Determinants of relationship quality and customer loyalty in retail banking: Evidence from Nigeria

NoThe purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of relationship quality (hereafter referred to as RQ) and its impact on customer loyalty within an emerging retail banking market through a dual-lens theory. The research informants were recruited from a city in South-eastern Nigeria. A quantitative data obtained through bank-intercept method and online survey from 332 customers of retail banking services formed the final database. The proposed model and by implication the research hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling procedure. he results show that customer orientation, expertise and information sharing are stimulus factors that directly influence the constructs of RQ (i.e. trust and satisfaction and indirectly influence customer loyalty through the constructs of RQ. The paper also demonstrates that the stimulus factors are direct predictors of consumers’ response. The proposed model explained 49 per cent of the total variance in customer loyalty. Customer orientation, expertise and information sharing are stimulus factors that improve RQ and customer loyalty. However, the explanatory power of the proposed model is modest. Future research should therefore integrate other determinants of RQ. The paper contributes to the growing body of stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) literature within the retail environment by exploring unique stimulus and organism variables from an emerging retail banking market perspective. Additionally, by showing that the stimulus factors are direct predictors of consumers’ response, the paper challenged the existing tenets of the S-O-R framework and deepened the current understanding of the model. The paper also contributes to the social exchange theory by demonstrating how the components of RQ mediate the antecedents and consequences of the construct

Next Level Service Performance - Intelligent Order Assistants in Automotive After Market

A car is only useful, when it runs properly – but keeping a car it running is getting more and more complex. Car service providers need a deep knowledge about technical details of the different car models. On the other hand car producers try to keep this information in their ownership. Digital data collection takes place every second on the car´s product life cycle and is stored on the car producers´ servers. The contribution of this paper is three-fold: we will provide an overview of the current concepts of intelligent order assistant technologies (I). This corpus is used to come to a more precise description of the specific service performance aspects (II). Finally, a representative empirical study with German motor mechanics will help to evaluate the wishes and needs regarding an intelligent order assistant in the garage (III)

How Are Negative Customer Experiences Formed? A Qualitative Study of Customers’ Online Shopping Journeys

This study investigates how negative customer experiences are formed during customers’ online shopping journeys. A qualitative, in-depth dataset collected from 34 participants was employed to identify negatively perceived touchpoints that contribute to the customer experience in a negative way. The findings reveal that negative touchpoints are experienced during customers’ entire journeys, particularly after a purchase is completed. We identified 152 negative touchpoints from the data, of which 53 were experienced during search and consideration, 35 when finalizing a purchase, 33 during delivery, and 31 during after-sales interactions with the company. Within these four main categories, 20 subthemes describing the touchpoints and formation of customers’ negative experiences were identified therein. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the holistic customer experience formation, including the before- and after-purchase phases of the online shopping journey. In practice, the findings can be utilized in online service design and improvement.peerReviewe

Customer Experience Formation in Online Shopping : Investigating the Causes of Positive and Negative Emotions During a Visit to an Online Store

This study explores customer experience formation in an online shopping context by investigating the causes of customers’ positive and negative emotions during their visit to an online store. Survey data collected from 1786 Finnish online customers was used to identify individuals who experienced strong positive (N = 138) or negative emotions (N = 215) during their visit. The causes of negative and positive emotions were studied by analyzing customers’ open-ended, written explanations attributed to their emotions. Attribution theory is utilized to explain how individuals make sense of their emotions. The findings show that customers offer various explanations for the emotions evoked during a visit to an online store. Three main themes were identified with respect to the causes of such emotions and related to: (1) the online store, (2) the socio-material environment, and, (3) the customer her/himself. Customers generally blame the online store for negative emotions, whereas positive emotions are mostly associated with oneself and one’s success as a consumer. Both negative and positive emotions are to some extent explained by the sociomaterial environment. The findings demonstrate the complexity of customer experience formation. Further investigation of the topic is therefore warranted.peerReviewe