Unique Characteristics Of Services Research Articles

The Role of Ambivalent Identification on Service Recovery: A Study of the Hotel Industry

Service failure is common and inevitable due to the unique characteristics of services. It is essential for service organizations to carefully handle service failure and employ effective recovery strategies to maintain and improve customer satisfaction, especially when consumers experience mixed emotions towards the organization. However, most service failure and recovery literature focuses on how ambivalent identification works at the organizational level. Thus, this study extends the application of the social identity theory beyond organizational perception and focuses specifically on the consumer context, shedding light on its role in recovery justice and satisfaction. It explores the impact of failure severity and degree of correction on recovery justice, with ambivalent identification serving as the moderator in the hotel industry context. Findings from an intercept survey method indicate that the negative relationship between severity of failure and recovery justice weakens as ambivalent identification increases, while ambivalent identification strengthens the positive relationship between degree of correction and recovery justice. Moreover, ambivalent identification diminishes the positive impact of recovery justice on post-recovery satisfaction. This study provides the theoretical and practical implications related to service recovery for hotel management.

A tribute to Dr Pierre Eiglier: a service field founder with timeless service wisdom

PurposeThis tribute to Dr Pierre Eiglier, who passed in February 2020, was prepared for the “17th International Research Conference in Service Management 2022” in La Londe les Maures, France. Tribute is defined as, “an act, statement, or gift intended to show gratitude, respect, or admiration”.Design/methodology/approachSampled Pierre's publications; consulted the 1993 Journal of Retailing “Special Services Issue” on the evolution of the field; collected reflections from another founder and two of Pierre's former doctoral students who have helped co-chair the La Londe conference and drew from my own interactions with Pierre over the years at La Londe.FindingsIn the mid-1970s, Pierre was one of the first to specify the unique characteristics of services vs products, and the implications and introduced, with Eric Langeard, the “servuction” (service production) model, highlighting customer participation in the servuction process and determinants of the service experience. Pierre continually applied a synthesis of systems thinking, researcher–practitioner interaction, and interdisciplinary/cross-functional perspectives.Practical implicationsPierre's contributions came at a time when marketing practice was geared largely toward products/goods, yet the service sector was growing. Pierre's pioneering framing, along with other founders, of service attributes, service models, and the service experience had much-needed implications for services marketing practice.Originality/valueThis detailed tribute to a service field founder is, regrettably, quite original; too rare. There is value in revisiting these founding contributions which often were broader and more interdisciplinary in perspective than now.

Implementing ‘cleanliness is half of faith’ in re-designing tourists, experiences and salvaging the hotel industry in Malaysia during COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose In the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, organizations now are expected to serve customers who are highly conscious of safety and sanitation. Among others, the hospitality industry is significantly and negatively influenced by this pandemic. Given the unique characteristics of services, using advanced technology is not enough to create a memorable experience without physical interaction between service providers and customers. Thus, this study aims to define the “new normal” for service customers and to explore the “new service design” for the hotel industry. Design/methodology/approach As most of the Southeast Asian countries heavily rely on the tourism industry, this study focuses on one of the emerging tourism destinations in this region, Malaysia. The data is collected through in-depth interviews with 17 potential national and international tourists. Findings The results suggest that considering the “new normal” for customers, there is an immediate need for the hotel industry to revamp their service design by mainly practicing disinfection and sanitation activities, re-designing overall infrastructure and introducing promotional offers. Originality/value This study is novel in its kind as it provides useful guidelines for both practitioners and academicians/researchers. Under this crucial time, very few research is conducted specifically focusing on the hotel industry and tourists’ behaviors amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The study will provide in-depth knowledge about tourists’ expectations from the hotel services, especially in their own voices.

Managing environmental turbulence through innovation speed and operational flexibility in B2B service organizations

PurposeThe research first and uniquely explores the antecedent relationship among three highly studied environmental forces – competitive intensity (CI), market turbulence (MT) and technological turbulence (TT) – in a service context. Next, given the importance of services to the USA and global gross domestic product (GDP) and the unique characteristics of services versus product firms, the research examines the impact of environmental forces on innovation speed capability, a less studied but critical enabler of service innovation. Finally, this study aims to suggest the importance of the sequential relationship between two dynamic capabilities – innovation speed and operational flexibility – to realize advantage.Design/methodology/approachThis study surveyed 264 US service firms in a business to business context and tested this research model using structural equation modeling.FindingsThe results yielded three major conclusions: in a service context when examining the relationship among the three environmental forces, CI appears to have the driving influence on MT and TT, MT, however, was the only environmental force that this study found to bare positive and significant direct influence on innovation speed. Looking at the zero-order effect of MT and TT on innovation speed this study found each to be positive and significant suggesting a negative suppression effect and innovation speed’s influence on performance relative to competitors is fully mediated by operational flexibility.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to context, as service firms represent the majority of the USA and global GDP. This study extends the literature on the highly studied environmental forces (MT, TT and CI) by examining how they influence each other in an antecedent role and in service context. This study extends service literature by going beyond the influence of environmental forces on innovation to examine the dynamic capability of innovation speed, suggested as uniquely important to service context and distinct from the more highly studied innovation construct. The study also extends prior research in the manufacturing (product) context that suggests the importance of sequential congruence between two critical dynamic capabilities – innovation speed and operational flexibility – necessary to deliver competitive advantage.

Service marketing stratgies in India

Service marketing is a sub-field of marketing which refers to promotion of economic activities by a business to its clients. Services marketing includes both business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) services, and this process may involve marketing of telecommunications, health treatment, financial, hospitality, car rental, air travel, and professional services. Services being intangible product are different from physical goods; therefore marketing for services requires different approach. Service marketing is marketing based on relationship and value. With the increasing prominence of services in the global economy, service marketing has become a subject that needs to be studied separately. Marketing services is different from marketing goods because of the unique characteristics of services namely, intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability and inseparability. In most countries, services add more economic value than agriculture, raw materials and manufacturing combined. In developed economies, employment is dominated by service jobs and most new job growth comes from services. Unlike goods there is no ownership transfer in service selling, rather it includes time based access to services in exchange of money. The services marketing being more individualized become to that extent more difficult to accomplish. Success factors in service excellence thus need a different set of marketing tools and strategy.

A review of service quality and service delivery

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide researchers with an overview of the service quality and delivery domain, focussing on the inclusion of customer co-production and customer integration. Specifically, this paper concentrates on service quality (including quality measurement), the service environment, controls and their consequences.Design/methodology/approachA comprehensive review of the literature is conducted, analysed and presented.FindingsThe review shows that service delivery is both complex and challenging, particularly when considering the unique characteristics of services and the high level of customer involvement in their creation. The facilitation, transformation and usage framework identifies how failures can occur at each stage of service delivery, beginning with the characteristics of the service environment, while control theory offers insights into the formal and informal controls that may be applied in the facilitation and transformation stages, which may reduce the likelihood or extent of such failures.Originality/valueDespite the fact that it is widely accepted that service quality is an antecedent to customer satisfaction, it is surprising that this customer co-creation aspect has been largely neglected in the extant literature. As such, the role that customer co-production plays in service quality performance has been examined in this paper. It is hoped that this examination will enhance both theoretical and practical understanding of service quality. It would be useful to find modern tools that can help in improving service quality performance.

Appropriateness of cellular operations in information-intensive services

We investigate the appropriateness of cellular work structures for information-intensive services under a wide range of conditions. In this study, we also consider important and unique service characteristics, such as the relationship of operator performance and workload or overwork. The approach uses experimental design and discrete event simulation. The results favour the cellular structure in service environments in which (a) significant reductions in key operational parameters may be achieved by introducing work cells, such as in setup time, in task duplication, and in the number of administrative layers; (b) no severe bottlenecks emerge; (c) operators are cross-skilled; and (d) high information dependencies exist amongst tasks. The study concludes by citing important managerial implications that service managers and consultants need to consider before embarking into the establishment of cells.

Guest-Defined Hotel Service Quality and Its Impacts on Guest Loyalty

ABSTRACTQuality of service is more difficult to define, measure, and manage than manufacturing products due to the unique characteristics of services. This study explores the dimensions of service quality in the hotel industry, using the Free-listing method, and its impacts on guest satisfaction, word-of-mouth communication, and revisit intention. To accomplish this task, 600 questionnaires were delivered to guests in three-star to five-star hotels in Beijing by five undergraduate students; 430 valid responses were collected. Three satisfiers and seven dissatisfiers for hotel services were identified, and a Hotel Guest Loyalty Model was also identified with ideal goodness-of-fit indices. Further, significant differences in satisfaction and word-of-mouth between Chinese and Western hotel guests were identified, indicating that Westerners were more satisfied with service quality than do Chinese guests, and Westerners showed a higher word-of-mouth intent than do Chinese guests, which is against previous findings by other researchers.

Severity and Controllability of Service Failures as Perceived by Passengers in Airline Industry

Abstract. Service delivery is inherently failure prone. Providing “zero defects” services should be the desired objective of all service providers, but problems are unavoidable in the service industry mainly due to the unique characteristics of services ( Parasuraman et al., 1985 ).The characteristics and the typology of the complaints have been studied in fragmented manner ( McCollough, 2009 ). Hence, this research has the following objectives: To find the severity and controllability of the complaint situations as perceived by airline passengers. To classify the complaint situations based on severity and controllability. To find the association between the typology of complaints, namely, process related and outcome related to the characteristics of severity and controllability. In the first stage, the research methodology wasin-depth exploratory interviews with officials of eight airlines. Situations of common complaints were collected and integrated with those in the literature to develop inventory of complaints. An instrument was developed to classify the complaint situation based on perceived severity and controllability. The findings have managerial implications of guiding the officials in assessment of the severity and controllability of the process and outcome related situations. Keywords. Complaints in airlines, Controllability of complaints, Outcome related complaints. Jel. C12,C83, C93, M31.

Characteristics and value of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations' primary health care and their financing needs: a protocol for systematic evidence reviews.

REVIEW OBJECTIVE AND QUESTIONS The objective of this comprehensive systematic review is to describe and assess the unique service characteristics, impact (experiences of meaningfulness and measures of effects) and costs of primary health care programs/services delivered by Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia as well as the limitations of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations financing arrangements and options for enhancing them. The review questions are: 1.How do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients, their family members and primary health care providers experience or perceive: a) the characteristics (positive and negative) and meaningfulness/value of primary health care provided by Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations: and b) the differences between the characteristics and meaningfulness/value of primary health care provided by Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations and other Australian primary health care providers (including mainstream and state controlled Aboriginal Medical Services)? 2. What are effects of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations primary health care programs/services on: a) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ access to primary health care; b) Social determinants of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health; and c) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health status? And how do these effects compare with those of other Australian primary health care providers? 3. How do costs of providing primary health care programs/services in the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations setting(s) differ from those of other Australian primary health care provider settings? 4. What are the perceived limitations of financing arrangements TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS

University brand equity: an empirical investigation of its dimensions

Purpose – In today's complex and highly competitive marketplace, universities and colleges, realizing a need to develop sustainable strategies, have turned to branding as a solution. However, because of unique service characteristics, universities’ branding attempts may not always result in success. The purpose of this paper, utilizing the concept of brand equity as a foundation of understanding, is to present a framework and scale measurements of university brand equity and its dimensions. Design/methodology/approach – Because no prior measurement scales for university branding have existed, the scale measures for this study are compiled from the literature on brand equity measurements identifying the core and supporting value-creation factors for higher education. For this exploratory study, several pretests and exploratory factor analyses were conducted to ensure that the scale items are comprehensible and clearly measure the intended constructs. Students are considered as the target population for this study. Data for the main study were collected at a comprehensive university in the Midwestern USA. A total of 30 classes with varying sizes provided 439 usable surveys. Findings – Empirical results from the survey research suggest that some of the brand equity dimensions are more important in developing strong university brands. Of the core dimensions, perceived quality of faculty is the most important brand equity dimension, followed by university reputation and emotional environment, brand loyalty, and brand awareness dimensions for creating a strong university brand. Among the supporting brand equity dimensions, library services was the most important for creating a strong university brand, followed by student living (residence halls and dining services), career development, and physical facilities (e.g. gym, classrooms, labs). Research limitations/implications – Although the target population was students, as a first step, the survey was administered to students at one university. Administering surveys to students at different universities and comparing the results would improve the reliability of the brand equity scales. The significant correlations found among the brand equity dimensions suggest the interconnectedness of these dimensions. The findings have implications for developing and implementing university brand strategies. The authors suggest serious consideration to be given to a holistic approach to branding efforts. Originality/value – The branding literature offers no prior research that develops and tests a scale or examines the issues and factors that are important for developing strong university brands and brand equity for higher education institutions. This study develops the scale measurements through a comprehensive literature review, tests the validity of the measurements, and takes the brand equity theory one step further by identifying the core and supporting-value creation factors suggested sporadically in the literature. The framework suggests that both core and supporting value-creating activities are dynamically interrelated and work jointly in creating student learning experiences, and ultimately, a strong university brand.

Influence of Commitment on Customer Discretionary Behaviour: A Survey in Retail Sector

Retail sector is one of the fastest growing sector in Indian economy. It is the largest source of employment after agriculture and has deep penetration into rural India and generating more than 10 percent of India's GDP. Retail industry is heavily people-based, requiring interaction and coordination of customers and service providers. Due to those unique characteristics of services, customer's role in organization has become indispensable. The present study examines the factors of customer citizenship behaviour (CCB) and impact of commitment on customer citizenship behaviour. To analyze the factors, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) has been applied and later on confirmatory factor analysis conform the factors that has been explored through EFA. To measure the impact of commitment on CCB structural equation modeling technique has been used. The findings of the article provide insight into multiple helping behavior of customers which are though discretionary in nature, but help in the overall functioning of the organization.

A Survey on the Effect of Service Delivery System on Corporate Performance Using Service Profit Chain Model

One of the unique characteristics of services is that customer participate actively in service production process.In other words, every moment is the interaction between a customer and a supplier of services, that each partplays crucial role in service- based organizations. Such models have been proposed to explain this interaction,the service profit chain model. Service profit chain model offers a relation which connects organization profit,customer loyalty and service value to the employee satisfaction, productivity and ability. In this study Servicedelivery system presented by variables such as employee satisfaction, employee loyalty, the quality of servicesprovided by employees and employee capability. In The designed model customer satisfaction considered asintermediate variables impact organizational performance in service delivery systems as well as customerloyalty.The results of the analysis of field data brokerage companies in Tehran Stock Exchange showed a significanteffect of service delivery system on customer satisfaction and loyalty. The results also showed that customersatisfaction and loyalty have significant effect on the performance of brokers that are in the Tehran StockExchange. Impact of employee satisfaction and employee capabilities on customer satisfaction has beenconfirmed. And the impact of employee satisfaction, service quality and employee capability on customer loyaltyhas been confirmed.

Utilizing the brand ecosystem framework in designing branding strategies for higher education

PurposeIn today's complex and highly competitive marketplace, universities and colleges, realizing a need to develop sustainable strategies, have turned to branding as a solution. However, because of their unique service characteristics, universities' branding attempts may not always result in success. The aim of this paper is to present a brand ecosystem framework in order to develop branding strategies for colleges and universities.Design/methodology/approachThe key elements of the framework include: student experiences as the driving force of the university branding strategies, academic services as the core value creation activities in delivering student learning experiences that are co‐created with students and faculty, and supporting activities that are important in creating the core value.FindingsThe framework suggests that both core and supporting value‐creating activities are dynamically inter‐related and work jointly in creating student learning experiences, and ultimately, a strong university brand.Originality/valueThe paper presents the crucial elements and the relationships among them for building successful brands in higher education.

Application of factor analysis for service R&D classification: A case study on the Korean ICT industry

This paper introduces an application of factor analysis for classifying and illuminating the nature of distinct dimensions of service research and development (R&D) which are difficult to examine due to the unique characteristics of services. The application is based upon the concept that firms would benefit from clarifying R&D and R&D-like activities to assist their R&D decision. Using principal component analysis (PCA) of factor analysis, a number of possibly correlated R&D activities is transformed into a smaller number of uncorrelated activities called principal components, and firms can identify the patterns of service R&D, express their similarities and differences, and develop its R&D portfolio. A case example for service R&D in the Korean ICT industry is provided.

The Application of Performance Measurement in the Service Quality Concept: The Case of a Greek Service Organization

The considerable attention that customers place in the notion of the quality of services has altered the practices which service organisations make use of, in order to assess and improve their service quality. In addition, the fierce competition extending from the inter-intra industry competitors to the unique characteristics of services has strengthened even more the challenges that service firms face. In that way, enterprises have acquired the principles of performance measurement in the service quality context, in order to examine the effectiveness and efficiency not only of their internal operations, but also the customers' external perceptions. In this light, the current paper aims to provide the reader with an in-depth insight of the integration of performance measurement in the assessment and improvement of service quality. In that way, investigating the performance measurement system in the context which is occurred, the justification of its adoption, implementation and operation could be achieved. The current paper conducted under qualitative principles as well as documentary data were collected. Semi-structured interviews were employed in order valuable information to be gathered. Finally, questionnaires were applied to the company's key customers, presenting a more accurate insight of the improvement of performance indicators in service quality context.

Separable but not equal: The location determinants of discrete services offshoring activities

In this paper we explore the question of why firms offshore particular services to specific geographic locations. We draw on research related to the unique characteristics of services in trade and commerce, and more recent analyses of the transnational unbundling and spatial dispersion of business processes. We move beyond a simple assessment of the cost sensitivity or relative sophistication of offshoring services and develop a typology emphasizing the degree to which offshoring services activities are interactive, repetitive, or innovative. We suggest that the location of offshoring projects will depend on the particular mix of these attributes, and test this assertion using a data set of 595 export-oriented offshore services projects initiated from 2002 to 2005 by US and UK company parents in 45 developed and developing countries. We find that offshore location choices greatly depend on these services characteristics, and in sometimes surprising ways, and draw implications from our findings for international business theory, policy, and practice.

Improving the accuracy of expert predictions of the future success of new internet services

One of the challenging issues in new product development is the evaluation of the future success of new product initiatives and the elimination of those with unpromising futures. The difficulty of assessing the future success of a new offering is more highlighted for new services than is for new products because of the unique characteristics of services. Earlier studies suggested that a number of factors can affect the quality of evaluating the future success of new products or services. Building on previous studies, this paper offers the first empirical tests of the roles of two important factors (task structuring and expertise sharing) in improving the quality of expert predictions of the future success of new Internet services. It presents an empirical study based on a longitudinal survey that involves both the initial predictions and the actual results for two Internet services to test related hypotheses. The results showed that these factors can significantly improve the predictive accuracy of experts in evaluating new Internet services. More importantly, the results also indicated a significant substitution effect between the factors, suggesting that either of these factors is sufficient to make major improvements in the accuracy of the evaluations. Because the factors can largely substitute for each other; however, using both can lead to only minor improvements over and above using just one.

Un enfoque integrador de la elección del modo de entrada en los mercados internacionales. Una aproximación empírica en sectores de servicios

From traditional explanations of entry mode choice, this paper provides evidence about an important sector in the worldwide commerce: the service sector. Based on 174 entry mode decisions of service firms, this paper suggests the need of including some other variables of strategic nature that facilitate the understanding of a complex phenomena which is not always explained just by efficiency or value-added considerations. Additionally, our results show that some arguments used in manufacturing firms cannot be directly transferred to service firms because unique characteristics of services could condition the entry mode choice into international markets. (PUBLICATION ABSTRACT)

Information technology and the performance effect of managers’ participation in budgeting: evidence from the hotel industry

Managers in the hotel industry, compared to their counterpart in manufacturing industries, face more uncertain and complex work environment because of the hotel industry's unique service characteristics. Hotel industry managers’ budgetary participation and their use of information technology for communication may assist them in facing the uncertain and complex work environment and perform their jobs better. This paper reports the results of a study, which investigated the role of hotel managers’ use of information technology for communication (ITC) in the relationship between the managers’ perceived performance and their budgetary participation. To assess the relationship, data were collected from 74 department managers using a mailed questionnaire. The results indicate that the department managers’ perceived performance in the hotels was positively associated with the interaction of their use of the ITC and budgetary participation. Implications of the results are discussed in the paper.