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This study aims to examine a proposed model based on a combination of relationship marketing and service quality dimensions as a significant predictor of corporate image. More importantly, it attempts to identify whether corporate reputation mediates the relationship between and customer loyalty and corporate image in the takāful (Islamic insurance) context, from the viewpoint of Saudi Arabian customers.

An online survey was conducted through an adopted questionnaire from 362 family takāful policyholders from Saudi Arabia. Also, structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed model on the direct relationships of the related constructs, as well as the establishment of corporate reputation as a mediator concerning its relationship between corporate image and customer loyalty.

This study discovered that only two dimensions of service quality (i.e. reliability and assurance) and three aspects of relationship marketing (i.e. Islamic ethical behaviour, financial and structural bonds) have a significant impact on the corporate image of the takāful providers. This study further concluded that corporate reputation mediates the relationship between corporate image and customer loyalty.

This study has presented and tested the perceived service quality using the PAKSERV model in the takāful (Islamic insurance) industry, particularly in the Saudi Arabian context. This research identified the dimensions of PAKSERV (i.e. reliability and assurance) that influence the corporate image and simultaneously, the aspects of relationship marketing (i.e. Islamic ethical behaviour, financial and structural bonds) are also connected to the corporate image. Corporate reputation acts as a mediator between the relationship of corporate image and customer loyalty. This study, nevertheless, only focused in the takāful industry alone, and these findings could also be tested for its validity to different services in other potential studies because of the diversity of the service industry.

The findings of this study highlight the specific components of PAKSERV measures in influencing the corporate image. Furthermore, relationship marketing addressing Islamic ethical behaviour, as well as the three facets of bonding – structural, financial and social bonds are also incorporated and connected to corporate image. Hence, this study will increase the understanding of the impact of service quality concerning the PAKSERV model and relationship marketing on corporate image, reputation and customer loyalty of the takāful operators in Saudi Arabia.

As the number of available services increases on the web, it becomes greatly vital in service-oriented computing to discover a trustworthy service for a service composition so as to best-fit business requirements. However, some dishonest service providers may advertise more than what they can offer and cause a great loss to users. In the last few years, trust and reputation management over web service selection mechanism becomes an emerging way of dealing with security deficiencies which are inherent in web services environment. The purpose of this paper is to review the security threats carefully and expect that the results serve as a reference guide for designing the robust trust and reputation management mechanisms.

Based on the published literature, the paper reviews and categorizes the most critical and important security threats that apply to trust and reputation models.

A detailed review and a dedicated taxonomy table are derived. As emphasized earlier, they could serve as the most important guideline for design of trust and reputation mechanisms.

The papers work contributes to: first, understand in details what kind of security threats may cause damage to trust and reputation management mechanisms for web services selection; and second, categorize these complex security threats and then assist in planning the defense mechanisms.

This study examines the outsourcing criteria prevalent in the Hotel industry of Pakistan. In doing so, the study investigates the role of trust in the association between relationship marketing dimensions—communication, opportunistic behavior, reputation, satisfactory prior outcomes and specific investment—and third-party logistics provider’s (3PL) selection.

Using a close-ended questionnaire, data were collected from 97 hotels of various categories operating in Pakistan and involved in 3PL outsourcing. Partial Least Square–Structural Equation Modeling was employed to estimate the modeled relationships.

With a high predictive relevance of the model, communication, satisfactory prior outcome and reputation were found to have a significant effect on the trust, whereas the results showed a significant mediating role of trust in the association between communication, reputation and 3PL provider’s selection.

The study uses static data from selected firms and cannot be used to analyze behavior over a period of time. Hence, a generalization of results should be made carefully.

Findings imply that for fully capitalizing on the benefits by virtue of their prospective relationship, the managers must streamline their processes and activities according to path directions that endorse a higher degree of trust in their service providers and establish an effective system of communications interconnecting their mutual goals and objectives.

The outcome of the research study illustrated the perceptions of the local businesses with regards to the 3PL service provider(s) selection via the establishment of trust.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze customer loyalty in the context of existing relationships between Brazilian banking service provider and its customers in the context of B2C (Business-to-Consumer) relationships. Hence, a theoretical model was proposed and tested with banking services private individual customers taking into account perceived value, service provider reputation, financial bonding tactics, structural bonding tactics, social bonding tactics and switching costs as customer loyalty determinants.

A multivariate statistical approach with structural equations modeling was used in a 505 customer sample of the one prominent bank in Brazil.

Results indicate that the proposed theoretical model confirming a satisfactory fit, presenting a good explanatory power (R²=0.738) and supporting that perceived value influences the service provider reputation; financial bonding tactics, structural bonding tactics and social bonding tactics influence perceived value; service provider reputation influences switching costs; switching costs influence customer loyalty and the social bonding tactics influence customer loyalty.

The results evidenced in the present research could serve as benchmarking for other researchers or managers connected to the financial service sector (or bank service) when looking for a better understanding about the antecedents of customer loyalty, adapting strategies and actions to stimulate and generate better market and economic–financial results for the institutions of this sector.

Finding out which constructs better explain customer loyalty, and its possible relations, is something relevant for the banking sector, once it can generate more effective managerial insights, positively making an impact in a customer portfolio performance, or the financial institution itself, from the construction, maintenance and strengthening of the relationships with customers.

Even though scholars have proposed multiple dimensions to measure corporate reputation, the relationship between these dimensions and service provider selection has received a dearth of research. Moreover, the moderating role of brand image on this relationship has hardly been considered. The purpose of this paper is to fill these gaps in the literature.

The study employed a quantitative approach, collecting data from 540 retail bank customers using surveys. Results were analyzed using structural equation modelling in AMOS.

The study found out that emotional engagement, corporate performance, customer centricism and service quality directly predicted customer selection of retail banks in Ghana. The results further indicated that brand image moderates the relationship between social and ethical engagement, which was not directly significant and bank selection.

The findings of the study indicate that some of the dimensions of corporate reputation have a direct impact on bank selection by customers, and that brand image could also be used to improve social and ethical dimension of corporate reputation to ensure bank selection by retail customers. The study thus provides practical guidelines for managing corporate reputation to achieve retail bank selection in Ghana.

The paper provides support to some of the prior studies on corporate reputation in the retail banking sector. Thus, the study provides useful insights into how corporate reputation can be managed to ensure service provider selection by retail bank customers.

Drawing on signaling theory, this paper aims to argue in favor of a “placebo outsourcing effect” (POE) consisting of a positive relationship between provider’s bluffing and customer satisfaction.

The authors applied prediction-oriented segmentation SEM on a dyadic sample of 171 outsourcing relationships.

The authors highlighted two segments that display a form of POE, representing about three-quarters of the customer-provider dyads. The first segment exhibits a positive relationship between the provider’s bluffing and customer satisfaction that is further strengthened by the provider’s reputation and customer’s operational capabilities, while for the other segment, the provider’s bluffing has positive interactions with both operational capabilities and outsourcing experience. These findings show that service providers have reached the bluffing proficiency that enables them to bluff customer firms with varying levels of operational capabilities and outsourcing experience by using the most appealing signals for every type of customer.

Based on the findings, the authors provided to customer firms extensive guidelines to avoid the POE by frustrating service provider’s bluffing proficiency.

This study’s originality resides in the amendment of the disconfirmation paradigm of satisfaction in the outsourcing context by introducing and testing the POE.

The purpose of this paper is investigating the value of service guarantee (SG) program in Service e-Commerce (SeC) which is one resolution to promote service transactions. SeC is emerging as a booming form of e-commerce where various services are contracted, managed, sold and even delivered via the Internet. However, the uncertainty of service quality and the heterogeneity of buyer preferences have been major challenges to sustainable development of SeC.

This study uncovered the value of SG in SeC by empirically analyzing the data collected from zhubajie.com, a well-known service e-marketplace in China, to classify the service providers, to indentify the predictors for SG subscription and to study the effects of SG on service providers’ business performance and service quality.

The authors found that the distribution of service provisions is diversified in terms of low-success, mid-success and high-success providers, while proactive or high ability-ranking providers consistently tend to subscribe to SG program. The study revealed that SG has diverse effects on business performance for low-success and mid-success providers. For high-success providers, it seems to not be an effective choice for transaction promotion. Finally, the results showed that SG marginally improved service quality.

This research provides some practical implications for SeC markets to improve SG program. In addition, the results also help service providers to understand the value of SG in depth.

This article extended the research of SG from the traditional offline market to the online market, as with SeC, in which transactions are conducted without face to face contact.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents of the patient’s initial trust in the doctor. In this sense, it is proposed that trust in the hospital plays a mediating role in the relationship between the physical evidence in the service environment and the patient’s initial trust in the doctor.

Two experimental studies with factorial between-subjects design with random assignment were used. The data were analyzed through an analysis of variance.

The results show that design and social factors affect the patient’s initial trust in the doctor through his trust in the hospital. The results also showed that reputation and recommendation affect the initial trust.

This is the first study to consider antecedents of patient’s initial trust in the doctor. Most of the studies about trust focuses on investigating trust in situations where there is a prior relationship; however, this study arises some evidences that trust starts to be constructing even before the patient properly meets the doctor. These findings are valuable because they highlight the importance of physical evidences, reputation and positive word-of-mouth for building initial trust.

Service providers leverage their corporate reputation management efforts to increase revenues by shaping customer attitudes and behaviours, yet the effects on customer innovation adoption and customer value remain unclear. In an extended conceptualisation of customer-based corporate reputation (CBR), the purpose of this paper is to propose that customer perceived risk, perceived value, and service separation are contingencies of the relationship between CBR and two key customer outcomes: customer new product adoption proneness (CPA) and recency-frequency-monetary (RFM) value.

Using a predictive survey approach, 1,001 service customers assess the online or offline operations of six multichannel retailers. The hypothesised model is tested using structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis.

The analysis reveals significant linkages of CBR with perceived risk and perceived value, as well as between perceived risk and perceived value and from perceived value to CPA and RFM value. These linkages vary in strength across unseparated (offline) and separated (online) services.

This study uses cross-sectional data to contribute to literature that relates CBR to relevant customer outcomes by considering CPA and RFM value and investigating contingent factors. It provides conceptual and empirical evidence that price appropriateness represents a new CBR dimension.

The results reveal that CBR reduces customers’ perceived risk and positively affects their perceived value, which drives CPA and RFM value. Multichannel retailers can create rewarding customer relationships by building and nurturing good reputations.

This study is the first to link CBR with customer product adoption proneness and value, two important customer measures. It proposes and tests an extended conceptualisation of CBR.

This study aims to test a proposed model based on a combination of the relationship marketing and service quality dimensions as predictors of corporate image and customer loyalty via corporate reputation in the Takaful context. More importantly, this study compares the Takaful operators’ services with the perceived service quality and the relationship marketing from the Malaysian and Saudi Arabian customers’ viewpoint.

A survey-based study was conducted through a questionnaire, and the data was collected from Takaful customers (362 Saudi Arabian and 350 Malaysian customers) through an online survey. Structural equation modelling is used to test the proposed model. Besides, the perception of Takaful customers between Saudi Arabia and Malaysia is compared through a multi-group analysis.

The results from the Malaysian context reveal that positive perceptions of service quality PAKSERV dimensions (personalization, reliability and tangibility) and positive perceptions of relationship marketing dimensions (Islamic ethical behaviour and structural bonds) have a significant influence on the corporate image. Alternatively, in the Saudi Arabian context, results have shown that the positive perceptions of service quality PAKSERV dimensions (assurance and reliability) of service quality and the positive perceptions of the relationship marketing dimensions (Islamic ethical behaviour, structural bonds and financial bonds) have a significant influence on the corporate image. The differences in both countries’ results can also enhance the corporate image on corporate reputation, merely in Malaysia. By contrast, corporate reputation is deemed a significant predictor of customer loyalty, represented as valid for both contexts.

The proposed research model tested in Takaful Malaysian and Saudi Arabian can be replicated in other contexts – in terms of country and industry. Moreover, the current study reveals the crucial role of corporate image in forming corporate reputation. Future research could be focussed on the importance of other emotional or affective variables that may be involved in determining corporate reputation. Finally, future studies can be carried with another cultural perspective to have more diversified socio-economic implications.

It is suggested that Takaful operators from both Malaysia and Saudi Arabia need to put maximum effort towards customer loyalty by bringing both the dimensions of service quality and the relationship marketing in compliance with the principles of Islamic business transaction. The findings of the specific dimensions of service quality and relationship marketing will contribute to customers’ perceptions of corporate image and reputation in the Takaful industry.

The present study tested a blended facet of customer’s overall experience through service quality (PAKSERV) and customer service provider connectivity (relationship marketing) to predict the corporate image of the highly growing financial marketplace (Takaful). Contextually, this study contributes to delineating the factors (corporate reputation) affecting customer loyalty rather than a customer satisfaction tradition. Significantly, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia were chosen for this study, as they are currently the two fast-growing markets for Islamic financial services, especially with regards to the Takaful products and offerings.