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The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an integrated conceptual framework using construal level theory (CLT) to explain the differences in the effects of process and outcome service attributes on overall service evaluation and customer satisfaction based on consumption context (social), evaluation context (temporal) and individual characteristics (expertise).

The authors use two lab experiments (hotel and restaurant settings) and a field study of online reviews posted by actual hotel customers to test all the hypotheses.

Process (outcome) attributes have a stronger influence on service evaluations under low-level (high-level) construal. Specifically, process attributes have a stronger influence when customers are accompanied by proximal (vs distal) social group, evaluate a service under near (vs distant) temporal frame or have high (vs low) level of customer expertise.

Service managers can use the findings about the differences in the influence of social, temporal and individual variables on customer evaluations under process and outcome attributes to improve customers’ service experiences and satisfaction.

This paper extends past research on the influence of construal levels on customer decision making by exploring the differences in the effects of process vs outcome service attributes on overall service evaluation and customer satisfaction, under the influence of low (vs high) construal levels triggered by social, temporal and individual variables.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of customer service employees’ (CSEs) competence and service recovery outcomes on service evaluations of foreign and domestic CSEs.

Three experiments were conducted to test and validate the proposed hypotheses. The participants were told a cover story that they were either listening to (Study 2) or reading (Studies 1 and 3) a real conversation between a customer service representative of a bank and a customer and the authors wanted their views about the service encounter. While country of origin (COO) and competency were common independent variables across three studies, Study 2 included service recovery with a full refund and Study 3 had both full and partial refund and apology offered or not.

Results from three experiments show that while competent CSEs are evaluated the same, regardless of their COO, the domestic CSE is evaluated more negatively than the foreign CSE when both are incompetent. The authors also find that when competent CSEs deliver no service recovery, the foreign CSE evaluations are significantly lower than the domestic one. Study 3 results show that this effect is mediated by participants’ ethnocentric beliefs.

For implications, this study provides a deeper understanding of the role of COO in services contexts. Future researchers can utilize the findings to investigate the important role that expectations play in determining service excellence and how it affects the COO effect.

The paper provides managers in both offshoring client and provider firms with an understanding of the effects of offshoring on employee evaluations. It discusses the relevance/irrelevance of COO on the customer evaluations of service employees.

The study investigates an under researched phenomenon – offshoring of services. This paper is one of the few looking at the role of different interaction factors, such as competence, recovery on service evaluations.

To examine precisely how service process and service outcome are related to service quality and customer satisfaction evaluations, and to look for consistent patterns in the relationships between these four concepts.

A theoretical framework is proposed to suggest links between the four concepts. The study is conducted in the real estate industry, and the focus is on home sellers' evaluations of the real estate agent's service. In‐depth interviews and a short survey are used to collect the data. A combination of content analysis and statistical tests is used to look for patterns in the data.

As proposed, process factors are closely linked with service quality, and outcome factors are closely linked with customer satisfaction. Also, as proposed, service quality evaluations precede customer satisfaction for normal service evaluations, but the opposite causal order is found for extreme service evaluations.

The study is conducted in the USA and is based on a relatively small sample, but sufficient for qualitative (and simple statistical) analysis. The differential links proposed and found between the four concepts advance researchers' understanding of the basis for service evaluations.

Managers can focus more on either service process or service outcome based on their specific objectives and/or resource constraints in different situations.

It is the first study to propose and empirically support the idea that service process is closely linked with service quality evaluations, whereas service outcome is closely linked with customer satisfaction evaluations.

This paper aims to explore the role of emotions in consumers' evaluations of service quality.

The study uses empirical qualitative data from in‐depth interviews with 26 senior citizens who are consumers of long‐term residential care services in a Swedish rural community. The empirical findings are analysed inductively in terms of dimensions derived from the literature on the role of emotions in consumers' evaluations of service quality.

When explaining their overall evaluations of service quality, the respondents referred exclusively to service dimensions that had evoked emotional reactions. However, although these service dimensions were the only ones to influence the consumers' perceptions of service quality, respondents tended to reflect about these dimensions in a cognitive manner. The remaining service dimensions, which did not evoke any emotional memories, did not influence the respondents' perceptions of the overall quality of services rendered.

Emotional reactions can direct the attention of consumers to certain service dimensions, and subsequently trigger cognitive evaluations of these dimensions. The emotional and cognitive responses of consumers to services are thus interrelated. More research is needed into the mechanism of this interaction.

Service providers should recognise that consumers' emotional and cognitive reactions are intertwined. For providers of aged‐care services, this study suggests certain service dimensions that are worthy of further attention in seeking positive evaluations of services from users.

Previous research has tended to distinguish between emotional and cognitive evaluations of services. This study challenges this distinction by demonstrating that dimensions that have traditionally been viewed as “non‐emotional” can be influenced by “emotional” reactions. Thus, the study shows that “emotional bias” can lead to some dimensions having a disproportionate influence on overall evaluations of service.

This paper aims to define an extended QoS model to accurately describe the quality of web service in the open distributed environment and propose a fuzzy evaluation approach for services selection based on the extended QoS model.

The extended QoS model classifies the quality criteria of web service as five composite quality criteria, and each composite quality criterion is composed by one or more sub‐quality criteria. Considering the multiple forms of representation for the quality criteria and different types of quality value could not be compared directly, a scaling fuzzy measure for quality criteria is introduced. Based on the scaling fuzzy measure of the quality criteria, a fuzzy synthetic evaluation system for services selection is proposed.

The quality of web service has multiple facets and multiple forms of representation. The fuzzy synthetic evaluation system can deal well with the fuzzy and implicit concepts about quality evaluations and provides higher expressive force and adaptability.

The quality of service in this paper is static preset.

The extended QoS model and the synthetic fuzzy evaluation system cover the shortage of the related researches and lay the foundations for QoS‐oriented service description and services selection.

This study aims to observe different purchasing and evaluation phases during the buying of business services, thus revealing the necessity for integration of different entities during the purchasing process.

On the basis of a systematic analysis, explorative case study methods involving five Swiss multinational companies are used. In addition, the study provides a structured literature review and uses the short-term perspective of the industrial marketing and purchasing (imp) approach as a conceptual approach.

In addition to specific and business service-related difficulties, the research observes different phases “levels of integration” within the evaluation process that takes place within a company: a preparation phase, an acquisition phase and an operational phase.

The study is limited to a qualitative research approach addressing five cases from Switzerland. However, assuming the results are generalizable, future research on service evaluation should always differentiate between the different phases of an evaluation.

It is shown that for practitioners, social, financial, service and informational exchange (as per imp approach) is closely related to an adequate integration of all involved entities during the different phases of purchasing. Therefore, this research provides practical support for the purchasing process to ensure highly efficient business services.

As there has been almost no research on business service evaluation, this paper is the first work known to extend the short-term perspective of the imp approach by addressing the different purchasing phases of an integrated service evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the service quality of university library more accurately and dynamically and improve the service efficiency of library. The paper realizes quantified representation of library service quality and overcomes the shortcoming of the traditional library evaluation system, which does not consider reader’s identity and cannot be evaluated separately. In addition, according to the function configuration of each department of library, a relation between library evaluation parameter and its organization structure is built. According to the evaluation results and the chain of relations, some suggestions for improving library service can be put forward; thus, it can improve the quality of library service and management efficiency.

In this paper, a four-dimensional (4-D) representation method is put forward to express four kinds of parameters, namely, the category of participants, the number of people evaluated, the rating level and the weight of parameters, which is expressed by chromaticity and a three-dimensional column coordinate space. Considering the existing evaluation methods such as LibQUAL+TM, the content of evaluation parameters, the grade of evaluation parameters and the weight of evaluation parameters are modified. Using the volume and the equivalent number of people under this evaluation system, the evaluation grade can be quantified and the total results can be evaluated quantitatively.

The evaluation model proposed in this paper is a 4-D system that is based on content parameters to evaluate the number of participants, score segments, evaluation content weights and reader information. It gives full consideration to the good advice of many scholars and combines the actual operation of domestic libraries. The situation effectively integrates successful experience abroad. Both the undergraduate and teacher sampling evaluation results and their analysis in this paper show the accuracy and credibility of the method.

Although the satisfaction index model has a good effect in foreign countries, taking into account that readers of university libraries in China are different from those in foreign countries in the evaluation methods of the tutorial, professional multi-level evaluation will produce greater errors in practical applications. The traditional four-level method based on Chinese education evaluation (excellent, good, pass and fail) has reached consensus among teachers and students in practical application, and it is easy to achieve consistency. Therefore, this paper also adopts four-level evaluation, that is, very satisfied, satisfied, generally satisfied and very dissatisfied. The embedded application will be able to perform dynamic evaluation and thus can be used in China. The evaluation of service quality in university libraries provides an effective new method.

The purpose of this paper is to explore cultural sources of variation on consumers’ expectations and evaluations of service quality within local emerging markets.

The authors employ a multi-method approach. The multi-method research design utilizes: first, netnography to examine foreign consumers’ blogs and online communities; second, interviews with local and foreign consumers to unveil critical incidents in service encounters; and third, an online survey of 139 foreign consumers living in Chile and 460 Chilean consumers to map differences in their expectations and evaluations of services.

A general analysis of local and foreign consumers living in an emerging market reveals that these two groups do not differ significantly in their expectations of service quality. The authors also find that differences in expectations and evaluations of service quality within a local emergent market are only partially explained by aggregating consumers according to their country or region of origin. Finally, the findings demonstrate that examining cultural differences at the individual level generates a better understanding of how cultural factors impact consumer expectations and evaluations of service quality within emerging markets.

The research is limited to one emerging market (Chile) and focusses largely in one industry (banking). Further research should be conducted to examine the findings in other contexts, including developed markets, and to identify how other cultural differences (e.g. language mastery) within local markets may impact consumer expectations and evaluations of services.

Service companies operating in emerging markets should account for cultural differences when determining service standards and protocols. These differences may cut across the local-foreign divide and suggest that profiling foreign customers depending on their country of origin is not the most adequate approach for providing excellence in service and enjoying the benefits that follow.

Foreign consumers living in a local market are frequently considered a homogeneous group distinct from local consumers, and are treated as such by public and private service providers. The study demonstrates that foreign consumers may be more or less similar to local consumers depending on their cultural values, and should not be considered as a uniform group.

The findings extend research on consumer expectations and evaluations of service quality to account for cultural diversity within local emerging markets. The authors demonstrate that a cluster-approach to examining consumer expectations and evaluations of service quality better accounts for variations due to cultural values within local markets.

In the context of sequential multistage utilitarian service processes, the purpose of this study is to develop and validate propositions to study the impact of service quality (SQ) perceptions developed in intermediate stages, along with the impact of service gestalt characteristics, such as peak and end experiences, on quality perception at each stage and on overall service quality (OSQ) perception. The cascade phenomenon (interdependency between process stages) is considered in the evaluation of OSQ perception of customer, who experiences service through a series of planned, distinct and partitioned sequential stages.

In this paper, a conceptual framework is used to evolve the propositions. Subsequently, propositions are tested in three different utilitarian service contexts wherein customer survey was conducted for feedback on attributes at each stage, summary perception evaluations of each stage and OSQ evaluation of multistage process. Peak experiences, considered for OSQ evaluation, were defined by a suitable statistical technique. Ordinal logistic regression with nested models is the technique used for analyzing the data.

This work reveals significant cascade effect of summary evaluation of intermediate stages on the subsequent stage. Peak customer experience (negative or positive) is observed to be marginally significant on intermediate stage and OSQ evaluation. In addition, OSQ is observed to be influenced by summary perception evaluations of intermediate stages, which leads to better model adequacy. Finally, among all the stages, end stage performance is observed to have a significant impact on the overall multistage SQ.

The findings suggest that in view of the cascade effect of intermediate stages, managers need to allocate resources to ensure that all stages are performing at an adequate level instead of only focusing on improving peaks and end effects of customer experiences. The proposed approach is easy to implement and suitable for evaluating SQ and OSQ in varied multistage sequential utilitarian service environment.

An integrated approach for evaluation of SQ in sequential multistage utilitarian service processes is proposed from the perspective of cascade effect of intermediate stages and peak and end effects on OSQ perception.

Service encounters are becoming increasingly virtual through the infusion of computer-mediated technologies. Virtual services separate consumers and service providers both spatially and temporally. With the advent of virtual services is the need to theoretically explain how service separability is psychologically perceived by consumers across the spectrum of computer-mediated technologies. Drawing on construal-level theory, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a theoretical framework depicting consumer’s construal of spatial and temporal separation across a continuum of technology-mediated service virtuality.

The authors conducted two studies: first, to investigate consumers’ levels of mental construal associated with varying degrees of service separation across a spectrum of technology-mediated services; second, to empirically examine consumer evaluations of service quality in response to varying degrees of spatial and temporal service separation. These relationships were tested across two service industries: education and tourism.

Consumers mentally construe psychological distance in response to service separation and these observations vary across the spectrum of service offerings ranging from face-to-face (no psychological distance) through to virtual (spatially and temporally separated – high psychological distance) services. Further, spatial separation negatively affects consumers’ service evaluations; such that as service separation increases, consumers’ service evaluations decrease. No such significant findings support the similar effect of temporal separation on customer service evaluations. Moreover, specific service industry-based distances exist such that consumers responded differentially for a credence (education) vs an experiential (tourism) service.

Recent studies in services marketing have challenged the inseparability assumption inherent for services. This paper builds on this knowledge and is the first to integrate literature on construal-level theory, service separability, and virtual services into a holistic conceptual framework which explains variance in consumer evaluations of separated service encounters. This is important due to the increasingly virtual nature of service provider-customer interactions across a diverse range of service industries (i.e. banking and finance, tourism, education, and health care). Service providers must be cognisant of the psychological barriers which are imposed by increased technology infusion in virtual services.