Glenn B. Voss

Do Satisfied Customers Buy More? Examining Moderating Influences in a Retailing Context

In this research, the authors propose that the relationship between satisfaction and repurchase behavior is moderated by customer, relational, and marketplace characteristics. They further hypothesize that the moderating effects emerge if repurchase is measured as objective behavior but not if it is measured as repurchase intentions. To test for systematic differences in effects, the authors estimate identical models using both longitudinal repurchase measures and survey measures as the dependent variable. The results suggest that the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase behavior is contingent on the moderating effects of convenience, competitive intensity, customer involvement, and household income. As the authors predicted, the results are significantly different for self-reported repurchase intentions and objective repurchase behavior. The conceptual framework and empirical findings reinforce the importance of moderating influences and offer new insights that enhance the understanding of what drives repurchase behavior.

The Roles of Price, Performance, and Expectations in Determining Satisfaction in Service Exchanges

In this article, the authors examine the roles that price, performance, and expectations play in determining satisfaction in a discrete service exchange. The authors maintain that the price fluctua...

Strategic Orientation and Firm Performance in an Artistic Environment

Conventional marketing wisdom holds that a customer orientation provides a firm with a better understanding of its customers, which subsequently leads to enhanced customer satisfaction and firm performance. However, there are cautions that being too customer focused can lead to inertia, and anecdotal evidence suggests that it may be better to “ignore your customer” when developing new products. Building on the market orientation research stream, the authors examine the impact of three alternative strategic orientations—customer orientation, competitor orientation, and product orientation—on a variety of subjective and objective measures of performance in the nonprofit professional theater industry, which is marked by high rates of artistic innovation and largely unpredictable customer preferences. The results indicate that the association between strategic orientation and performance varies depending on the type of performance measure used. However, the most unambiguous result is that a customer orientation exhibits a negative association with subscriber ticket sales, total income, and net surplus/deficit.

Strategic Ambidexterity in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Implementing Exploration and Exploitation in Product and Market Domains

Balancing exploration and exploitation is a critical challenge that is particularly difficult for smaller, nascent organizations that lack the resources, capabilities, and experience necessary to successfully implement ambidexterity. To better understand how small and medium-sized enterprises achieve ambidexterity, we develop theoretical arguments that link organizational performance to strategic combinations of exploration and exploitation in both product and market domains. We test the hypotheses with a longitudinal study in a dynamic industry that combines objective measures of competition, firm size, age, and revenue performance with self-reported measures of product and market exploration and exploitation. The empirical results offer new insights with respect to several tensions at the heart of the ambidexterity challenge: (1) pure strategies that combine product exploration with market exploration or product exploitation with market exploitation have complementary interaction effects on revenue, (2) cross-functional ambidexterity combining product exploitation with market exploration also exerts complementary interaction effects on revenue, (3) product ambidexterity has positive effects on revenue for older and larger—but not younger and smaller—firms, and (4) market ambidexterity has positive effects on revenue for larger—but not smaller, younger, or older—firms. Two ambidexterity paradoxes emerge: (1) larger, older firms have the resources, capabilities, and experience required to benefit from a product ambidexterity strategy, but larger, older firms are less likely to implement product ambidexterity; and (2) only larger firms have the resources and capabilities required to benefit from a market ambidexterity strategy, but developing and sustaining market ambidexterity is necessary to drive long-term growth.

An empirical examination of the complex relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and stakeholder support

Purpose – This paper seeks to integrate stakeholder theory with the entrepreneurial orientation literature to explore relationships between distinct entrepreneurial behaviors and support from stakeholders with divergent interests.Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal study in the non‐profit professional theatre industry examines how relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and stakeholder support evolve over time. A series of regression analyses examine how support from diverse stakeholders influences entrepreneurial behaviors and, subsequently, how those entrepreneurial behaviors influence future stakeholder support.Findings – The findings support a multi‐dimensional conceptualization of entrepreneurial orientation, point to tensions inherent in satisfying multiple stakeholder demands, and illustrate that different stakeholders support entrepreneurial behaviors in unique and sometimes unexpected ways. The findings offer insight into the complex balancing act that entrepreneurial managers ...

How Complementarity and Substitution Alter the Customer Satisfaction-Repurchase Link

Customer satisfaction is universally acknowledged as a key driver of customer repurchase behavior, but recent evidence suggests that satisfaction has no effect on repurchase under certain circumstances. In this study, the authors develop a framework for understanding the complex relationships among satisfaction, moderating variables, and repurchase. They propose that the satisfaction–repurchase link is subject to complementary and substitute effects and present satiation and inertia as key theoretical mechanisms that explain and predict those effects. In weak-satiation purchase categories, complementary effects are more likely, which suggests that managers should invest in customer satisfaction and complementary initiatives simultaneously. In strong-satiation purchase categories, substitute effects are more likely, which suggests that managers should invest in either customer satisfaction or substitute initiatives. An empirical test combining survey and longitudinal purchase data from two categories—fashion apparel and automobile service—provides a remarkable degree of support for the propositions. The findings offer new theoretical insights and substantive guidance for managers to effectively allocate resources to initiatives that complement or substitute for customer satisfaction.

Enough Is Enough! The Fine Line in Executing Multichannel Relational Communication

In an effort to build long-term, profitable relationships, many companies systematically engage in multichannel relational communication—personalized messages sent to existing customers through various channels as part of a broader relationship marketing strategy. In this research, the authors examine three key drivers of relational communication effectiveness: volume of communication, mix of communication channels, and alignment of those channels with customers’ preferences. They hypothesize that customer response to relational communication follows a continuum in which reciprocity explains response to lower levels of communication, the classic ideal point describes a transition phase, and reactance explains response to higher levels of communication. They empirically test the theoretical framework by examining the impact of multichannel communication on repurchase over a three-year period. The results indicate that after the ideal level of communication is exceeded, customers react negatively. This negative response can be exacerbated by the use of multiple channels but attenuated by aligning channels with customer preferences. The findings suggest that the complex effects of multichannel communication can actually drive customers away from rather than closer to a company.

Implementing a relationship marketing program: a case study and managerial implications

Proposes that successful implementation of a relationship marketing program requires a complement of strategies that satisfies and motivates customers through different phases of relationship development. To accomplish this, firms simultaneously implement transactional marketing strategies and relational marketing strategies. Offers a case study of a non‐profit professional theater to demonstrate how a firm can implement multiple marketing strategies to achieve different relational objectives, and extends these findings to offer recommendations and managerial implications.

Exploring the effect of retail sector and firm characteristics on retail price promotion strategy

Abstract This study examines why retail price promotion strategies vary across retail sectors and across firms within sectors. Using hierarchical linear modeling and a sample of 38 firms from 11 retail sectors, the authors investigate how two sector-level characteristics, related to product assortment perishability and heterogeneity, and three firm-level characteristics, related to retailer differentiation, number of stores, and average store size, influence price promotion decisions. The results indicate that assortment heterogeneity moderates the positive influence of perishability on price promotion activity; scale and scope also have significant effects. These results offer fresh insight into the ongoing debate surrounding stable versus promotional pricing, suggesting that the benefits of a particular strategy are driven largely by a complex interaction between sector-level characteristics as well as firm-level cost advantages.

Formulating interesting research questions

The result is that academic research is perceived as irrelevant and incremental and is rarely read. It should come as no surprise that the academic review process is viewed as flawed. The evaluation and production of new ideas is, at best, an ill-structured problem, and market failure in this process is universally evident. For example, the television and film industries spend billions to develop, evaluate, and distribute new concepts. Publishers search for promising new authors and manuscripts. Advertisers create new images and messages. The success rate for these various efforts is underwhelming. And we the public see only the small percentage of ideas that survive the review and evaluation process. The programming of academic research is unique in that the audience for new ideas also plays the role of producer and reviewer. Thus, unlike television programming where my only option is either to watch or not, I read academic journals, participate in the review process, and occasionally contribute content as an author. In all of these capacities, I am excited by research that is interesting, which I define as research that makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge. Unfortunately, as a reviewer, I frequently read papers that are not interesting, and even the authors are hard-pressed to clearly articulate the study’s contribution. Thus, although the review process at many scholarly journals may have deficiencies, an equal or greater problem is that many of the submissions at these journals fail to make interesting contributions. With that in mind, I will endeavor to offer suggestions on how to formulate more interesting research questions. The formulation of an interesting research question is a necessary first step to conducting successful research. When this first step is done poorly, the research is doomed to mediocrity. But “being interesting” is a tacit skill that is hard to define or teach (see Davis 1971; Zaltman, LeMasters, and Heffering 1982). We easily recognize when something is interesting (and even more easily when it is not!), but it is difficult to articulate what makes something interesting.