Christine Ennew

Impact of Participative Service Relationships on Quality, Satisfaction and Retention: An Exploratory Study

Abstract Within any service there is scope for considerable variation in the degrees to which both parties become involved in the relationship; beyond a certain minimum level, customers and service providers may be more or less participative. However, participative behavior should yield benefits. Customers who are more willing to share information and develop closer personal contacts might be expected to benefit in terms of a higher quality of service provision, because the provider will be more knowledgeable about their needs and expectations. Similarly, greater degrees of participation by the service provider should enhance customer awareness of the ways in which the supplier operates and, in turn, should result in more realistic expectations of what the supplier can offer. Thus, it can be argued that the extent to which both parties participate in a relationship will affect the perceived quality of the service provided; this, in turn, is expected to make an impact on overall satisfaction and customer retention. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of the relationships between relationship participation, quality, satisfaction, and retention using data from over 1,200 small firms. The results highlight the importance of participative behavior, particularly on the part of the service provider, in explaining perceived quality and satisfaction; in turn, satisfaction is found to be an important influence on retention. The direct impact of participation on retention is found to be weak.

The adoption of Internet financial services: a qualitative study

Examines the case of the consumer adoption of Internet financial services, which may be viewed as an innovation in service delivery. The qualitative study employed Rogers’ model of perceived innovation attributes is augmented by Bauer’s concept of perceived risk. The perceived innovation attributes were found to be important determinants of consumers’ adoption decisions. However, two additional dimensions were found to influence people’s adoption decisions, highlighting the complexity of the adoption decision for Internet financial services.

Modelling consumer choice of distribution channels: an illustration from financial services

With channels of distribution changing rapidly and multi‐channeling becoming increasingly widespread, studies of consumers will need to focus not just on understanding product choice, but also on understanding the reasons for channel choice. Although the choice of individual channels and the adoption of new channels has been researched, there is little to suggest that we have a more general understanding of why consumers, although purchasing essentially similar products, use some channels rather than others. Using the example of financial services, where multi‐channeling has been the norm for some time, this paper reports on an exploratory study to identify those factors which influence channel choice. Based on the results of focus group discussions, the paper argues that channel choice in financial service can usefully be conceptualised as being determined by consumer, product channel and organisational characteristics, with product‐channel interactions and consumer‐channel interactions being particularly important.

The impact of perceived justice on consumers' emotional responses to service complaint experiences

Purpose – Emotional responses to complaint experiences have received limited research interest. The current paper seeks to address this gap by considering the role of perceived justice in the elicitation of differential emotions following complaint‐handling experiences.Design/methodology/approach – Service scenario scripts were devised to depict a complaint‐handling encounter in relation to holiday check‐in arrangements. The scripts, which varied in terms of levels of interactional, procedural and distributive justice, were presented to a total of 384 respondents. Respondents were asked to imagine themselves as the person in the scenario and to indicate the extent to which different emotional adjectives described their reaction to the complaint‐handling encounter.Findings – Analyses of variance (ANOVA) revealed that perceived justice evaluations were predictive of the type of emotion (i.e. positive or negative) elicited.Research limitations/implications – Existing theoretical frameworks focus primarily on...

Importance‐Performance Analysis and the Measurement of Service Quality

The intangibility of services presents a number of problems for the measurement of quality and customer satisfaction. Proposes a simple index which can be applied to ordinal or cardinal data and will provide a convenient aggregate summary of the extent to which a product or service meets consumer expectations. The index, though simple, is robust, and is applied to the problem of analysing the quality of banking services provided to small firms in the United Kingdom.

Growing Firms and the Credit Constraint

Restricted access to finance (either debt or equity or both) is potentially a significant constraint on the growth of small businesses. Financing problems arise primarily as a consequence of information asymmetries; the adverse effects of these may in part be counteracted by the use of collateral as a signalling and bonding mechanism and/or by the development of a good working relationship between lender and borrower. If the form of information asymmetry differs for growth firms or if the effects of information asymmetries are less easily ameliorated then growing firms may be more adversely affected by credit constraints. If growth is contingent upon access to credit then the generalised implications for the economy may be significant and detrimental. Using evidence from a survery of over 6,000 firms conducted in 1992, this paper addresses the extent to which growth firms are adversely affected by a credit constraint; the results suggest that the credit constraint for growing firms per se is no greater but growth firms may still experience a credit constraint as a consequence of their relative youth. However, there is evidence to suggest that firms expecting to grow in the future do perceive a rather tighter credit constraint but this may be partly or wholly offset by a generally better relationship with their bank.

Trust, ethics and relationship satisfaction

The development of effective customer relationships is increasingly recognised as an important component of marketing strategies, particularly in the case of service industries. Developing and maintaining satisfactory customer relationships can help to reduce perceived risk, reduce transactions costs, increase customer loyalty and customer retention and thus impact on organisational performance. From the customer’s perspective, the determinants of relationship satisfaction are thought to include factors such as customer orientation, trust, length of relationship, expertise and ethics. Provides further evidence on the cognitive antecedents of relationship satisfaction based on evidence from the financial services sector.

Business‐to‐business relationship quality

Although relationship quality is recognized as a central construct in the relationship marketing literature, relatively little attention has been paid to the issues of: the dimensions of relationship quality, and the directional relationship between relationship quality and related service evaluation outcomes. This study seeks to provide alternative conceptualization of business‐to‐business relationship quality based on the well‐established IMP interaction model and to clarify the relationship between relationship quality and service quality. The findings from an empirical study, support the hypothesis that relationship quality, defined as a higher‐order construct of cooperation, adaptation, and atmosphere, has a positive impact on service quality.

Applying the technology acceptance model to the online retailing of financial services

– Extant research has examined consumer acceptance of the internet in various contexts mainly as a dichotomy (adoption/non‐adoption), thus ignoring the process underlying adoption. This paper aims to provide insights into factors determining the extent to which an innovation is adopted., – The paper reviews the literature on the technology acceptance model (TAM), and justifies the use of this model to explore the factors contributing to the extent to which consumers use the internet as a distribution channel for financial services (FS). Data are collected through telephone interviews with 300 UK consumers responding to a questionnaire., – The application of the TAM model is helpful but additional links need to be included. The key drivers of extent of use are past experience with the internet as a purchasing channel (for non‐FS) and attitudinal aspects, i.e. positive emotions towards the internet as a distribution channel for FS. Insecurity about this channel does not appear to be an obstacle and perceived usefulness is not directly linked to extent of use but fully mediated via attitude towards the channel. Consumers with computer access from home, those with an active interest in FS, as well as consumers who have general online purchasing experience tend to find this channel easy to use, which, jointly with perceived usefulness, leads to a positive attitude toward this distribution channel., – The findings are limited to the FS online retail context and may not be generalisable beyond this context. Future research should be considered using a longitudinal approach., – FS retail providers should consider prior experience with the internet as a distribution channel and product category involvement as segmentation bases, and also provide more opportunities for consumers to try and observe the internet as a distribution channel., – This research explores the determinants of consumer acceptance of online retailing from a process‐based rather than a binary view of adoption of an innovation.

Information Asymmetries and the Provision of Finance to Small Firms

Dr M. R. Binks and G.V. Reed are with the department of economics, nottingham university, England, and C.T. Ennew with the Department of industrial economics of the same university. Ascertaining the risk associated with the provision of external finance to small firms involves the collection of considerable amounts of external fiance to small firms involves the collection of considrable amounts of inforation. The cost incurred in this process are sufficient to cause both an equity and a debt gap. Mainstream econmic therorists are divided as to whetehr the inforatmion asymmetries concerened cause an under or an over-supply of credit. This paper outlines the main elements of the eimpact of asymmetries concrened cause an under of over supply of credit.idicates the tendency of a cpaital as opposed to an incoming-generting approach to loan evaluation to emerge as a natural default process by United Kingdom banks. Although identifying the anture of asymmetries in practice is very difficult. it is important to make attempts to do so in order to guide and monitor progress in theri removal .the authors explain how a measure of demand, supply and attainment quality, with respect.The result illustrate tehrrelative experience of firms by sector, size and growth rate and reveal the possiblity tha those firms most in need of a prospectus based approach may be least well placed to receive it.