Tsung-Chi Liu

Factors affecting attitudes toward private labels and promoted brands

This work examines whether promoted brands and private labels attract different or similar consumers through psychographics and store image that drive purchase attitudes for these brands. The results using regression analysis demonstrate that these attitudes are driven by differences in psychographics and store image. Attitude toward promoted brands is characterised by positive store image, smart shopper self-perception, need for affiliation, and money attitude regarding power-prestige and anxiety. Private label attitude is characterised by more positive store image, and money attitude regarding retention and distrust. Noticeably, the conclusion of Ailawadi et al. (2001) regarding the indirect effect of demographics on the feasibility of using store brands and national brand promotions via psychographics appears weak, since we conclude that the impacts of demographics on the two types of purchase attitudes are weakly funneled through psychographics.

Service failures away from home: benefits in intercultural service encounters

Consumer travel and multinational service corporations have increased the opportunity for service failures where consumers from one culture experience service problems in another cultural setting. This study tested the Stauss and Mang model (1999), which proposed the possibility that intercultural service failures exhibit lower seriousness ratings due to the customer’s attributing errors to cultural distance. Such a possible outcome has important implications for service providers whose customers are from different cultures, such as tourist or visiting businesspeople.

Fatal Service Failures Across Cultures

Abstract This study tests the existence of service failure and recovery categories, previously defined in the United States within the Chinese cultural setting of Taiwan. The CIT method was applied and found a high similarity between U.S. and Taiwan restaurant failure types and recovery strategies, while some unique differences were discovered, suggesting a uniform approach to service may benefit international restaurant chains. Extending previous research findings, this study describes specific failure type and recovery strategies that stand out as fatal in leading to a level of dissatisfaction that cannot be recovered from and that increase in severity if ignored. These fatal failures are also shown to be more malleable to recovery strategies than non-fatal failures. This leads to increased opportunity for moderation, or amplification, of the negative impression the customer takes away from the service incident. Catastrophe theory is applied in explaining this differential reaction to failure types. Restaurant managers are encouraged to empower service employees so that non-fatal incidents can be prevented or quickly dealt with through low-cost and effective recovery strategies while establishing policies to identify and then reduce the negative consequences of fatal incidents that require more costly recovery efforts.

Cross-buying evaluations in the retail banking industry

Is a customer’s past purchase experience of traditional banking products applicable to the continuing purchase of insurance and investment products at a bank branch? Are service attributes used with similar extensions evaluated differently from when used with dissimilar extensions? In response to these questions, this study develops and examines a framework of service attributes (e.g., locational and one-stop shopping convenience, functional and technical service quality, and firm reputation and size) having positive effects on cross-buying. Meanwhile, this study also examines the mediating roles of satisfaction and trust on the relationship between services attributes and cross-buying. Our results indicate that the relative importance of locational convenience and functional service quality is likely to decline, while the relative importance of one-stop shopping convenience and firm size is likely to increase as category dissimilarity increases. Technical service quality and firm reputation only have indirect effects on cross-buying dissimilar product categories through trust. Instead, satisfaction plays the mediating role for cross-buying similar product categories. Our findings reinforce the view that the relative effects of service attributes, satisfaction and trust on cross-buying vary under different category similarity conditions.

The Tacit Knowledge Flow of R&D Personnel and Its Impact on R&D Performance

For R&D personnel, the archetypal knowledge worker, tacit knowledge flow and knowledge creation capability is crucial in the context of new product development. Based on the perspectives of knowledge creation and knowledge network, this study intends to explore relationships among knowledge creation capability, knowledge network, and perceived R&D performance of individual R&D personnel. With a sample of 206 R&D personnel from 12 manufacturing firms in Taiwan and structural equation modeling (SEM) technique, findings fall into five categories. Firstly, beyond the four traditional knowledge creation abilities, i.e. socialization, combination, externalization, and internalization, there exists a fifth capability called CMC (Computer-Mediated Communications) ability. CMC represents an important communication and knowledge creation tool implemented through the Internet and intranet for the R&D personnel within emerging information-based economies like that in Taiwan. Secondly, with the exception of combination ability, all knowledge creation capabilities have positive relationships with perceived R&D performance, echoing the extant literatures. Additionally, increased centrality of the R&D team member within the knowledge network increases perceived personal R&D performance. Furthermore, those who are able to externalize their tacit knowledge tend to be located at the center of the knowledge network, while those located in more central positions of the knowledge network have better externalization capability. These two results verify externalization as the most critical capability for R&D teams to transfer their tacit knowledge and to obtain better performance. Lastly, knowledge ossification of tenure also exists, implying that while longer tenure is good for knowledge creation and performance, too long tenure of the R&D team members leads to decay of their R&D performance. Implications and suggestions for research and management practices are also provided.

Please Smile, the CCTV is running!

This paper examines the use of closed-circuit television (CCTV) system notices in banks. This study was designed to measure the effect of the wording of CCTV notices on customer service quality expectations and purchase intent, while also considering the customer involvement as the moderating effects. Results show that customers, in expectation of better service quality, may be more likely to purchase the service when moderately worded CCTV notices (i.e. ‘please smile, the CCTV is running!’) had been employed in the bank rather than when the negatively worded CCTV notices (i.e. ‘Taping now! All your behaviour here is monitored by the CCTV system!’) are deployed. These effects were stronger in low-involvement situations. Implications of the findings and the future research directions are also discussed.