Kalliopi Chatzipanagiotou

Store image attributes and customer satisfaction across different customer profiles within the supermarket sector in Greece

Purpose – This research seeks to accomplish two objectives: to extend the test of the functional relationship between store image attributes and customer satisfaction in the market environment of Greece; and to investigate the stability of the structural relationships between store image attributes and customer satisfaction across different customer groups.Design/methodology/approach – The literature concerning major store image attributes was systematically reviewed. After assessing the construct validity of the store image attributes based on confirmatory factor analysis, a path model specifying the relationships between store image attributes and customer satisfaction was estimated. A multigroup analysis was conducted to test the invariance of structural paths between store image attributes and customer satisfaction for different customer profiles.Findings – On appraising the store customers personal variables four specific types of buyers, namely, the Typical, the Unstable, the Social, and the Occasi...

The relationships of customer-perceived value, satisfaction, loyalty and behavioral intentions

Abstract The concept of Customer-Perceived Value (CPV) has become a matter of increasing concern in marketing literature. However, there are few empirical studies that attempt to examine the notion of it. Filling this gap, this study provides a conceptual as well as empirical investigation of CPV as a formative construct and also offers an insight regarding the role of CPV in influencing, through satisfaction and loyalty, the behavioral intentions of word of mouth, repurchase intention and cross-buying. Furthermore, the potential moderating role of social pressure in the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is also examined. The results suggest that delivering superior customer value enables a firm to achieve favorably behavioral intentions. Implications for practice, study limitations and future research are discussed.

Internal-market orientation: a misconceived aspect of marketing theory

Purpose – Although many authors argue that practising marketing internally facilitates the implementation of the market orientation concept, systematic empirical research to explore the validity of the argument remains surprisingly scarce. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the relationship between market orientation (MO) and internal‐market orientation (IMO) as well as their joint effect on customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approach – The findings ground on data collected from dyads of financial services providers and their customers. The former provided the information pertaining to the companys degree of MO and IMO adoption as well as on perceived employee value, while the latter were asked about perceived customer value, perceived service quality and their satisfaction with their provider. In total 127 dyads are employed in the analysis.Findings – The findings show that MO and IMO are two inter‐related concepts, probably falling under the marketing philosophy umbrel...

Measuring the effectiveness of marketing information systems: An empirically validated instrument

Purpose – To design and empirically validate an instrument for measuring the effectiveness of a marketing intelligence system (MkIS).Design/methodology/approach – A thorough review of the literature of IS in general and MkIS in particular was the foundation for a new conceptualisation of MkIS effectiveness, which was developed into a measuring instrument for experimental application to data collected by a pre‐tested postal questionnaire from 254 five‐star hotels in Greece.Findings – Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis show that the proposed measuring instrument meets acceptable criteria of reliability and validity. The effectiveness of MkIS is found to comprise both internal and external components, related on the one hand to the extent to which the user organization improves functional effectiveness and corporate climate and on the other to its adaptability to market conditions and its customer responsiveness. The instrument is capable of integrating these into a holistic measure.Research limita...

Pilgrimages: the “promised land” for travel agents?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the most important characteristics of the religious package tour as perceived by consumers who travel to the Holy Land and to examine the marketing components that play an important role for pilgrims.Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews were conducted with Greek Orthodox travellers who were about to leave for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Content analysis was used in order to analyse the transcribed interviews.Findings – Results show that regarding the product mix, hotel ratings and extra benefits are considered of minor importance by the interviewed travellers. However, the tour guide and the trips schedule and program are the most important factors that influence consumer decisions regarding the purchase of a specific tourism product. In addition, the travel agents reputation for organising religious trips plays a crucial role. Alternatively, price does not seem to influence travellers to sacred places.Practical implications – Travel agen...

Hotels on fire: investigating consumers' responses and perceptions.

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the consumer responses associated with crises in the hotel industry. More precisely, the current research explores the factors that affect consumer attitudes (i.e. impressions, perceived social responsibility, and future purchases) during a hotel crisis.Design/methodology/approach – An experiment was conducted relying on four factors: the hotels reputation, the extent of the crisis, external effects from regulatory agencies, and press and organisational response. Respondents were randomly assigned to 36 treatment groups (three levels of crisis extent×two levels of hotel corporate reputation×two levels of external effects×three levels of hotel response). Scenarios were developed, each describing one of the 36 treatments.Findings – The results revealed that reputation, external effects and organisational response significantly influenced consumers. Specifically, consumers were more likely to have a positive impression of a hotel in crisis, to perceive the hotel as b...

A suggested typology of Greek upscale hotels based on their MrkIS: Implications for hotels' overall effectiveness

Purpose – This paper aims to suggest an empirically based typology of hotels according to their marketing information systems (MrkIS) configurations. The study seeks to examine major antecedents of the effectiveness of MrkIS and their influence on the adoption of specific marketing applications. Finally, this paper seeks to expand the general understanding of the relationship between the effectiveness of a hotels MrkIS and that hotels overall effectiveness, compared with that of others from the suggested typology.Design/methodology/approach – The paper collected empirical data from a sample of 254 luxury and five‐star Greek hotels. They conducted a cluster analysis in order to define various clusters of hotels based on their use of specific marketing applications. They considered the role of basic antecedents – namely the hotels degree of market orientation adoption, system quality, the quality of the information that the MrkIS produce, and support service quality – examining their influence on the Mrk...

APPLYING A FUZZY SET QUALITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION DURING NEW SERVICE DEVELOPMENT

The management of the New Service Development (NSD) process remains a key research priority for service organizations. As a diverse mix of team members with different skills, perspectives and backgrounds participate in development teams and close collaboration is required among them, conflicts are likely to arise among team members. Different team members perceive conflict episodes in a different way and often embrace different conflict management behaviours and orientations (e.g. competing, avoiding) to deal with them. This study recognises NSD team as a complex system, through which individual members’ conflict management style choices enable team developmental dynamics, which sequentially lead to intragroup conflict resolution. Although a lot of work exists around the role of individual members’ conflict management styles, little research scrutiny is attracted on how teams solve intragroup conflicts and even limited empirical evidence is available regarding the linkages between individual and team factors can contribute to resolve intragroup conflicts. The present study taking under consideration the causal complexity, asymmetry and idiosyncratic nature of NSD conflict resolution, utilizes Complexity theory and leverages the advantages of fs/QCA in order to shed light on the NSD intragroup conflict resolution. Data was collected from employees in several service industries such as advertising, financial, insurance, consulting, IT services and telecommunications providers. The results confirm the major tenets of Complexity theory highlighting that any attempt to examine complex phenomena, such as NSD conflict resolution, as simple ones, based on symmetrical methodological approaches, may lead to simplistic and distorted explanations. In fact, the results demonstrate that there is not a ‘one fits all’ solution in order to solve NSD conflicts. Different facets for both the conflict-management styles and team dynamics act in various combinations in order to predict high scores in NSD conflict resolution.

Legitimate Customer Consequences Deriving from Customer-Oriented Deviance

Acknowledging the developments in the constructive employee deviance stream (Leo and Russell-Bennett, 2014), which denote that although employees may depart from workgroup hypernorms, their behaviour might still have pro-customer intentions (Vadera, Pratt and Mishra, 2013), this research illuminates deviant employee–customer encounters and grows the ongoing discussion on the impact of employee customer-oriented deviance on various customer outcomes. Customer-oriented deviance (COD) is a form of pro-social behaviour which occurs when the employee deviates from organizational norms, defying organizational protocol and higher authority for the sake of the customer who is the main beneficiary of this behaviour. Indeed, scarce evidence explores how customer-oriented deviance during the service encounter affects customers’ psychological state as well as whether the psychological consequences deriving from employee deviance which actually render the customer more prone to reciprocally respond the employee or the organization with some kind of citizenship behaviour (Hochstein, Bonne and Clark, 2015), this study addresses the impact of three types of customer-oriented deviance on post-deviant customer evaluations. To address these issues, an experimental design with a 3x2 between-subjects design is adopted. The independent variables manipulated are three types of COD and also whether the customer participates (or not) to the solution of the problem that (s)he is currently facing. In particular, the impact of three types of customer-oriented deviance (i.e. deviant service adaptation, service communication and use of resources) on customer’s distributive, interactional and procedural justice (cognitive outcomes) and customer’s emotional state (affective outcome) is considered. This study advances current knowledge in three ways. First, it proposes that post-deviant customer consequences are both cognition- and emotion-driven, deepening the empirical understanding of the role of customer’s perceived justice and emotional state as a result of COD. Results also uncover the importance of customer participation during COD and its corresponding impact on customer encounter outcomes. The social exchange and the equity theory are extended and set as the theoretical link between customer-oriented deviance and customer’s response to the organization and the employee.