Jillian C. Sweeney

Consumer perceived value: The development of a multiple item scale

Abstract Value creation is widely discussed in the practitioner literature and is often a part of organizations’ mission statements and objectives. It is seen by many commentators as the key to long-term success, with Albrecht (1992 , p 7) arguing that “the only thing that matters in the new world of quality is delivering customer value.” Despite this emphasis, little research has addressed the value construct itself and there is no well-accepted value measure, even in the retail environment in which customers evaluate products before purchase. The present research project describes the development of a 19-item measure, PERVAL, that can be used to assess customers’ perceptions of the value of a consumer durable good at a brand level. The measure was developed for use in a retail purchase situation to determine what consumption values drive purchase attitude and behavior. Four distinct, value dimensions emerged that were termed emotional, social, quality/performance and price/value for money. The reliability and validity of the scale was assessed in a prepurchase situation, using exploratory and confirmatory analyses. All four value dimensions were found to help significantly in explaining attitudes and behavior. The scale was also tested in a postpurchase situation and found to be both reliable and valid in this context as well. The PERVAL scale has a variety of potential applications and can serve as a framework for further empirical research in this important area.

A Hierarchical Model of Health Service Quality: Scale Development and Investigation of an Integrated Model

This research developed and empirically validated a multidimensional hierarchical scale for measuring health service quality and investigated the scales ability to predict important service outcomes, namely, service satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Data were collected from a qualitative study and three different field studies of health care patients in two different health care contexts: oncology clinics and a general medical practice. Service quality was found to conform to the structure of the hierarchical model in all three samples. The research identified nine subdimensions driving four primary dimensions, which in turn were found to drive service quality perceptions. The primary dimensions were interpersonal quality, technical quality, environment quality, and administrative quality. The subdimensions were interaction, relationship, outcome, expertise, atmosphere, tangibles, timeliness, operation, and support. The findings also support the hypothesis that service quality has a significant impact on service satisfaction and behavioral intentions and that service quality mediates the relationship between the dimensions and intentions.

Health Care Customer Value Cocreation Practice Styles

This article explores in-depth what health care customers actually do when they cocreate value. Combining previously published research with data collected from depth interviews, field observation, and focus groups, the authors identify distinct styles of health care customer value cocreation practice. Importantly, the authors show how customers can contribute to their own value creation through their own (self) activities in managing their health care. Building on past work in service-dominant (S-D) logic, consumer culture theory and social practice theory, the authors identify “roles,” “activities,” and “interactions” that underlie customer cocreation of value in health care. The authors uncover five groupings of customer value cocreation practices yielding a typology of practice styles and link these to quality of life. The practice styles are “team management,” “insular controlling,” “partnering,” “pragmatic adapting,” and “passive compliance.” Two in particular, team management and partnering, should be encouraged by managers as they tend to be associated with higher quality of life. The authors provide a health care Customer Value Cocreation Practice Styles (CVCPS) typology. The usefulness of the typology is demonstrated by showing links to quality of life and its potential application to other health care settings.

The role of cognitions and emotions in the music‐approach‐avoidance behavior relationship

This study extends the Mehrabian‐Russell environmental psychology model to include both emotional states and cognitive processing as mediators of the music‐intended behavior relationship. Our model specifically suggests that music affects customers’ perceptions of service quality and merchandise quality as well as feelings of arousal and pleasure, in the context of a women’s fashion store. The effect of music on service quality has not previously received much attention. In addition, it has been suggested that previous results of studies examining the effect of music on consumer responses may have been largely the result of individual music tastes. In the present study, therefore, the effect of music tastes is also examined. Findings indicated that liking of music has a major effect on consumers’ evaluations (pleasure, arousal, service quality and merchandise quality), while the music characteristics (specifically slow pop or fast classical) have an additional effect on pleasure and service quality. Further, pleasure, service quality and merchandise quality affected intended approach behaviors, and arousal contributed to these behaviors when the store environment was considered pleasant. Affiliation behaviors similarly resulted from service quality, pleasure and arousal, but not merchandise quality. Overall results indicate the importance of understanding the effect of music on both consumers’ internal evaluations as well as intended behaviors.

Cognitive dissonance after purchase: A multidimensional scale

The concept of cognitive dissonance has been discussed widely in the consumer behavior literature, yet paradoxically, there is no well established scale to measure it. This article describes the development of a 22-item scale for assessing cognitive dissonance immediately after purchase. First, the article discusses the conceptualization of the construct, recognizing that dissonance is not only cognitive in nature, but also has an emotional component, consistent with Festinger’s early description of dissonance as a psychologically uncomfortable state. The procedures used to develop and refine the scale are subsequently described. This included a qualitative study to generate the items and two samples for each stage of the quantitative stages of scale refinement. Evidence of the scale’s sound psychometric properties, including its reliability, validity and factor structure is given. 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Festinger (1957) described cognitive dissonance as a psychologically uncomfortable state that motivates a person to reduce that dissonance. Following Festinger’s early work, dissonance has been discussed in a

Word of mouth: measuring the power of individual messages

Purpose – Word‐of‐mouth (WOM) marketing has become a key focus for many organisations. However, little research has sought to identify the dimensionality of WOM. The present research project aims to describe the development of a 12‐item measure that can be used to assess WOM at an individual message level for positive and negative WOM and among givers and receivers of WOM.Design/methodology/approach – The research includes four studies, a qualitative focus group phase and quantitative phases involving surveys of over 2,000 consumers representing givers and receivers of positive and negative WOM.Findings – Three distinct dimensions emerged. Two (cognitive content and richness of content) reflect the composition of the message, while the third, termed strength of delivery, reflects the manner of delivery. The scale has strong psychometric properties and was found to be generalisable in the four contexts – sending positive/negative messages and receiving positive/negative messages.Research limitations/implic...

Service quality attribute weights: How do novice and longer-term customers construct service quality perceptions

Service experiences often unfold over a series of consumption episodes, yet customer perceptions of these experiences are often treated as static events. This prevents a good understanding of the impact of consumption stage on service perceptions. Prior research reveals little about the variation in the salience of service quality attributes between novice and longer-term customers, especially in terms of contribution to overall service quality perceptions or about the effect of service quality and service satisfaction on behavioral intentions across consumption stages. This study examines these issues using cohort analysis within the context of ongoing health care services. Results indicate that the contribution of attributes to overall service quality differs across novice and longer-term customer cohorts, as does the interrelationship of service quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. These findings have important implications for managing service processes, improving service provider performance, and enhancing customer service.

Customer empowerment and relationship outcomes in healthcare consultations

Purpose – Several trends such as improved access to health care information via the internet, the growth of self‐help groups and expenditure on alternative medicine signals consumers are taking an active role in their own health management. Chronic illnesses such as diabetes and asthma require a significant amount of self‐management and thus call for a collaborative patient‐physician relationship. This study explores whether empowering patient‐physician consultations measured through three patient empowerment dimensions (patient control, patient participation, physician support) enhance patients trust in and commitment to their physician.Design/methodology/approach – A comprehensive mail survey of adults registered with one of four different chronic illness associations in Australia was conducted to collect the data.Findings – The structural equation modelling results show that patients are more trusting of and committed to physicians who adopt an empowering communication style with them.Research limitati...

Perceived value and its impact on choice behavior in a retail setting

Abstract Value has been widely recognized in the past decade by retailers as an important consideration in consumers’ store selection and product purchase decisions. Empirical academic research, however, has concentrated on the impact of consumers’ perceived value on the attitude to purchase rather than on the resulting behavior itself. We address the substantive retailing issue of whether consumers’ value orientation (i.e., their predisposition towards quality, price or a balance of the two) actually affects their choice behavior in-store, for the case of durable goods. This paper discusses an approach to modeling consumer choice behavior (buy/not buy given the store) based on consumers’ value orientation and their perceptions of various product and store characteristics appropriate to the specific in-store experience. The consumer market is assumed to consist of several unobservable segments, membership of which reflects a consumer’s general value orientation concerning durable goods. The utility of buying the specific product in question from a certain retailer is conditional on the consumer’s segment membership. From a modeling viewpoint, the proposed framework requires the joint estimation of a latent segment membership function (based on value orientation) and a discrete choice model. The approach we adopt requires the formulation of an ordered latent segment choice model, since a priori considerations permit us to predict the number and structure of the segments. The empirical results presented in this article are based on a survey of over 1000 shoppers actively searching for an electrical appliance in various retail stores.

A comparison of traditional and web-based tutorials in marketing education: an exploratory study

Crucial to achieving educational effectiveness and academic credibility is the systematic evaluation of innovative practices. Despite the rapid advance of cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet and the World Wide Web into higher education, this imperative still remains. The present study investigates marketing students’ perceptions of different modes of tutorial that supplements rather than replaces traditional face-to-face lectures. The three alternative modes investigated were a face-to-face approach and two Web-based approaches— one asynchronous (bulletin boards) and one synchronous (chat rooms). Findings indicate that face-to-face tutorials are most highly rated in terms of the effectiveness of the learning environment and several other criteria. While gender and Internet experience did not affect perceptions of different tutorial types, ethnicity did. Findings and implications are discussed.