Alexander Reppel

Online community: enhancing the relationship marketing concept through customer bonding

Purpose – To revisit relationship marketing in the context of the digital economy.Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a conceptual framework (the customer bonding triangle) that enables greater understanding of the contributions of service delivery and online communities in the development of bonds in interactive relationships. The function of the three key elements of the framework (namely service value, technical infrastructure and interactivity) in enabling bonding via internet communities, is developed.Findings – Suggests that firms rethink the role and nature of the consumer and that in order to facilitate bonding firms must make use of systems that are tightly integrated yet can also incorporate flexibility to help develop better understanding amongst participants.Originality/value – Provides a framework to help understand key elements in interactive relationships.

The iPod phenomenon: identifying a market leader's secrets through qualitative marketing research

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to explore the potential for learning from customers of a market leader through qualitative marketing research.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents findings from a study that applies a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. An online variation of an existing qualitative research method is proposed.Findings – The results suggest that the proposed method can be transferred successfully to an online environment and combines the effectiveness of qualitative research with the efficiency of quantitative research.Research limitations/implications – A general problem with online research is that it excludes all individuals who are not online. Moreover, the results are limited by the nature of the sample, which only includes German‐speaking respondents. Finally, further research should investigate the differences in depth between responses of online‐ and offline‐conducted interviews.Practical implications – Offers a relatively inexpensive yet ef...

Designing and conducting online interviews to investigate interesting consumer phenomena

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to thoroughly explain how qualitative researchers can design and conduct online interviews to investigate interesting consumer phenomena.Design/methodology/approach – A semi‐standardized qualitative technique called laddering was applied successfully to an online environment. Laddering allows researchers to reach deeper levels of reality and to reveal the reasons behind the reasons. A web survey that included an opinion leadership scale filled in by 2,472 people served as a springboard for identifying possible participants for the online laddering interviews. In total, 22 online interviews were conducted with opinion leaders in the specific product field of digital music players such as Apples iPod.Findings – Conducting online interviews enabled information to be gathered from an interesting group of respondents that would have been difficult to contact otherwise. The whole online interviewing process was convenient for respondents who did not have to leave their ho...

Understanding the characteristics of effective professors: the student's perspective

Increasingly, higher education institutions are realising that higher education could be regarded as a business-like service industry and they are beginning to focus more on meeting or even exceeding the needs of their students. Recent research findings suggest that the factors that create student satisfaction with teaching (‘teaching satisfiers’) may be qualitatively differently from the factors that create dissatisfaction with teaching. Thus, this research uses the Kano methodology to reveal the characteristics of professors that students take for granted (‘Must-be factors’) and that have the potential to delight them (‘Excitement factors’). Kano questionnaires containing 19 attributes of effective professors taken from previous studies and focus group discussions were handed out in two marketing courses to 63 postgraduate students enrolled in a service marketing course. The Kano results corroborate previous US findings that revealed the importance of personality in general and support studies that stress the importance of professors creating rapport with their students in particular.

Investigating the influence of professor characteristics on student satisfaction and dissatisfaction: a comparative study

This research uses the Kano model of satisfaction to investigate professor characteristics that create student satisfaction as well as those attributes that can cause their dissatisfaction. Kano questionnaires were handed out to 104 undergraduate students at a university in the Southwest and to 147 undergraduate students at a university in the Midwest of the United States. The two resulting Kano maps show the same delighting attributes although other satisfaction attributes are also similar. The findings reveal the importance of the personality of professors and the characteristics of professors that (a) are desired by students, (b) are not desired by students, (c) affect student satisfaction the most, and (d) affect satisfaction the least. The results also demonstrate how professors and universities can focus attention on those attributes most likely to influence satisfaction. No attributes of professors are classified as basic or taken for granted factors by students, although three attributes are excitement factors that have the potential to delight students. The findings illustrate that there is a set of multiple attributes that professors need to possess for satisfying student–professor classroom service encounters. Student populations appear to show strong similarities in their preferences for characteristics of professors that lead to satisfaction and dissatisfaction outcomes.

Which classroom service encounters make students happy or unhappy?: Insights from an online CIT study

Purpose – This paper aims to explore satisfactory and dissatisfactory student‐professor encounters in higher education from a students perspective. The critical incident technique (CIT) is used to categorise positive and negative student‐professor interactions and to reveal quality dimensions of professors.Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory study using an online application of the well‐established CIT method was conducted. The study took place at a large European university. A total of 96 students took part in the study on a voluntary basis and reported 164 incidents. Respondents were aged between 19 and 24 years (x=23.2) and slightly more female students (52 per cent) filled in the online CIT questionnaire than male students (48 per cent). On average, every student provided 1.7 incidents.Findings – The results of the critical incident sorting process support previous classification systems that used three major groups to thoroughly represent the domain of (un)satisfactory student‐professor enc...

Complaint resolution management expectations in an asymmetric business-to-business context

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the attributes of effective complaint management in business‐to‐business relationships, and to reveal the underlying benefits that buying organizations are looking for when complaining.Design/methodology/approach – A semi‐standardized qualitative technique called laddering was applied successfully to an online environment with 22 representatives of companies in the manufacturing industry participating.Findings – The resulting hierarchical value map displays 13 attributes which exemplify the complaint resolution management expectations. A total of 14 constructs represent consequences of such resolution activities, while four constructs can be interpreted as values. Take “Quick action” is the most important of the expected attributes and behaviours of complaint resolution management. Four consequences seem to dominate the assessment: Financial benefits, Prevention of future problems, Solution, and Effective resolution handling. “Mainta...

Consumer-managed profiling: a contemporary interpretation of privacy in buyer–seller interactions

Abstract The rapid commercial evolution of the World Wide Web has resulted in an environment where consumers engage directly with businesses in a variety of ways and levels of interactivity. This has resulted in a conflict between the need for identifying individual consumers in buyer–seller interactions through the use of personal data and their desire to protect this personal data. This paper contributes to the discussion of new developments in online marketing by investigating the potential for a profiling system managed by individual consumers with a view to allowing role-specific privacy. Challenging the accepted notion of organisations being the sole managers of data about individuals, the research starts from the hypothetical point where individual consumers manage and distribute their own data. Using the means–end approach, an initial survey was followed by in-depth interviews and a self-completion questionnaire. These were analysed according to a variation of the laddering interview technique. Benefits and concerns raised by respondents are discussed and a consumer-managed profiling system is introduced that could overcome the conflict between the need for consumers to participate in contemporary societies and their desire to seek projection from the unnecessary collection of their personal data.

Analysing the preferred characteristics of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints: A cross‐national Kano study

Purpose – This paper seeks to use the Kano model to gain a deeper understanding of attributes of effective frontline employees dealing with customer complainants in personal interactions. Previous research revealed that excitement factors deteriorate to basic factors over time. This research aims to investigate whether the same phenomenon holds true for attributes of service employees.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using Kano questionnaires from 272 respondents with complaining experience in the UK and Saudi Arabia, these being two countries at different stages of service sector development.Findings – The analysis of the Kano questionnaires for the UK reveals that complaining customers take the contact employees ability to listen carefully for granted. The Kano results for Saudi Arabia clearly indicate that complaining customers are (still) easier to delight than their UK counterparts.Research limitations/implications – Even though the study has a sample size similar to several existin...

Service recovery in higher education: Does national culture play a role?

Abstract It is now well recognised that an effective service-recovery system plays a crucial role in service organisations. However, the importance of such systems has not yet been acknowledged by the higher-education industry. Given the need for more research on service-recovery expectations of students, this exploratory study attempts to shed light on what students believe to be the desirable attributes of professors during recovery encounters. To investigate how national culture influences student expectations during such encounters, 40 students from the UK and Bangladesh were interviewed and 210 questionnaires were completed by students. Using the semi-standardised laddering interviewing technique in combination with Kano questionnaires, the study provides an in-depth insight into the qualities and behaviours that students expect professors to portray during service-recovery encounters. The research reveals that the key attributes desired by both groups of students include being approachable, listening actively, showing empathy and providing an explanation. Among a wide range of benefits, students link these attributes to enhanced teacher–student relationship, better academic performance and at a more abstract level, to desired end-states such as harmony and well-being.