Service validity and service reliability of search, experience and credence services: A scenario study

The purpose of this research is to add to our understanding of the antecedents of customer satisfaction by examining the effects of service reliability (Is the service “correctly” produced?) and service validity (Is the “correct” service produced?) of search, experience and credence services.\ud Design/methodology/approach – Service validity and service reliability were manipulated in scenarios describing service encounters with different types of services. Customer satisfaction was measured using questionnaires.\ud Findings – Service validity and service reliability independently affect customer satisfaction with search services. For experience services, service validity and service reliability are necessary conditions for customer satisfaction. For credence services, no effects of service validity were found but the effects of service reliability on customers' satisfaction were profound.\ud Research limitations/implications – Scenarios provided a useful method to investigate customer evaluation of different types of service situations. A limitation of this method was that the participants were not observed in a real service situation but had to give their opinion on hypothetical scenarios.\ud Practical implications – For search and credence services, it is possible to compensate low service validity by providing a highly reliable service. However, managers of experience services should be aware that little can be gained when either service validity or service reliability is faulty.\ud Originality/value – The present study provides empirical data on the effects of service reliability and the thus far neglected effects of service validity and integrates these (new) concepts in the model of information verification

Cross-Domain Discovery of Communication Peers. Identity Mapping and Discovery Services (IMaDS)

The upcoming WebRTC-based browser-to-browser communication services present new challenges for user discovery in peer-to-peer mode. Even more so, if we wish to enable different web communication services to interact. This paper presents Identity Mapping and Discovery Service (IMaDS), a global, scalable, service independent discovery service that enables users of web-based peer-to-peer applications to discover other users whom to communicate with. It also provides reachability and presence information. For that, user identities need to be mapped to any compatible service identity as well as to a globally unique, service-independent identity. This mapping and discovery process is suitable for multiple identifier formats and personal identifying properties, but it supports user-determined privacy options. IMaDS operates across different service domains dynamically, using context information. Users and devices have profiles containing context and other specific information that can be discovered by a search engine. The search results reveal the user's allocated globally unique identifier (GUID), which is then resolved to a list of the user's service domains identities, using a DHT-based directory service. Service-specific directories allow tracking of active endpoints, where users are currently logged on and can be contacted.Comment: Accepted for publication at the 2017 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC