Michael K. Brady

Assessing the effects of quality, value, and customer satisfaction on consumer behavioral intentions in service environments

Abstract The following study both synthesizes and builds on the efforts to conceptualize the effects of quality, satisfaction, and value on consumers’ behavioral intentions. Specifically, it reports an empirical assessment of a model of service encounters that simultaneously considers the direct effects of these variables on behavioral intentions. The study builds on recent advances in services marketing theory and assesses the relationships between the identified constructs across multiple service industries. Several competing theories are also considered and compared to the research model. A number of notable findings are reported including the empirical verification that service quality, service value, and satisfaction may all be directly related to behavioral intentions when all of these variables are considered collectively. The results further suggest that the indirect effects of the service quality and value constructs enhanced their impact on behavioral intentions.

Some New Thoughts on Conceptualizing Perceived Service Quality: A Hierarchical Approach

Through qualitative and empirical research, the authors find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a third-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has three subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. The authors test and support this conceptualization across four service industries. They consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations.

Customer Orientation Effects on Customer Service Perceptions and Outcome Behaviors

This study investigates the effect of being customer oriented on service performance perceptions and outcome behaviors. Specifically, the focus is on identifying the influence that being perceived as a customer-oriented firm has on consumer quality perceptions, customer satisfaction, and service value. The impact of being customer oriented on consumers’ outcome behaviors is also investigated. Responses from 649 consumers indicate that customer orientation is directly related to customers’ evaluations of employee service performance, physical goods, and servicescapes. Indirect effects on organizational quality, customer satisfaction, value attributions, and outcome behaviors are also reported. The implications of the research are discussed, as are the limitations.

Investigating the role of the physical environment in hedonic service consumption: an exploratory study of sporting events

As we continue to enjoy economic growth and development in the latter part of the twentieth century, there is an abundance of disposable income for consumers to spend. Americans are spending more and more of these dollars in leisure activities. However, relatively little is known about which factors influence consumers’ behavioral intentions (i.e., loyalty, word of mouth, willingness to pay a price premium) in this area. It appears that in this extremely attractive and growing services segment, academics, as well as practitioners, would benefit from investigating the relationships between the physical environment (i.e., servicescape) and several other key service constructs (i.e., positive effect, enduring involvement, service quality, waiting time, and value) on consumer behavioral intentions. With a better understanding of the servicescape’s role in consumers’ purchase decision processes, practitioners should be able to make adjustments in their marketing plans that should help to provide them with a sustainable advantage over their competition. This paper is intended to expand our understanding of how the servicescape influences behavioral intentions. A model is developed and tested on a sample of sporting event customers. The results support the model and lead to some interesting managerial implications. D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

A cross-sectional test of the effect and conceptualization of service value

Focusses attention on service value as a construct which may help explain consumer decision making; however, to date this attention has been largely conceptual. Finds from the results of two empirical studies that models of consumer decision‐making which include service value explain significantly more variance in purchase intentions than models which include only service quality or cost factors, and the means by which consumers form service value perceptions is best depicted as a cognitive addition process.

Rethinking Service Recovery Strategies: The Effect of Rapport on Consumer Responses to Service Failure

Researchers and practitioners have invested heavily in identifying effective complaint management strategies. However, most of the strategies identified to date occur only after a service failure occurs. This article proposes that antecedent states such as an ongoing rapport with service employees can also provide service recovery benefits. Four independent studies test this approach and indicate that an existing rapport between the customer and service provider results in increased postfailure customer satisfaction, increased repatronage intentions, and decreased negative word of mouth. Yet results for complaint intentions suggest that rapport does not increase the propensity for customers to complain about poor service. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for research and practice.

A Voice From the Silent Masses: An Exploratory and Comparative Analysis of Noncomplainers

This study used a critical incident survey with both qualitative and quantitative sections to investigate noncomplainers. Noncomplainers are customers who experience service failures but do not voice complaints. The qualitative study (n=149) explored reasons why customers do not complain after experiencing service failures. In the quantitative study (n=530), two kinds of noncomplainers who either (a) received organization-initiated recoveries or(b) exited the encounters without recoveries were compared with three kinds of complaining customers who received (a) satisfactory recoveries, (b) dissatisfactory recoveries, or (c) no recoveries. The five customer groups were compared across repurchase intentions, negative affect, perceived regret, and intentions to engage in negative word of mouth. The results of the comparative analyses challenge existing views of noncomplainers’ repurchase intentions and negative outcome levels.

A Service Perspective on the Drivers of Complaint Intentions

This study assesses the effects of service evaluations in a failed service experience on complaining intentions in a future encounter. A model is developed and tested that investigates the relationships between service quality, satisfaction, social justice, and future complaint intentions. A sample of 525 dissatisfied customers across numerous service industries is used to test the model. Results support the model and suggest that otherwise fair service in a failed service experience increases complaint intentions in future failed encounters. Specifically, the authors find that firms that are perceived to treat customers fairly during a service failure and that have employees perceived to be responsive are rewarded with higher future complaint intentions. They also find that service quality and satisfaction have significant, negative effects on future complaint intentions. Moderation analysis indicates that the findings do not depend on a customer’s attitude toward complaining. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Service Sweethearting: Its Antecedents and Customer Consequences

This research is the first to examine service sweethearting, an illicit behavior that costs firms billions of dollars annually in lost revenues. Sweethearting occurs when frontline workers give unauthorized free or discounted goods and services to customer conspirators. The authors gather dyadic data from 171 service employees and 610 of their customers. The results from the employee data reveal that a variety of job, social, and remuneration factors motivate sweethearting behavior and several measurable employee traits suppress its frequency. The results from the customer data indicate that although sweethearting inflates a firms satisfaction, loyalty, and positive word-of-mouth scores by as much as 9%, satisfaction with the confederate employee fully mediates these effects. Thus, any benefits for customer satisfaction or loyalty initiatives are tied to a frontline worker that the firm would rather not employ. Marketing managers can use this study to recognize job applicants or company settings that are particularly prone to sweethearting and as the basis for mitigating a positive bias in key customer metrics.

An exploratory study of service value in the USA and Ecuador

In recent years, the significance of offering value to service customers rivals the provision of satisfaction and service quality. The growing importance of the construct is especially apparent in the fast food industry as evidenced by the international popularity of value menus offered by many fast food franchises. The service value trend is particularly relevant in Latin America as more multinational service franchises compete for newfound market share. Zeithaml, in her comprehensive analysis of the service value construct, suggests that service value perceptions emerge when consumers weigh their perceptions of service quality against the necessary sacrifices made to acquire the service. In the current study, this conceptual model is tested using samples derived from fast food consumers in both Ecuador and the USA. The objective is to perform an empirical test of Zeithaml’s model and to compare the relative importance attached to the components of her model across the two samples. An additional consideration is an analysis of the effect of gender on the purchase behaviour of these consumers. The research and managerial implications of the study are considered, as are the research limitations.