Keyoor Purani

Modelling the consequences of e‐service quality

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to model the consequences of achieving better service quality in e‐services.Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual model is developed though a survey of literature on e‐services and allied domains and validated through a survey of users of job‐portals in India.Findings – The conceptual model finds significant support based on the empirical study. It is seen that the four components of e‐service quality: efficiency, fulfilment, system availability, privacy, are linked to trust and satisfaction.Practical implications – The study underscores the need to focus on service quality in the context of e‐services. The positive linkages should motivate practitioners to invest more to achieve greater service quality.Originality/value – By focusing on the consequences of e‐service quality, the study contributes to the growing stream of e‐service quality literature. This is also one of the few studies to look at other categories of e‐services apart from e‐tailing.

The moderating role of industrial experience in the job satisfaction, intention to leave relationship: an empirical study among salesmen in India

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to explore the moderating role of industrial experience in the relationship between different facets of a sales persons satisfaction with the job and his/her intention to quit the job.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on the data collected from sales persons from a pharmaceutical company in India. Dimensions of job satisfaction have been specifically developed for this study due to the cultural specificity of the context. The job satisfaction scale was developed through a process of qualitative research.Findings – The paper finds that industry experience moderates the job satisfaction, disinclination to quit relationship for most of the job satisfaction dimensions. Specifically it is seen than Industry experience has a moderating effect when the effect of a salespersons satisfaction with the organizational HR policies, supervisor satisfaction, compensation policies and career development and disinclination to quit, are considered.Research limitations/...

Knowledge community: integrating ICT into social development in developing economies

Technology and social change are interdependent. The information technology (IT) revolution has redefined social equation shifting the focus from material to knowledge power. While developed countries have harnessed their resources with the growth of knowledge societies, the developing and least developed countries have lagged behind in progress. In this paper, the authors have examined the roles of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), government and international agencies and human-centered approaches to arrive at a conceptual model of knowledge community in developing countries. This paper explores need for knowledge community in developing countries to suggest an integrative framework to harness local knowledge.

Exploring restorative potential of biophilic servicescapes

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the biophilic stimuli present in the servicescape and restorative effects on psychological states among consumers. The research also examines moderating role of service contexts in this relationship.,This empirical study applied a laboratory-like experimental design with one-shot treatment. About 566 usable responses were collected using six photographic images – three were biophilic environments and three were non-biophilic environments – for four a priori service contexts: hospital lobby, upscale restaurants, spa and bank lobby.,The tests of hypotheses confirm restorative effects of biophilic servicescapes on consumer’s psychological states, attention and mood, which, in turn, positively influence service preference. Further, the restorative effects of natural elements are found to vary across hedonic – utilitarian and experience – credence type service contexts.,Because of higher levels of natural stressors, consumers today likely have attention fatigue and depleted mood states, which, in turn, may have adverse effects on their service consumption behaviour. In this context, building upon theories from environmental psychology, findings of this study contribute by establishing restorative potential of biophilic servicescape. The study also establishes that natural elements in biophilic servicescapes influence service preference, which is mediated by consumers’ psychological states – attention and mood. Further, it demonstrates that consumers are more responsive with regards to such restorative effects of biophilic elements in contexts where they seek emotional, experiential value compared to rational, functional value.

Visual service scape aesthetics and consumer response : a holistic model

This paper aims to introduce subjective dimensions of appraising visual servicescape aesthetics and to empirically test their influence on the consumer’s affective responses and preference, thus providing a holistic model to evaluate visual servicescape aesthetics from consumer’s viewpoint. It also tests the moderating role of service contexts in the modelled relationships.,Data was collected from 350 respondents using a laboratory-like experimental design, with one-shot treatment using photographic surrogates of services capes in four different service contexts.,Results indicate the visual servicescape aesthetics dimensions significantly and positively influence consumers’ affective states of arousal and pleasure. Also, service context moderates the relationship between servicescape aesthetics and affective responses.,As the subjective dimensions of visual servicescape aesthetics are borrowed from environmental psychology and introduced in marketing literature, it is likely to trigger a stream of research in service marketing domain.,Findings provide marketing practitioners insights into servicescape design, evaluation and selection decisions to improve return on such investments.,The study contributes to theory by introducing more appropriate holistic servicescape aesthetics variables borrowed from environment psychology and empirically establishing relationships between them, consumers’ affective responses and preference to the servicescape.

Brand extension evaluation: real world and virtual world

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to help marketing scholars view virtual worlds as new product–markets and trigger serious investigations on consumer evaluation of brand extensions when a brand is extended from the real world to a virtual world and vice versa. Design/methodology/approach – The paper makes an extensive review of studies on virtual world. Further, it amalgamates understanding from well-established literature on consumer evaluation of brand extensions into the emerging virtual world understanding to conceptualize moderating influence of contexts – the real world context and a virtual world context – on how consumers evaluate brand extensions. Findings – Through logical arguments supported by existing literature, the paper provides 14 well-conceptualized propositions that argue that the real world and virtual world contexts moderate the well-established relationships in brand extension literature. It broadly proposes that the relationships between the consumer evaluations of brand exten...

Effects of competitive psychological climate, work-family conflict and role conflict on customer orientation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of a competitive psychological climate on the levels of role conflict and work-family conflict in call center employees and their further impact on customer orientation. Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual model is developed through a review of literature and is then validated in the context of call center employees in India. A total of 281 responses were considered. The model is validated using a multi-group analysis in order to consider a possible influence of gender. Findings – The model is found to have a very good fit and four of the five hypothesized relationships are found to be significant. The study thus establishes the impact of a competitive psychological climate on the role conflict and work-life conflict in the case of service employees. Research limitations/implications – The study uses a self-reported measure of customer orientation as well as the sampling methodology is not random. These two aspects could limit the gene...

Service employee adaptiveness: Exploring the impact of role-stress and managerial control approaches

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between managerial control strategies, role-stress and employee adaptiveness among call centre employees. Design/methodology/approach Based on a conceptual model, a questionnaire-based survey methodology is adopted. Data were collected from call centre employees in India and the data were analysed through PLS methodology. Findings The study finds that outcome control and activity control increase role-stress while capability control does not have a significant impact. The interaction between outcome control and activity control also tends to impact role-stress of employees. Role-stress felt by employees has significant negative impact on employee adaptiveness. Research limitations/implications The sampling approach was convenience based affecting the generalisability of the results. Practical implications The paper provides guidelines for utilising managerial control approaches in a service setting. Originality/value The paper looks at managerial control approaches in a service setting – a topic not quite researched before.

Boundary spanning elements and the marketing function in organizations

This book presents current research on boundary spanning elements. The editors bring together extant knowledge in the field and present a uniform narrative. Previous studies have often been disseminated across several academic disciplines like services marketing, personal selling and sales management etc. and this monograph aggregates studies dealing with boundary spanning elements or has boundary spanning elements related to the marketing function as the main empirical platform under a uniform theoretical perspective. Each chapter in the book deals with an important research theme and synthesizes studies in relation to boundary spanning elements.

Globalization and Academic Research: The Case of Sustainability Marketing

The impact of globalization on academic research is undeniable. This impact is more pertinent and strongly felt in the academic field of marketing. The pattern of this impact can be easily discerned from the trends in academic publishing in marketing such as more globalized representation of university affiliation of authors or the type of topics that dominate academic publishing in the field of marketing. In this article, through systematic analysis, one such trend is observed. The subjects covered by articles published in the 10 important marketing journals are analyzed in order to measure the extent to which these journals cover sustainability and related issues. Minimal representation of sustainability-based issues in the academic papers published in the most important marketing journals is argued to be closer to the idea of ‘Academic Capitalism’ in light of globalization. Considering the argument that sustainability and related issues often pose difficult questions to the mainstream schools of thought in the field of marketing, the minimal coverage given to sustainability-based issues should be perceived as reflecting the general lack of interest in conducting research in sustainability. The article discusses implications as well as pathways for future research.