Terrence J. Levesque

Customer satisfaction with services: putting perceived value into the equation

This research investigated the relationship between three elements – core service quality, relational service quality‐ and perceived value – and customer satisfaction and future intentions across four services. The results revealed that core service quality (the promise) and perceived value were the most important drivers of customer satisfaction with relational service quality (the delivery) a significant but less important driver. A direct link between customer satisfaction and future intentions was established. The relative importance of the three drivers of satisfaction varied among services. Specifically, the importance of core service quality and perceived value was reversed depending on the service. A major conclusion was that both perceived value and service quality dimensions should be incorporated into customer satisfaction models to provide a more complete picture of the drivers of satisfaction.

Determinants of customer satisfaction in retail banking

Points out that customer satisfaction and retention are critical for retail banks, and investigates the major determinants of customer satisfaction and future intentions in the retail bank sector. Identifies the determinants which include service quality dimensions (e.g. getting it right the first time), service features (e.g. competitive interest rates), service problems, service recovery and products used. Finds, in particular, that service problems and the bank’s service recovery ability have a major impact on customer satisfaction and intentions to switch.

Waiting for service: the effectiveness of recovery strategies.

Two experiments examined the effectiveness of service recovery strategies in situations where the service firm made customers wait even though they had made a reservation. The recovery strategies ‐ apology only, assistance, compensation, assistance plus compensation ‐ which reflected industry practices, did not lead to positive future intentions towards the service firm. While assistance plus compensation was the most effective strategy, respondents still held negative future intentions towards the service firm. Other factors that had an impact included the type of hospitality service, restaurant or hotel, and the purpose for buying the service. The major implication was that current industry recovery practices were inadequate in mitigating negative intentions. When service firms break a promise, effective recovery requires considerable effort to overcome customers’ negative intentions.

Designing the service guarantee: unconditional or specific?

When designing a guarantee, service firms have a choice ‐the unconditional that guarantees customer satisfaction or the specific, which guarantees a major aspect of the service such as on‐time delivery. To date, this decision has been based primarily on anecdotal observations. This investigation examined consumer reactions to unconditional versus specific service guarantees in terms of risk reduction, preference, and trust in the service provider. In an experimental setting, respondents preferred firms which offered an unconditional guarantee. However, specific guarantees were favoured when subjects considered the ease of getting their money back. For a service firm, the implementation of an unconditional guarantee with a specific payout would have the broadest appeal in the market.

The Canadian constitutional amending formula: Bargaining in the past and the future

The amending formula of Canadas Constitution Act, 1982 is analysed and assessed, as are a variety of alternative formulae, some of which were actually proposed and then rejected. The models and techniques of game theory provide measurements of the power and satisfaction of the individual provinces under the various amending procedures. Thus, past and future provincial bargaining positions can be compared with provincial interests, and several potential outcomes for future bargaining can be projected.

Measuring state power in presidential elections

This essay describes a method that uses state voting records to calculate the probability that a state is pivotal in presidential elections. The method takes into consideration the changes in state voting patterns that occur at critical elections, and a separate power index is calculated for each period of stable state voting patterns. This results in a more descriptive measure of power when the resulting indices are compared with a similar index based on voting records from several different periods.

Party voting discipline and the power of parties, legislators and states

Summary We examine the distribution of decision-making power among the principal actors of a federal legislative system; parties, legislators, and constituencies. We are especially interested in how the balance of power between legislators and constituencies depends on the voting discipline exercised by the parties. We derive power measures that are related to the Banzhaf-Coleman index of decision-making power and illustrate with a simple example. Our power measures are novel because they are based on an explicit representation of party voting discipline as well as the structural properties of the decision-making process, whereas previous analyses concentrate on structurally determined power alone.

Party Voting Discipline, Legislators’ Power, and Constituency Representation in Multi—Party Systems

In this essay we consider what influence political parties on the voting behavior of members of a legislature might have on the functioning of representative democracy. In particular, we extend the analysis of Kilgour and Levesque (1985) to multi-party systems. We present a simple example to illustrate our calculations.