Transforming mundane experiences : exploring customer well-being of the commuting journey

Improving well-being through transformative service has been highlighted as a research priority in recent years (Ostrom et al., 2010; 2015) with traditional service research criticised for rarely considering the broader outcomes resulting from service experiences (Anderson et al., 2013). With continuous usage of service and a number of interactions that customers have with services and service systems in their daily lives, it becomes critical for researchers to look beyond typical service measures like customer satisfaction and loyalty, and investigate the transformative outcomes that can potentially be resulted from service experiences (Anderson et al., 2013; Ostrom et al., 2015). To date, studies have neglected the possible effects of service experiences on customers lives, particularly in the context of well-being within every-day or otherwise mundane service settings, including commuting experiences by public transport, the context for this study

The underlying dimensions of relationship marketing in the Malaysian mobile service sector.

After so many years, the Malaysian mobile service market is getting saturated whereby the service operators had difficulties to differentiate themselves since they had offered almost the same services. As the service options are wide, therefore customers become less committed to a particular provider and might easily shift from one operator to another. This situation forces the service providers to create a strategy that focuses more on gaining and retaining long term relationship with their customers. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the underlying dimensions of relationship marketing in the Malaysian mobile service sector. A sample of 300 customers is drawn using Mall Intercept Scientific Procedures around Klang Valley and the Structural Equation Model (SEM) is utilized in testing the proposed model. The results show that the relationship between the exogenous latent factors and the overall endogenous factor are significant ranging from 0.77 to 0.94. That is, relatively high proportion of the variance in relationship marketing are well-explained by each of the factors

Consumer perception towards meat safety: confirmatory factor analysis

This study was conducted to analyze consumers’ perceptions on meat safety. The results indicate that the main determinants of consumer perceptions are government’s safety awareness, campaigns and health conscious. Therefore, from the practical standpoint, it suggests that responsible parties should focus their attention on the development of products that have attributes such as proper packaging, labelling and GMP guaranteed in order to increase positive perception of meat safety among customers

Technical efficiency of small and medium enterprise in Malaysia: a stochastic frontier production model

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in the Malaysian economy and are considered as the backbone of industrial development in the country. However, SMEs’ value added is very much lower than that of large scale enterprises. The low productivity of physical inputs or factors efficiency may be attributed to the low level of value added. The objective of this study is to determine the technical efficiency of 7360 small and medium enterprises for the year 2004 using stochastic frontier model. Results show that the number of firms considered technically efficient is only 3.06 percent of the total firms, while total technical inefficiency varies from 0.30 to 97.10 percent. Thus, policy makers have to play an important role in promoting economies of scale and developing technical skills of labors, which will lead to higher efficiency levels among SMEs

Exploring hierarchy situation of 4A marketing mix on Malaysia's fast food restaurants

Fast Food Restaurant becomes one of the sectors that contribute a lot to the gross domestic product to Malaysia in recent years. In order to penetrate the market of fast food industry in multi racial country, marketers must always take care of food consumption behavior of every ethnic. This study tried to find out the hierarchy situation of 4A marketing mix factors (Affordability, Accessibility, Awareness and Acceptability) in customer perspective instead of marketer perspective that had grown importance in the market. Descriptive analysis and ANOVA analysis were conducted to run as to generate results. Research findings showed that, accessibility situated at the top of the hierarchy, acceptability, awareness and affordability ranked respectively. Therefore, it is crucial for the fast food restaurants and marketing policy makers to take into account these four factors hierarchy to enrich any correspondent marketing strategy

Influence of relationship marketing on cross buying in Malaysian mobile service sector

Relationship marketing has been widely considered as a company’s activity that not merely helps in acquiring new customers, but also to retain them in the company. It is well-known fact that the cost to entice a new customer is much higher than to maintain the current one. Additionally, it is said that high quality of relationship marketing is potentially able to increase relationship extension such as cross buying. While relationship marketing may influence customer to make additional purchases, however there is little agreement on which mediators could be used to achieve this aim. This study develops a model of relationship marketing based on existing literature to empirically investigate: (i) the influence of relationship marketing on customer satisfaction and loyalty; (ii) the influence of customer satisfaction on loyalty; and (iii) the ultimate influences of customer satisfaction and loyalty on cross buying. Specifically,this study aims to examine the direct and indirect influences of relationship marketing on cross buying, while taking into account the mediation effects of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Six underlying dimensions are employed in measuring relationship marketing, which are trust, commitment, communication, conflict handling, bonding and empathy. A sample of 300 customers was drawn using Mall Intercept Scientific Procedures in Klang Valley. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) is used to assess the unidimensionality of each dimension before the Structural Equation Model (SEM) is utilized to test five proposed hypotheses. The results show that all the hypotheses are supported thus providing evidence of significant direct and indirect influences of relationship marketing on cross buying. That means, cross buying can happen without the existence of customer satisfaction and loyalty, but the total influence (direct and indirect) of relationship marketing is more powerful. Based on the findings, this study gives an idea of synergistic of relationship marketing, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in influencing cross buying. Therefore, it is imperative for practitioners and theorists to understand that relationship marketing is not merely important in satisfying and maintaining customers, but it helps in relationship enhancement as well

The underlying dimensions of relationship marketing in the Malaysian mobile service sector

After so many years, the Malaysian mobile service market is getting saturated, whereby service operators are having difficulties differentiating themselves because they offer similar services. As the service options are wide, customers become less committed to a particular provider and might easily shift from one operator to another. This situation forces the service providers to create a strategy that focuses more on gaining and retaining long-term relationships with their customers. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the underlying dimensions of relationship marketing in the Malaysian mobile service sector. A sample of 300 customers in Klang Valley was drawn using scientific procedures of mall intercept, and structural equation modeling was utilized in testing the proposed model. The results show that the relationships between the exogenous latent factors and the overall endogenous factor are significant, ranging from.77 to.94. This illustrates that a relatively high proportion of the variance in relationship marketing is well explained by each of the factors