attributes of properties in what has been largely a services-dominated debate. What guests value may not lead to repeat business.

Providing excellent customer service may not be the main motivation for return business. Also, holistic measures of guest satisfaction may not accurately measure what guests value. Perceived value is not a significant predictor of intention to return.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to the field of supply chain management and provide a detailed roadmap that supply chain researchers can utilize when applying this methodology.

Data collection focused on the evaluation of product returns management practices as perceived by business customers who operate in a supplier–customer context. In order to analyze the data using the QCA approach, a multi-step analysis was developed.

The results indicate five solutions that lead to high levels of customer satisfaction. The existence of multiple sufficient configurations for customer satisfaction indicates equifinality because multiple alternative solutions can lead to the same outcome.

The authors make a methodological contribution by applying the QCA method to the field of supply chain management and providing a detailed roadmap that supply chain researchers can utilize.

The authors provide managers five different and novel combinations of antecedents that lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

This study offers supply chain researchers a better understanding of when it is appropriate to use QCA and how to apply this methodology. From a theoretical perspective, past studies focused exclusively on the “net effects” of these antecedents, thus, did not capture the complexity of the relationships between these various antecedents and customer satisfaction. This is a noteworthy contribution as it highlights the complexity of the amalgam of relationships and factors that impact customer satisfaction within the context of reverse supply chain.

This study aims to investigate whether and how different sentiments affect the stock market’s reaction to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) information.

The portfolio approach, with time-varying risk factor loadings and the asset-pricing models, is borrowed from the finance literature to investigate the ACSI-performance relationship. A direct sentiment index is used to examine how investors’ optimistic, neutral and pessimistic sentiments affect the aforementioned relation.

This paper finds that customer satisfaction is a valuable intangible asset that generates positive abnormal returns. On average, investing in the Strong-ACSI Portfolio is superior to investing in the market index. Even when the stock market holds pessimistic beliefs, investors can beat the market by investing in firms that score well on customer satisfaction. The out-performance of our zero-cost, long–short ACSI strategy also confirms the mispricing of ACSI information in pessimistic periods.

Findings are limited to firms covered by the ACSI data.

Finance research has further documented evidence of the stock market under-reacting to intangible information. For example, firms with higher research and development expenditures, advertising, patent citations and employee satisfaction all earn superior returns. Literature also proves that investors efficiently react to tangible information, whereas they undervalue intangible information. In summary, combining our results and those reported in the literature, customer satisfaction is value-relevant for both investors and firm management, particularly in pessimistic periods.

This study is the first to investigate how sentiment affects the positive ACSI-performance relationship, while considering the time-varying property of risk factors. This study is also the first to show that ACSI plays a more important role during pessimistic periods. This study contributes to the growing literature on the marketing–finance interface by providing better understanding of how investor emotional states affect their perceptions and valuations of customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between occupiers’ satisfaction with the property management service they receive and the financial performance of commercial real estate.

The study uses occupier satisfaction data for 240 UK commercial properties collected over a 12-year period and the annual total returns achieved by those properties. Various statistical techniques are employed to assess whether increasing occupier satisfaction leads to greater returns for investors. These include comparing excess returns and risk-adjusted returns with occupier satisfaction at each property to assess whether superior property management generates outperformance (“positive alpha”). The study also investigates whether the relationship between occupier satisfaction and returns is the same across all sectors and whether it is affected by market conditions.

A positive correspondence is found between benchmark outperformance and occupier satisfaction. The relationship is similar for all sectors of commercial property and is particularly strong during the Global Financial Crisis, indicating that paying attention to satisfying the needs of occupiers has particular benefits during periods when the supply of commercial real estate exceeds demand.

The sample of properties was restricted to those for which occupier satisfaction data had been collected by RealService Ltd and whose owners permitted access to the financial performance results. This meant that the properties belong to only three landlords, all UK REITs that care sufficiently about occupier satisfaction to commission studies. Thus the findings might not apply to all commercial properties. The mechanism by which the positive relationship between satisfaction and financial performance occurs is not tested, but the conventional mechanisms of reputation and customer loyalty (the “service-profit chain”) are discussed.

The findings suggest that it is worthwhile for landlords, or property managers acting on their behalf, to understand the needs of their occupiers in order to deliver the level of service that those occupiers desire. Leases in the UK are generally “triple net” and the total returns used for this analysis are net of property management costs, so the positive relationship between satisfaction and performance is not the result of economising on service delivery. A further implication is that valuers should take more account of occupier satisfaction when assessing the capital value of a property, from which total returns are assessed.

Demonstrating the links between customer service, customer satisfaction and business profitability is rarely attempted because of the many confounding factors that affect profitability. UK listed real estate companies are typically reluctant to reveal the financial performance of individual properties, and information about occupiers’ satisfaction is not generally available. The authors were fortunate to be granted access to a time series of such data, and to be able to demonstrate that attention to delivering a property management service that satisfies occupiers is likely to bring financial rewards to the owners of the property.

The purpose of this study is to address two issues relevant to those managing product returns: (1) how customers perceive the returning process and assessing the extent that these perceptions have on satisfaction with the organization, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM) and (2) are these outcomes moderated by whether customer returns were planned or unplanned?

The data consisted of 21 semi-structured interviews (pilot study) and a quantitative survey (n = 384; main study) targeted at consumers who had bought fashion items online.

Qualitative insights revealed that perceptions of the returning experience are driven by monetary costs, convenience, stress and guilt. Quantitative findings showed that the returning experience explains return satisfaction for both planned and unplanned returners, and returning satisfaction explains overall satisfaction and WOM. The noteworthy difference concerns loyalty: although customers that planned to return items are more loyal to the organization, it is the unplanned returners whose loyalty can be significantly increased by better managing the returning process.

Returning products online is increasingly common and thus forms an important part of the customer's overall experience with an organization. Returns management can therefore drive key customer outcomes. Understanding the dynamics between the product return experience, return satisfaction and customer outcomes will help practitioners design and implement more informed returns management strategies. Measures are also presented that assess the cognitive and emotional aspects associated with returning products.

Returning products is an increasingly important challenge for online retailers. Understanding what kinds of returning behaviors occur allows companies to design and execute better informed decisions to manage this phenomenon, not only for the sake of firm performance but also for societal and environmental benefits – the triple bottom line.

While scholars have investigated the relationship between return policies (e.g. free vs fee) and profitability, no prior literature has examined the returning experience: how consumers perceive the returning process; motivations for their returns (whether returns were planned or not) and subsequent customer outcomes.

Although customer satisfaction and loyalty have attracted a lot of attention in service management research, relatively few studies have examined the impact of waiting time and service quality on customer satisfaction and repurchase frequency. In this study, we model the relationships between customer satisfaction, repurchase frequency, waiting time and other service quality factors in fast food outlets. The results indicate that waiting time and other service factors such as staff attitude, environment, seat availability and food quality significantly influence the customers’ return frequency. Results also show that waiting time, staff attitude, food quality and food variety all significantly affect customer satisfaction. It is also found that the significance of the relationship depends on the timing of the visits. These models will help managers to understand the critical factors that influence customer loyalty and satisfaction in the fast food industry and help them make improvements accordingly.

Compared with the emphasis that service quality research has received in online marketing, much less work has been done on the role of price perception, service attribute‐level performance and satisfaction that unfolds over time, and their effects on customer retention. This paper seeks to fill this gap in the literature.

This paper builds propositions about the role of price and customer satisfaction at different stages on customers' intention to return. Research hypotheses are developed based on theory from the combined literatures of services, product pricing, and behavioral decision theory. Data from the e‐retailing industry related to two specific periods of shopping experience (at checkout and after delivery) are used in the empirical tests. Structural equation modeling is employed to test the hypothesized relationships.

The findings of this study indicate that after‐delivery satisfaction has a much stronger influence on both overall customer satisfaction and intention to return than at‐checkout satisfaction, and that price perception, when measured on a comparative basis, has a direct and positive effect on customer overall satisfaction and intention to return.

The data are only available from surveying customers who have made purchases. Future study can investigate how satisfaction with shopping convenience has impacted customer acquisition. Measures of actual return behavior, as opposed to behavioral intentions, will also enhance the validity of the study.

This paper concludes that excellence pre‐sales service is not necessarily an advantage that allows e‐tailers to develop customer retention. In fact, e‐tailers might command higher customer retention through providing good performance in after‐delivery service and continuously generating favorable price perceptions among customers because both have a strong and positive influence on return intention.

This research conceptualizes and explores different aspects of satisfaction that unfold over time, regarding customers' whole shopping experience with a particular e‐retailer. It is a pioneer work that empirically investigates the relative contribution of at‐checkout and after‐delivery satisfaction in generating intention to return to an e‐tailer.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of post-purchase logistic services on customer satisfaction and future purchase decision, to reveal any differences across China and Taiwan, to fill in a gap in the literature focused on post-purchase logistic activities related to shipping, return, and tracking, to provide managerial guidance in logistics for e-commerce, and to develop insights on logistic services for future research.

Using a validated survey instrument, 384 respondents in China and 145 respondents in Taiwan are collected. The research model is analyzed using component-based estimation approach to structural equation modeling.

The structural equation analysis of the study found that post-purchase shipping and tracking have an impact on customer satisfaction in both China and Taiwan. It also found that customer service is the most significant factor among the examined antecedents for online shoppers in China. While, return service is more important for shoppers in Taiwan. Finally, customer satisfaction played a stronger positive role for online shoppers in Taiwan as compared to their counterparts in China.

This research extended the current literature about post-purchase logistic services in an online shopping environment with a literature-based research model and good empirical data support. However, one limitation of the study is that the data collected represents a cross-sectional sample; future research should examine longitudinal sample to study customers’ purchase intentions over time.

This study can help both scholars and practitioners understand the importance of tracking, return, shipping, and customer service in an online shopping environment and across countries. It provides insights on designing e-commerce relevant shipping services to satisfy and attract customers across countries.

The study investigated how post-purchase activities contributed to customer satisfaction in online shopping and explored the influence of customer satisfaction on future purchase intention in China and Taiwan. This is one of the first studies available in the literature to provide empirical support and managerial insights about post-purchase activities related to shipping, tracking, and returns for e-commerce with cross-regional comparison.

In the preceding article “Consumer research in the restaurant environment, Part 2”, the operationalisation of the theoretical model of dining satisfaction and return patronage (IJCHM, Vol. 11 No. 6), was developed and described. This was preceded by Part 1 (IJCHM, Vol. 11 No. 5), in which a model of dining satisfaction and return patronage was proposed and conceptualised. Based on an extensive review of the relevant consumer behaviour literature, proposed model (Part 1), the development of the research instrument, sampling frame and procedures (Part 2), and the analytical analysis used in the study, this paper is the final contribution to the three‐part series and it reports on the findings of the study. Overall, the encouraging results of this study can be summarised as having provided: a clearer understanding of customers’ dining satisfaction perceptions; a clearer understanding of restaurants attribute performance that determine satisfaction as a consequence of dining experience; and a robust prediction of return as a result of dining satisfaction.

The purpose of this research is to analyse the LSQ in the context of three different omni-channel purchasing scenarios while considering four dimensions (timeliness, availability, condition and return of the product) and to assess their impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, an evaluation of the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty in the mentioned omni-channel scenarios is investigated.

A mixed two-phase research methodology is proposed: an initial qualitative analysis with six focus groups followed by quantitative research through surveys with a sample of 323 individuals. The proposed scales were tested for three purchase scenarios: “buy-online-ship-direct” (BOSD), “buy-online-pickup-in-store” (BOPS) and “buy-in-store-ship-direct” (BSSD). The data were analysed using partial-least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) techniques.

In an omni-channel context, the most important element of the logistics service deriving in satisfaction was timeliness for all the scenarios. The return-of-product dimension of LSQ was relevant for satisfaction in “ship-direct” scenarios, while the availability dimension was only relevant for customer loyalty in the BOPS scenario. Customer satisfaction had a positive impact on loyalty in the three purchasing scenarios.

These results might provide guidance to managers in order to improve not only logistics procedures and processes but also their relationships with their customers. Moreover, retailers need to account for return policies in ship-direct channels, prioritize punctuality and adapt delivery terms to ensure product availability.

This work represents a progress in LSQ research in the B2C omni-channel environment by extending its study to a previously untested purchasing scenario (BOSD) and including a fundamental and insufficiently explored dimension of the LSQ: the return.