Jean-Charles Chebat

The Impact of Empowerment on Customer Contact Employees’ Roles in Service Organizations

A pilot study was conducted to test a hierarchical model in which empowerment of contact personnel is presented as an antecedent condition to role conflict, role ambiguity, adaptability, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction. The latter are, in turn, presented as antecedents to helping behaviors directed at customers. The model is structured on three interfaces: employee-manager, employee-role, and employee-customer. The data were collected in six branches of the same bank in a major North American city. Results reveal that empowerment is a very efficacious managerial control tool in that it significantly affects the behavior and attitudinal dispositions of boundary-spanning service employees. Specifically, role ambiguity emerges as the most influential variable in the employee-role interface, and employee adaptability is a highly determining factor for the delivery of effective role-prescribed and extra-role performances. Implications for the management of customer-contact service employees and directions for further research are discussed.

Linking Retail Strategy, Atmospheric Design and Shopping Behaviour

Although not usually recognized in the published work in retail atmospherics, the environment created by retail managers is an important strategic variable. Most of the work in atmospherics has focused on consumer reactions to environments while the strategic dimensions of this decision have largely been ignored. The present paper explores this gap by focusing on the managerial dimensions of store atmosphere by linking retail strategies and atmospheric design with consumer behaviours and issues. This discussion underscores the necessity for retail managers to have specific goals for the atmosphere in mind before creating a store design since the retail environment is capable of eliciting a wide range of behaviours from consumers.

Silent Voices Why Some Dissatisfied Consumers Fail to Complain

Although noncomplaining dissatisfied consumers represent a vast majority of the dissatisfied consumers, they have not yet received adequate attention from marketing researchers. To understand the paradoxical combination of dissatisfaction and absence of complaint, the authors use the Lazarus cognitive-emotive model of coping with situational challenge. They added a moderator, the Seeking Redress Propensity (SRP) to this model and then developed a theoretical model and a set of hypotheses. A sample of consumers who had experienced a negative incident with the bank were administered a questionnaire by telephone. The sample was designed in such a way that half of them had complained and half had not. It was found that SRP is a significant moderator. In addition, SRP is shown to be strongly related to the likelihood of complaining. Lazarus’s model is basically supported, mostly for the customers scoring higher on SRP. Theoretical and managerial implications are proposed.

Environmental background music and in-store selling

Abstract Retailers use background music in order to enhance the atmosphere of their stores. The present study shows, as predicted by the proposed model, that the effects of music on attitudes toward the store, the salesperson, and the visit to the store are moderated by cognitive processes (number of thoughts and depth of information processing), whereas previous studies focused on emotional moderators. Soothing music (i.e., both pleasant and low arousing) is shown, as predicted, to increase cognitive activity when other cognitive stimulation is low (mainly when sales arguments are weak). However, retailers are warned that enhancing cognitive activity is no panacea since it is found here that higher cognitive activity is associated with lower attitudes. It is proposed that music fit with the store may explain such results. Music fit and cognitive processed triggered by store music are strongly suggested as avenues of store atmospherics research.

Value Strategy Rather Than Quality Strategy: A Case of Business-to-Business Professional Services

Abstract How do organizational customers assess professional services? The present study aims at evaluating the respective effects of three strategic variables, which are often confused—namely, quality, value, and satisfaction, on organizational customers’ behavioral intention to buy professional services from engineering consultants. Hypotheses derived from the existing literature are tested through a causal model (EQS procedure). Results show that competence, reliability, and communication are good indicators of quality, and that quality does not influence satisfaction; however, value, which is determined by both quality and total price, affects satisfaction; finally intent to buy (or rebuy) services is a function of satisfaction. These results lead to a reconsideration of the service evaluation models, both in theoretical and practical terms.

Interactive effects of musical and visual cues on time perception: an application to waiting lines in banks.

This study explores the interactive effects of musical and visual cues on time perception in a specific situation, that of waiting in a bank. Videotapes are employed to simulate the situation; a 2 × 3 factorial design (N = 427) is used: 2 (high vs low) amounts of visual information and 2 (fast vs slow) levels of musical tempo in addition to a no-music condition. Two mediating variables are tested in the relation between the independent variables (musical and visual ones) and the dependent variable (perceived waiting time), mood and attention. Results of multivariate analysis of variance and a system of simultaneous equations show that musical cues and visual cues have no symmetrical effects: the musical tempo has a global (moderating) effect on the whole structure of the relations between dependent, independent, and mediating variables but has no direct influence on time perception. The visual cues affect time perception, the significance of which depends on musical tempo. Also, the “Resource Allocation Model of Time Estimation” predicts the attention-time relation better than Ornsteins “storage-size theory.” Mood state serves as a substitute for time information with slow music, but its effects are cancelled with fast music.

Cross-cultural mall shopping values and habitats: A comparison between English- and French-speaking Canadians

Immigrants gaining economic security tend to reinforce—not relinquish—their ethnic identification [Halter M. Shopping for identity: the marketing of ethnicity. New York: Schoken Books, 2000. p. 256.]. Shopping is one avenue where people affirm themselves. Mall shopping has become an expression of personal values. In this research, the authors investigate shopping values [J. Consum. Res. 20 (1994) 644.] and mall activities [J. Retailing 70 (1994) 20.] in a bicultural environment. The study focuses on English- and French Canadian mall shoppers. The two constructs are first subjected to invariant factorial analyses for measurement equivalence. Subsequently, English- and French Canadian shoppers are tested for invariant latent means on the shopping value and the mall habitat scales. As hypothesized, French Canadian mall shoppers are more hedonistic than English Canadians. In this specific setting, English- and French Canadians have similar shopping mall behaviors.

Person-Place Congruency The Interactive Effects of Shopper Style and Atmospherics on Consumer Expenditures

A person-place congruency framework is proposed that predicts more affectively charged atmospherics, such as background music, will positively affect impulsive shoppers, whereas atmospherics that tend to facilitate more cognitive consumer processing, such as ambient scent, will positively affect contemplative shoppers. Expectations are supported in a large-scale field study (N = 774).

What makes contact employees perform? Reactions to employee perceptions of managerial practices

Which type of managerial control makes bank contact employees more likely to perform so called prosocial behavior toward their customers (i.e. behaviors which contribute to the bank’s positive image, perceived good service and customers’ satisfaction)? Four types of formal controls are considered here: training, behavioral control, pay administration and managerial orientation. An empirical study performed in six branches of a charter bank shows that pay management has the strongest effect on service employee prosocial behavior. Training also affects prosocial behavior significantly, but not as strongly as does perceived pay fairness. In addition it is shown that pay is the primary contributor to these employees’ perceived workplace fairness.

Service quality and service productivity management practices

Abstract This article reports the results of empirical research on service quality and service productivity management practices. The objective of the research is to gain a better understanding of these practices through a comparative analysis of large and small businesses, of firms delivering services to organizations and to consumers, and of unionized and nonunionized firms. A second objective is to correlate these practices to two performance variables: financial results and perceived customer satisfaction. The most frequent practices have been identified. Various quality practices are associated with customer satisfaction but not with financial results. Productivity practices are less popular than quality practices, but some are related to both financial results and customer satisfaction. An important problem is that quality has been defined and redefined in many ways that often embody elements of productivity.