Specific Service Characteristics Research Articles

Communication flows during financial service innovation

Reports on research concerning the role and nature of communication during the innovation process of new financial services. A causal framework has been developed on the antecedent role of communication in financial service innovation and its impact on success. Project team communication is conceptualized by: intra‐project communication (communication between project team members); and extra‐project communication (boundary‐spanning communication). Examines the effectiveness of these communication flows from an information processing perspective and assesses the amount of uncertainty reduced about customers, competitors, technologies and resources. Also assesses the impact of the reduction of uncertainty on new financial service performance. In view of the context, i.e. financial service innovations, we included the specific characteristics of services (intangibility, inseparability of production and consumption, heterogeneity and perishability) into our theory and research design. Finally, the theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Service Satisfaction: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Satisfaction in Financial Services

Does the widely accepted espectancy-disconfirmation model apply to situations within a financial services context? Or could it be, due to specific characteristics of services, that a different model applies? This paper addresses these questions and tests the relationships between consumer expectations, performance, disconfirmation, .satisfaction and repeat purchase in a lisrel model. The results would suggest that the relevancy of disconfirmation is fairly apparent and that expectations have only an indirect influence on satisfaction where financial services are concerned. The performance level of financial services however has a strong positive direct effect on satisfaction.

MODELING AND SIMULATION OF WORKPIECE TEMPERATURE IN GRINDING BY FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

The quality of ground workpieces is largely determined by the accuracy of dimensions and geometry, and by the surface finish. The thermal stress to which workpieces are subjected during the grinding process, characterized by the temperatures that develop, plays a major role as far as the economical fulfillment of high-quality requirements is concerned. Too high thermal stresses have a deleterious effect on the workpiece, leading to changes in specific service characteristics. This paper predominantly concerns experiments to determine the temperature when grinding cemented carbides. In this context, the temperature fields developing in the workpiece were examined for different grinding conditions, both on the basis of experiments and calculations by means of finite element analysis (FEA). The simulations show a rise in surface temperatures in the workpiece from the run-in to the run-out phase of the grinding process. The analysis indicates that the-grinding process gives rise to an inho-mogeneous distribution of the material properties of the workpiece, along the grinding direction.