Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine service receivers' negative emotions in two different service settings, namely at an airport and in a hospital.

A descriptive, convenience sampling survey method was used to collect data in South Africa consisting of a sample of 294 respondents at an airport and 288 respondents in a hospital. Data analysis included an exploratory factor analysis, and the results reported in this paper are based on the critical incident technique.

The findings indicate both similarities and differences in service receivers' negative emotions between the two service settings. Furthermore, the results were found to be valid and reliable.

The results obtained pertaining to the negative emotions that service receivers experience in two service settings in South Africa may provide the foundation for further research and replication in other countries. Furthermore, the results can aid in refining and extending service providers' efforts of managing critical incidents in different service settings in airline and hospital service settings.

Three main aspects of negative incidences in service encounters should be considered in strategies to manage critical incidents, namely those that are caused by: the service receiver; the service provider; or the service encounter context.

This study complements and reinforces existing theory pertaining to the negative emotions service receivers' experience in negative service encounters.

The objective of this paper is to describe the teleological actions needed to assess and manage critical incidents that cause negative emotions in service encounters. Teleological actions are movements into the future that are believed to be move either towards a predictable/known or unpredictable/unknown state or condition. The authors distinguish between, define and apply three categories: transformative – ad hoc and present-based actions; formative – pre-determined and past-based actions; and rationalist – goal-directed and future-based actions.

A qualitative study, based upon a two-phase approach applying convenience and judgemental sampling, was used. Focussing on one teleological theory, a process of abductive matching was applied throughout the study. Abductive matching refers to recurring themes, patterns and categories that are uncovered through the iterative processes of analysis. The teleological framework structured and guided the data collection and empirical observations.

Seen through the perspective of teleological actions, the study enhances our understanding of the manner in which critical incidents generate negative emotions in service encounters. Through the same perspective, the investigation also reveals that the outcome of a negative service encounter depends upon the interactive interface between service provider and service receiver.

The teleological actions between service providers and service receivers in negative service encounters appear to be mediators between cause-and-effect on the one hand (critical incident and negative emotions) and a perceptual gap on the other (outcome of negative service encounter). The teleological perspective also provides numerous opportunities for further research in this area.

Managers should strive to understand the teleological actions potentially undertaken by service receivers, so that they can deal with the teleological actions of their front-line staff accordingly. The interactive interface between a service provider and a service receiver is crucial in assessing and managing critical incidents.

Based on teleological actions, the investigation provides both a valuable and complementary contribution on assessing and managing critical incidents and the negative emotions that are often triggered in the service-encounter interface between a service provider and a service receiver. Providers also need to educate their staff on what can occur and on how to react appropriately.

Generally, the article provides a fundament beyond the state‐of‐the‐art construct of service quality. In particular, the content is dedicated to the construct of interactive service quality in service encounters. Interactive service quality in a service encounter requires the simultaneous consideration of the service provider’s and service receiver’s perspectives. Furthermore, it also demands the consideration of both the service provider’s and the service receiver’s expectations and perceptions in a service encounter. The theoretical contribution is a generic conceptual framework of interactive service quality in service encounters consisting of the service continuum, the service cycle, and an interactivity model. The managerial contribution is a model of the invisibility dilemma of a service offer, the features of interactive service quality and an application model of interactive service quality in service encounters. Suggestions for further research are also proposed.

The study aims to describe the interactive gaps between service receiver learning curves and service provider adaptive curves, as well as the cause-effect-outcome in processes and interfaces of service encounters, through the perspective of teleological actions.

This paper includes a qualitative study based on non-probability sampling of informants (air passengers).

The empirical findings indicate interactive gaps in teleological service encounters and a cause-effect-outcome sequence in the associated processes and interfaces.

The study provides knowledge on how to manage the interactive interface between a service provider and a service receiver and a foundation for enhancing complaint handling in service encounters after critical incidents have occurred.

Service providers need to balance their teleological actions in relation to the service receivers’ teleological actions when critical incidents occur.

The paper takes into account service receiver teleological learning curves in relation to service provider teleological adaptive curves in an interactive transformative service encounter (TSE)-model that provides multiple opportunities for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to test a research model based on the cause-and-effect relationships between perceived justice, service satisfaction and behavioral intention.

This paper is based on a questionnaire survey with service receivers in the Mexican telecom industry.

There are significant relationships between international/distributive justice and service satisfaction, as well as between service satisfaction and behavioral intention.

The research model tested appears not to be context- and time-specific, but valid across contexts and through time.

The cause-and-effect relationships between perceived justice, service satisfaction and behavioral intention provide useful insights into service recovery strategies.

This paper provides additional empirical substantiations to existing theory and previous studies.

Despite the prevalent use of professional status and service feedback in online healthcare markets, the potential interaction relationship between two types of information is still unknown. This study used the signaling theory to examine the substitute relationship between professional status and service feedback in patients' doctor choice, as well as the moderating effect of illness severity.

To test the paper's hypotheses, we constructed a panel data model using 418 doctors' data collected over a period of six months from an online healthcare market in China. Then, according to the results of the Hausman test, we estimated a fixed-effects model of patients' choice in online healthcare markets.

The empirical results showed that the effect of a doctor's professional status and service feedback on a patient's doctor choice was substitutable. Moreover, patients' illness severity played a moderating role, in that the influence of professional status on a patient with high-severity illness was higher than that on a patient with low-severity illness, whereas the influence of service feedback on a patient with low-severity illness was higher than that of a patient with high-severity illness. In addition, we found that illness severity negatively moderated the substitute relationship between professional status and service feedback on a patient's choice.

These findings not only contribute to signaling theory and research on online healthcare markets, but also help us understand the importance of professional status and service feedback on a patient's choice when seeking a doctor online.

The objective of this paper is to describe a conceptual framework that addresses the interactive interface of service quality in service encounters.

A conceptual framework is described and discussed in relation to previous research efforts in the field.

Service encounters have been largely researched as a non‐interactive phenomenon. This means that the complexity and dynamics of the construct have not been sufficiently explored. Researchers have described the construct of service quality in different empirical contexts and have developed different models and dimensions – all of which tend to be derived from the service receiver's perspective.

In making the description, the framework acknowledges that service encounters and service quality pertain not only to human interactions, but also involve interaction between individuals and self‐service technology. It may also to some extent serve as a fundamental to scholars in their quest for generic structures across contexts, and over time to explore the interactive interface of service quality in service encounters. In addition, the framework may be used to position previous, ongoing and forthcoming research efforts of service quality.

The conceptual framework may contribute to describe and enhance operative service performances in service encounters.

The framework may contribute to describe and conceptualize the interactive interface of service quality in service encounters. The idea has been to convert some of the theory‐oriented knowledge of service performance in literature into a framework applicable to both scholars and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and describe how service providers’ and service receivers’ teleological actions relate to negative emotions after critical incidents in service encounters have occurred.

Three categories of teleological actions are used: transformative – ad hoc and present-based actions, formative – pre-determined and past-based actions and rationalist – goal-directed and future-based actions.

The empirical findings indicate that airline ground staff should interact differently with air passengers based on the negative emotions involved and the teleological actions undertaken after critical incidents in service encounters have occurred.

The current research improves the interactive and sequential understanding of how to manage negative emotions through teleological actions in service encounters between a service provider and a service receiver after critical incidents have occurred, as well as providing numerous opportunities for further research in services.

It is an important and relevant insight that it is necessary to understand both the initial and derived causes of negative emotions and the subsequent effects and outcomes occurring in service encounters after critical incidents have arisen.

This current study provides theoretical and managerial contributions to manage negative emotions after critical incidents have occurred in service encounters.

Studies of the construct of service quality have traditionally been undertaken from the perspective of the service receiver. More recently, research has focused on both the service provider's perspective and the service receiver's perspective. In addition, there have also been some triadic network approaches to the study of service quality. However, there has been very little research into sequential service quality in service‐encounter chains (that is, consecutive service performances in a series of service encounters). The incorporation of connected service encounters in services management can improve understanding of sequential service quality in service‐encounter chains. This paper provides a customized construct of sequential service quality and highlights the importance of time, context, and performance threshold in service‐encounter chains. Furthermore, the paper presents a generic five‐phase performance process, and a customized six‐dimensional construct of sequential service quality.

The purpose of this paper was to test a construct of perceived justice and its dimensions in negative service encounters across Mexican, Puerto Rican and Spanish hospitals. Also to compare similarities and differences of perceived justice in negative service encounters in these countries.

Includes Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Spaniards who have experienced service failures at hospital settings. A descriptive research design was followed and a self-administered questionnaire was applied to gather the data from respondents. The researchers applied convenience sampling, and a pre-screening of respondents was included to verify that respondents were appropriate to participate in the study. A total number of 937 usable questionnaires were obtained from the hospital settings.

The empirical findings across three Spanish-speaking countries indicate that the construct of perceived justice in negative service encounters consists of merely 15 items, divided into three dimensions, namely, distributional, interactional and procedural.

The empirical findings provide satisfactory validity and reliability across three countries, but there are acknowledged research limitations. These offer an opportunity for further research to verify or falsify the validity, reliability and generalization of the current findings.

Service providers may use the three-dimensional construct of perceived justice as a guide when developing, implementing and managing processes and procedures of service failures in negative service encounters.

The current international study in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Spain complements and fortifies previous research and existing theory of perceived justice in negative service encounters, and possible actions of complaint handling as well as service recovery.