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

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.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3203465.pdf

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

This article provides a synthesizing overview of the past 20 yr. of consumer research addressing the sociocultural, experiential, symbolic, and ideological aspects of consumption. Our aim is to provide a viable disciplinary brand for this research tradition that we call consumer culture theory (CCT). We propose that CCT has fulfilled recurrent calls for developing a distinctive body of theoretical knowledge about consumption and marketplace behaviors. In developing this argument, we redress three enduring misconceptions about the nature and analytic orientation of CCT. We then assess how CCT has contributed to consumer research by illuminating the cultural dimensions of the consumption cycle and by developing novel theorizations concerning four thematic domains of research interest.

/pdf/consumer-culture-theory-cct-twenty-years-of-research-3gcdikziju.pdf

Consumer Culture Theory (Cct): Twenty Years of Research

In this article, the authors try to determine why and under what conditions consumers enter into strong, committed, and meaningful relationships with certain companies, becoming champions of these companies and their products. Drawing on theories of social identity and organizational identification, the authors propose that strong consumer-company relationships often result from consumers’ identification with those companies, which helps them satisfy one or more important self-definitional needs. The authors elaborate on the nature of consumer-company identification, including the company identity, and articulate a consumer-level conceptual framework that offers propositions regarding the key determinants and consequences of such identification in the marketplace.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30040524.pdf

Consumer-Company Identification: A Framework for Understanding Consumers¿ Relationships with Companies

Brand experience is conceptualized as sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand's design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments. The authors distinguish several experience dimensions and construct a brand experience scale that includes four dimensions: sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral. In six studies, the authors show that the scale is reliable, valid, and distinct from other brand measures, including brand evaluations, brand involvement, brand attachment, customer delight, and brand personality. Moreover, brand experience affects consumer satisfaction and loyalty directly and indirectly through brand personality associations.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1960358_code1671431.pdf?abstractid=1960358&mirid=4

Brand Experience: What is it? How is it Measured? Does it Affect Loyalty?

A brand community from a customer-experiential perspective is a fabric of relationships in which the customer is situated. Crucial relationships include those between the customer and the brand, between the customer and the firm, between the customer and the product in use, and among fellow customers. The authors delve ethnographically into a brand community and test key findings through quantitative methods. Conceptually, the study reveals insights that differ from prior research in four important ways: First, it expands the definition of a brand community to entities and relationships neglected by previous research. Second, it treats vital characteristics of brand communities, such as geotemporal concentrations and the richness of social context, as dynamic rather than static phenomena. Third, it demonstrates that marketers can strengthen brand communities by facilitating shared customer experiences in ways that alter those dynamic characteristics. Fourth, it yields a new and richer conceptuali...

Building brand community

Extending the research on service quality in health care, the authors examine the efficacy of four models for measuring service quality and conclude that SERVPERF methods are superior to SERVQUAL methods. Their study found that dental patients' assessments of overall service quality were strongly influenced by assessments of provider performance. Furthermore, an examination into the causal order between perceptions of overall service quality and patient satisfaction reveals such strong reciprocal influences that it's impossible to conclude that one empirically precedes the other. Finally, the authors found that purchase intentions are influenced by both patient satisfaction and patient assessments of overall service quality.

Service quality measurement.

Transcendent customer experiences (TCEs), which have aspects of flow and/or peak experience, can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes, including subjective self-transformation. With data from a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental field experiment we examine the impact of TCEs on customers’ integration in a brand community. Because TCEs are highly desirable and valued for their own sake, customers value marketing activities they perceive as instrumental to them. This study demonstrates that a TCE in the context of a marketer-facilitated consumption activity can strengthen a person’s ties to a brand community, delivering a particularly strong form of brand loyalty.

Transcendent customer experience and brand community

In previous research, entrepreneurs' social networks are expected to influence entrepreneurial success because they give access to resources. This is confirmed in this study. In most research it is also believed that network features such as strength of ties determine to a great extent what kind of resources the entrepreneur receives. Although this last assumption has important implications for entrepreneurship research and for practice, the validity of the assumption has not been put to the test in previous research. The analysis of data from an empirical study of entrepreneurs in Norway gives at best partial support for the assumption. Contrary to what should be expected, the results indicate that strong ties are important channels for information and that weak ties give access to finance.

Harold F. Koenig

Papers

Building brand community

Service quality measurement.

Transcendent customer experience and brand community

The Effect of Social Networks on Resource Access and Business Start-ups

Managing conflict in software development teams: a multilevel analysis