Leonard V. Coote

Determining consumer satisfaction and commitment through self-service technology and personal service usage

This paper expands research into self-service technology in the service encounter. Self-service technology is where customers deliver service themselves using some form of a technological interface. There is still a great deal unknown about self-service technology, in particular its impact on consumer satisfaction and consumer commitment. With that in mind, this empirical study explores the relative impact of self-service technology on consumer satisfaction and on a multidimensional measure of consumer commitment containing affective commitment, temporal commitment and instrumental commitment. The results reveal that in a hotel context personal service still remains very important for assessments of satisfaction, and affective and temporal commitment. What is particularly interesting is that self-service technology, while impacting these constructs, also impacts instrumental commitment. This suggests that positive evaluations of self-service technology may tie consumers into relationships with hotels. A discussion and implications for managers are provided on these and other results, and the paper is concluded with further potential research.

A study of organizational citizenship behaviors in a retail setting

This study investigates the potential antecedents of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) in a retail setting. Much remains unknown about the factors affecting OCBs in retail settings. Several characteristics of retail jobs, as compared with other organizational behavior contexts, suggest the need to examine antecedents of OCBs. Job attitudes (job satisfaction and organizational commitment) are proposed as direct predictors of OCBs. Leadership support, professional development, and empowerment are posited as indirect predictors of OCBs and direct predictors of job attitudes. The possible moderating impacts of employee demographics and job types on the modeled relationships are also examined. The research hypotheses are tested using data collected from 211 frontline employees who work in a retail setting. The employees have customer-contact roles in the upscale food and grocery retailer that participated in the study. The pattern of results is more complex than hypothesized. Job attitudes are related to OCBs but the mediating role of job attitudes is not supported. The relationships between leadership support, professional development, and empowerment, and OCBs and job attitudes differ systematically. Evidence of how employee demographics can alter the modeled relationships is also presented. The findings have significant implications for the theory and practice of managing frontline employees. Limitations of the study are discussed and a program of further research is sketched.

Structural choice modelling: theory and applications to combining choice experiments

We propose and describe a comprehensive theoretical framework that integrates choice models and structural equation models. Referred to as “structural choice modelling,” the framework easily combines data from separate but related choice experiments. We describe the mathematical properties of the new framework, including goodness-of-fit and identification and we illustrate how to apply the framework with three empirical examples. The examples demonstrate new ways to evaluate choice processes and new ways to test substantive theory using choice experiments. We show how to combine choice experiments within the same model where there is a common research question, yet the designs and nature of the experiments differ. The seemingly simple notion of combining two or more choice tasks for the same people offers considerable potential to develop and test theory, as illustrated with the new framework.

Event-related advertising and the special case of sponsorship-linked advertising

Corporate sponsorship is a valuable brand-building platform, typically leveraged by advertising and promotion. While advertising often ‘uses news’ to connect to meaningful events, sponsorship contracts create a special category of advertisers that have official rights to event affiliation. In fact, sponsorship-linked marketing creates two special categories of advertiser: those officially linked to the event and those that seek association with the event but have no legitimate link (i.e. ‘ambushers’). We examine the prevalence and nature of sponsorship-linked advertising (SLA) as a leveraging strategy employed by both sponsors and ambushers. SLA includes advertising that communicates a sponsorship link or tie, as well as advertising that demonstrates a theme that links to sponsorship. Two content analytic studies find extensive use of SLA by ambushers and true sponsors. We propose a diagnostic method to identify ambushing attempts. Practical implications for sponsoring brands, potential ambushing brands and policy makers are discussed.

An Empirical Investigation into Entrepreneurship and Organizational Innovation-based Competitive Strategy

For several decades, marketing researchers have stressed that firms can achieve competitive advantage by creating superior value for customers through innovation. However the literature on entrepreneurship and innovation based competitive strategy is deficient in several important respects. First, entrepreneurship has been poorly measured in the past. Next, research on innovation is biased towards technological innovation and new product development. Finally, robust measures of sustained competitive advantage have yet to emerge in the literature. This paper examines the role of entrepreneurship in organizational innovation-based competitive strategy. The study finds that entrepreneurial firms pursue both technological and non-technological innovations, and all such innovations lead to sustained competitive advantage. The study contributes to the emerging marketing and entrepreneurship interface paradigm by examining the role of entrepreneurship in the innovation based competitive strategy and refining and testing measures of entrepreneurship, organizational innovation, and sustained competitive advantage.

Consumer-citizens mobilizing social capital following a natural disaster: effects on well-being

Purpose This paper aims to demonstrate how vulnerable consumer-citizens mobilize social capital following a natural disaster, showing how different forms of social capital contribute to well-being and resilience. Design/methodology/approach An embedded case study design comparing three different social networks is employed. Findings Understanding the active role consumer-citizens play in provisioning within social networks provides a deeper understanding of the important mechanisms that explain how different forms of social capital contribute to well-being. The three identified networks demonstrate different structural signatures composed of differing forms of social capital that arise following a natural disaster. Research limitations/implications Drawing on social capital theory, this study contributes to advancing transformative service research, providing implications for both theory and practice. Originality/value This study is one of the first to empirically compare networks in a natural disaster context, demonstrating the effects of bonding, bridging and linking social capital on well-being and community resilience. This study shows how social network analysis can be used to model network processes and mechanisms. Findings highlight the important role of social provisioning to vulnerable consumer-citizens as an alternate form of consumption.

Discrete choice experiments: a research agenda for experimental accounting

Purpose This paper aims to introduce and illustrate how discrete choice experiments (DCEs) can be used by accounting researchers and present an agenda of accounting-related research topics that might usefully benefit from the adoption of DCEs. Design/methodology/approach Each major phase involved in conducting a DCE is illustrated using a capital budgeting case study. The research agenda is based on a review of experimental research in financial accounting, management accounting and auditing. Findings DCEs can overcome some of the problems associated with asking decision-makers to rank or rate alternatives. Instead, they ask decision-makers to choose an alternative from a set. DCEs arguably better reflect the realities of real-world decision-making because decision-makers need to make trade-offs between all of the alternatives relevant to a decision. An important advantage that DCEs offer is their ability to calculate willingness-to-pay estimates, which can enable the valuation of non-market goods. Several streams of experimental accounting research would appear well-suited to investigation with DCEs. Research limitations/implications While every effort has been made to ensure that this illustration is as generic to as the many potential studies as possible, it may be that researchers seeking to utilise a DCE need to refer to additional literary sources. This study, however, should serve as a useful starting point. Practical implications Accounting researchers are expected to benefit from reading this article by being: made aware of the DCE method and its advantages; shown how to conduct a DCE; and provided with an agenda of accounting-related research topics that might usefully benefit from application of the DCE methodology. Originality/value It is the authors’ understanding that this is the first article directed to accounting academics regarding the conduct of DCEs for accounting research. It is hoped that this study can provide a useful platform for accounting academics to launch further research adopting DCEs.

Incentives and monitoring: impact on the financial and non-financial orientation of capital budgeting

While investment decisions may be financial decisions, there is a growing recognition that they are also often non-financially based decisions. The purpose of this study is to report findings focused on the project selection stage of capital budgeting, which has the objectives of exploring for: the relative degree of emphasis decision makers attach to a financial and non-financial orientation in capital budgeting; and the role, if any, that two agency theory variables have on the relative degree of emphasis: a personal incentive for project go-ahead and monitoring of project outcomes through a post-audit.,Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are used and framed in a between-subjects 2 (personal incentive) × 2 (monitoring) design. DCEs are well-suited to research questions which examine some tension between competing alternatives. For example, trade-offs involving the relative degree of emphasis decision makers attach to a financial and non-financial orientation in capital budgeting.,In the absence of a personal incentive and monitoring, decision makers attach a significant degree of emphasis to cash inflows and cash outflows, both financial factors, and one strategic non-financial factor being improvement in the position of the firm vis-a-vis competitors in capital budgeting. However, when decision makers receive a personal incentive from project go-ahead, they attach a lower degree of emphasis to cash outflows. Alternatively, when there is monitoring through a post-audit and a personal incentive, decision makers attach a higher degree of emphasis to cash outflows.,Decision makers attach a significant degree of emphasis to only a relatively narrow band of attributes in making a capital budgeting decision, which is true in both the absence of and in the presence of the agency conditions. There is also little support for the view that there is any higher degree of emphasis attached to a financial orientation vis-a-vis a non-financial orientation. A particularly important finding relates to the overarching goal of monitoring through a post-audit. One view is that it should foster more accurate forecasting by making forecasters aware that their efforts will be reviewed. However, the findings of this study appear to be more supportive of a view that post-audits might lead agents to become more conservative or even shy away from projects.,The study makes contributions to the growing field of research which has the objective of exploring for the relative degree of emphasis decision makers attach to a financial and non-financial orientation in capital budgeting. In particular, it extends the prior research through its investigation of the role that two agency theory variables play in the relative degree of emphasis decision makers attach to a financial and non-financial orientation: a personal incentive for project go-ahead and monitoring of project outcomes through a post-audit.