Carol W. DeMoranville

Organizational citizenship behavior and service quality

What is the best way for service organizations to evaluate and motivate service employees so that customers are retained and new customers are attracted? What motivates service employees to deliver high quality service? Are there actions a service organization can take, e.g. way of evaluating, training, and rewarding employees, which encourage them to perform to the organization’s advantage? Answers to these questions would enable a service organization to formulate a system that links human resource management policies to desired service employee performance, thus enhancing customer perceptions of service quality and organizational financial outcomes. This research investigated organizational citizenship behavior, with its framework of organizational rights and responsibilities, to explore these issues. The research shows that service employee perceptions of how they are treated by the service organization, i.e. what organizational rights they receive, are positively associated with organizational citizenship behaviors. Furthermore, it demonstrates that these behaviors result in more effective service delivery to organizational standards and enhanced customer perceptions of service quality.

Question order effects in measuring service quality

Abstract Service quality measurement plays an important role in assessing service performance, diagnosing service problems, managing service delivery, and determining employee and corporate rewards. This study examined question order effects on service quality measurement of three services, banking, hair salons, and dental services. We found assimilation effects for overall service quality items in banking and hair salons, and contrast effects for specific questions (SERVQUAL) in banking. Furthermore, the difference in SERVQUAL means was the result of changes in the performance items, not the expectations items. The results highlight the importance of academic researchers and practitioners considering question order when designing and administering service quality questionnaires. Future research should examine the generalizability of these results across other service industries.

Cross‐Functional Business Programs: Critical Design and Development Considerations

Well‐documented corporate demands for crossfunctionally competent employees have instigated a wide variety of efforts by the educational community to integrate business curricula. Many colleges and universities struggle to functionally integrate business programs that historically have been delivered by well‐defined, and often well‐siloed, disciplines. Drawing from the numerous published and unpublished case studies of cross‐functional integration attempts, this study develops a framework of critical issues to consider when developing an integrated program. The framework develops five major categories of issues (strategic, leadership, administrative, faculty, and student) to help universities identify typical program decisions and potential roadblocks that may inhibit the development of a successful program.

The Delivery of an Undergraduate, Cross-Functional Business Principles Program: One University's Continuing Journey

Managerial attention continues to focus on the critical and continuing need for business organizations to develop effective cross-functional teams and cross-functional skills among individual employees. Based upon significant input from both the business and academic communities, a large, mid-western university has developed, introduced, and modified a cross-functionally-integrated undergraduate business principles program. The revolutionary program has evolved into an exercise in continuous improvement stemming from student, faculty, and administrative input. This study provides a description of the programs chronology and reports an analysis of student perceptions identified in a series of student assessments. Valuable insights and implications are provided to those at other institutions who are either contemplating or are in development of a functionally-integrated undergraduate business core curriculum.

Using question order for predictive service quality measures

Purpose – Previous research shows that question order affects responses, but does not indicate which order is more accurate. This study aims to examine the effect of three question orders on measurements of SERVQUAL and global quality in an effort to determine which order produced the most predictive measures.Design/methodology/approach – Three forms of a survey were randomly distributed to users of different services; banking, dental services, and hair salons. Correlation with intention of future interaction was used to identify the order that resulted in the most predictive quality measure.Findings – The paper finds that correlations with intention of future interaction were highest for SERVQUAL in the global‐SERVQUAL order, but highest for the global quality measure in the random order.Research limitation/implications – This study indicates that practitioners and academicians should order questionnaire items differently depending on how the results will be used and which type of measure, specific or gl...

Price Elasticity of Per-Credit-Hour Tuition Charges and the Effects on Four-Year Graduation Rates.

ABSTRACT Colleges and universities are faced with the necessity of raising tuition rates to meet the ever increasing costs of providing higher education. How those increases are marketed may influence the typical negative impact such increases have on enrollments. This study examines whether changing tuition rates to a sliding scale based on the number of credit hours taken will increase four-year graduation rates. Other factors that influence four-year graduation rates are also examined. The results indicate that a sliding tuition rate scale does not increase four-year graduation rates. The authors suggest that emphasizing value may make tuition increases more palatable.

Incorporating Social Marketing into an Introductory Marketing Course Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Case Study

Today there is general agreement that social marketing aims to benefit society by changing the behavior of individuals through the application of traditional marketing principles (Kotler & Lee, 2008; Andreasen, 2002). Social marketing attempts to improve society by focusing on behaviors that protect i) the health and safety of individuals (e.g., smoking cessation), ii) the environment (e.g., water conservation), or iii) community well-being (e.g., literacy). Social marketing encompasses all of the activities central to commercial marketing, for example, market segmentation, consideration of environmental forces, and strategies centered on the 4Ps (Andreasen, 2002). It differs from commercial marketing, however, by focusing on social rather than financial gain, and on behavior change rather than goods and services. In social marketing, competition arises from competing behaviors rather than from providers of similar goods and services. Social marketing also requires different skill sets. Because social marketing often attempts to promote behavior that individuals do not want to perform (e.g., reducing water use), long-term effort and special levels of commitment are required to achieve social marketing goals. These important differences suggest that marketing students need to understand social marketing to appreciate the full scope of marketing. Incorporating social marketing into core marketing curricula provides students with a more complete understanding of the breadth of marketing. It also affords students a unique opportunity to wed interests in business with concerns for society.

Identifying the Accuracy of Service Quality Measures: The Effects of Question Order

This study examined the effect of three question orders on measurements of SERVQUAL and global quality. Means for both SERVQUAL and global quality were highest in a random order. Correlations with future intentions were highest for SERVQUAL in the global-SERVQUAL order, and highest for the global quality measure in the random order. Practitioners and academicians may need to order questionnaire items differently depending upon how the results will be used.

Order Bias in the Application of the Servqual Instrument

Service quali1y questionnaires were administered using the same questions presented in different orders. Results indicate that questionnaire order affects both the relationships among service quality constructs and the factor structure of SERVQUAL.

Reality Education: The Marketing Apprentice

Rarely in the halls of academia would you ever hear, “I’d take this course even if it had no credits!” That is what students said about our Marketing Apprentice Class (The MAC), an active learning course modeled after the television show, The Apprentice. The class had teams of students compete against each other on various marketing tasks, which were judged by alumni CEOs, expert judges, and faculty advisors. Media students filmed the marketing teams performing tasks and in the board room. The course was an unqualified success in teaching students to apply marketing concepts to real business problems, and strengthening ties with alumni and the business community.