Maik Hammerschmidt

Measuring the quality of e‐banking portals

Purpose - In the internet economy, the business model of web portals has spread rapidly over the last few years. Despite this, there have been very few scholarly investigations into the services and characteristics that transform a web site into a portal as well as into the dimensions that determine the customers evaluation of the portals service quality. Design/methodology/approach - Based on an empirical study in the field of e-banking, the authors validate a measurement model for the construct of web portal quality based on the following dimensions: security and trust, basic services quality, cross-buying services quality, added value, transaction support and responsiveness. Findings - The identified dimensions can reasonably be classified into three service categories: core services, additional services, and problem-solving services. Originality/value - The knowledge of these dimensions as major determinants of consumers quality perception in the internet provides banks a promising starting point for establishing an effective quality management for their e-businesses.

Identifying Cross-Channel Dissynergies for Multichannel Service Providers

In this article, the authors propose that in a multichannel environment, evaluative conflicts (dissynergies) between service channels exist. Building on status quo bias theory, they develop a model that relates offline channel satisfaction to perceptions about a new self-service channel. Data were collected from 639 customers currently using offline investment banking. Results show that offline channel satisfaction reduces the perceived usefulness and enhances the perceived risk of the online channel. These inhibiting effects represent a status quo bias. Trust in the bank shows both adoption-enhancing effects and an adoption-inhibiting effect. Finally, the negative relationship between offline channel satisfaction and perceived usefulness is significantly stronger for men, older people, and less experienced Internet users. This study has both theoretical and managerial relevance as it helps to understand consumer behavior in multichannel environments and provides implications for the design of multichannel service strategies.

Gratitude Versus Entitlement: A Dual Process Model of the Profitability Implications of Customer Prioritization

Customer prioritization strategies, which focus a firms efforts on its most important customers, are expected to improve account profitability. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that such strategies may also undermine account profitability by inducing customers to become overly demanding. Building on social exchange theory, this research evaluates these competing perspectives across two field studies and finds that prioritization is best understood as a double-edged sword. Specifically, the results reveal that prioritization efforts initiate both a gratitude-driven process, which enhances sales and profit, and an entitlement-driven process, which increases service costs and reduces profit. Importantly, the findings indicate that prioritization tactics differ in the extent to which they trigger these competing processes and thus in their ability to influence account profitability. Finally, the results also reveal that critical moderators (competitive intensity and prioritization transparency) determine the extent to which the entitlement-driven process undermines the gratitude-driven process. For managers, the findings suggest that both the tactics employed and moderating conditions determine whether prioritization has a positive, negative, or negligible effect on prioritized accounts’ profitability.

Principles and principals: Do customer stewardship and agency control compete or complement when shaping frontline employee behavior?

This article introduces customer stewardship control (CSC) to the marketing field. This concept represents a frontline employees felt ownership of and moral responsibility for customers’ overall welfare. In two studies, the authors show that CSC is a more encompassing construct than customer orientation, which reflects a frontline employees focus on meeting customers’ needs. They provide evidence that the former is more potent in shaping in- and extra-role employee behaviors. Moreover, they highlight how CSC operates in conjunction with an organizations agency control system: Stewardships positive influence on in- and extra-role behavior is weaker in the presence of high agency control. They offer actionable advice about how to solve the resulting managerial control dilemma. Finally, the authors show that CSC depends on drivers that reside at the individual level (employee relatedness), the team level (team competence), or both levels of aggregation (employee and team autonomy). These findings show how to effectively design a frontline employees work environment to ensure optimal frontline performance.

Customer‐based corporate valuation

Purpose – Synthesis of the customer lifetime value and the shareholder value (SHV) approach in order to develop an integrated, marketing‐based method for corporate valuation.Design/methodology/approach – Discusses the limitations and assumptions of existing methods to estimate customer value components and examines the limitations of the SHV concept. By linking the customer equity (CE) and the SHV approach, a formal model to calculate corporate value is developed. The discounted cash flow method is used for modelling the profit streams.Findings – Provides formulas for the estimation of both the individual lifetime value of a customer and CE. Provides a comprehensive model to estimate corporate value based on customer‐related cash flows and traditional financial metrics. Introduces typical cases, in which the use of a customer‐based valuation seems beneficial. Illustrates how our approach can be applied by using a simple case study on M&A in the telecommunication industry. Gives suggestions on how to obtai...

Product Performance Evaluation - A Super-Efficiency Model

This study introduces the concept of product performance from the perspective of customers. Product performance is measured as a ratio of outputs that customers obtain from a product relative to inputs that customers have to spend for purchasing and using the product. The output side is modelled by a set of customer-relevant parameters such as technical performance attributes but also non-functional benefits and brand strength; the input side reflects user costs. More than 60% of the cars in this study are rated as efficient and obtain the maximum efficiency value of unity. They form the efficient frontier of the compact car market representing a reference function for performance evaluation. Using a super-efficiency model, it is possible to differentiate the efficient products that are left with a score of 100% by standard efficiency models. Our approach is relevant for companies because implications for product design and market segmentation can be derived.

Measuring and Improving the Performance of Health Service Networks

Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) have intensified their efforts to establish network-like structures with service partners who are responsible for different functions along the health value chain. To calculate the potential value and cost benefits of service production within health care networks and to improve performance in such networks, the authors propose a two-step benchmarking approach. While the first step is concerned with measuring and comparing service provider performance, the second step relates to a contact program that disseminates the lessons learned during the benchmarking process. Across two empirical studies with general practitioners and specialty physicians, the authors identify in a first step tremendous overspendings and provide suggestions on cost reductions that could be achieved without threatening output levels. With regard to the second step, the authors find that detailing efforts based on the results of performance measurement helped physicians to improve their performance. Through detailing, the hub was able to inform network partners about the benchmarking results and to reveal performance gaps in their current resource utilization patterns. In addition, the authors show that managers of HMOs should seek out physicians with smaller practices and high-referral (i.e., risk-averse) physicians as targets for detailing, who are especially responsive to these initiatives.

Brand Efficiency and Brand Relevance - Introducing and Linking Both Concepts

Brand managers are under increased pressure to illustrate the performance of their multimillion dollar expenditures. This paper provides three contributions in the context of brand management. First, we introduce the concept of brand efficiency as a measure for the performance of the brand management process. Second, we develop a measure for the industry-specific brand relevance (influence of branding on purchase decisions). Third, we link these concepts and examine if brand management efficiency in an industry is influenced by brand relevance.

Channels in the Mirror: An Alignable Model for Assessing Customer Satisfaction in Concurrent Channel Systems

Firms operating multiple channels as parallel routes to market face intense pressure to ensure superior customer satisfaction in their entire channel system. Relying on the structural alignment framework, the authors argue that to address this challenge, providers of concurrent channels should give priority to alignable channel attributes—attributes that have corresponding or “mirror” attributes in the other channels. These features are more salient to customers than nonalignable features and likely represent the origin of satisfaction evaluations in concurrent channel environments. Applying multigroup nested models using data from off-line and online shoppers, the authors empirically validate choice (assortment breadth and depth), charge (availability of fair prices), convenience (efficiency of the purchase process), confidence (security of transactions), and care (assurance of promised quality) as alignable channel facets. The resulting 5C model is superior to existing models in that it enables the unified capture of both off-line and online satisfaction, allowing a meaningful comparison across formats. Using alignable satisfaction facets enables managers to trace true differences in the satisfaction levels between channels. In particular, a channel’s share of investment should match its share of unexploited satisfaction potential. The 5C model also supports within-channel decisions by revealing the impact of the five facets on overall satisfaction with each format.

Value-Based Benchmarking and Market Partitioning

The paper offers an analytical approach for an integrated treatment of market partitioning and benchmarking within a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) framework. Based on an empirical example from the automotive industry we measure product efficiency from the customer’s perspective. This is interpreted as customer value, i. e., as a ratio of outputs that customers obtain from a product (e. g., resale value, reliability) and inputs that customers have to invest (e. g., price, running costs). Products offering a maximum customer value relative to all other alternatives represent efficient peers, which constitute benchmarks for different sub-markets. All products benchmarked via the same efficient peer(s) constitute a sub-market including the benchmarks.