“How do We Achieve it?” A Relational View of Service Quality Enhancement in High-involvement Service

Abstract

Although the discourses on the consequences of attaining service quality are extensive, scholars did not seem to expend adequate effort in understanding the underlying mechanisms through which a service organization could enhance perceived quality. This apparent gap in the services marketing literature calls for a detailed process study to enable researchers and practitioners comprehend how relational approach could help service organizations to persuade the consumers over a period of time. Drawing on social influence theory (SIT), this paper shows how service quality is enhanced in high-involvement service contexts. Building on ethnographic memoir of a large-scale management consulting assignment, I show that consultants utilize Kelman’s (1958) social influence techniques of compliance, identification, and internalization to gradually increase the extent of cooperation from clients thereby improving their perceptions of service delivery. This study also reveals why a continuous, process-oriented, relational perspective is superior to examine the dynamic nature of consumers’ expectations and their perception of performance compared to discrete evaluations of service quality at different encounters. Through this paper I contribute to the service quality literature as well as to the SIT-related conversations.