How customers react to service unfairness? Moderating roles of interpersonal similarities on experience of envy and benign envy

Session: 04-206The “Customer Pyramid” and other similar customer management concepts advise firms to prioritize customers and treat them differently. Yet, offering preferential treatment to selected customers is potentially controversial. It implies a relatively inferior treatment to other customers and elicits the perception of service unfairness. In this study, we employ the social comparison theory to explicate the underlying process of how service unfairness impacts non-recipients’ behaviors. Specifically, we examine (1) impacts of service unfairness on the customers’ emotional experiences of envy and benign envy, (2) the differential effects of envy and benign envy on the non-recipients’ behaviors toward the preferentially treated customers (spreading negative word of mouth) and the sources of unfairness (cooperation with the salesperson and repurchase intention toward the store), and (3) the boundary conditions of the non-recipients’ similarities with those preferentially treated customers and the salesperson on the impacts of service unfairness. We tested our framework with laboratory experiments and a survey study in the context of clothing retail stores of 331 customers. Results support the roles of envy and benign envy in mediating the impact of service unfairness on those non-recipients’ behavioural outcomes. Specifically, if service unfairness elicits envy, it will increase the non-recipients’ negative WOM mouth toward those preferentially treated customers, reduces their repurchase intention, and lessens their cooperation with the salesperson. However, witnessing a preferential treatment received by others could be motivating for the non-recipients because they would also have the chance to enjoy such preferential treatment in the future (i.e., experience of benign envy). Our findings show that if service unfairness increases non-recipients’ experience of benign envy, it will motivates them to repurchase more, be more cooperative with the salesperson, but with no impact on the act of spreading negative WOM. Moreover, findings on the moderation influence of customers’ similarity with other customers and the salesperson further shed insights about the conditions for the differential impacts of service unfairness on ones’ experiences of envy and benign envy. Our study offers important implications on how firms can benefit from implementing customer management strategies involving differential treatments while minimizing their drawbacks.postprin

Do customers and employees enjoy service participation? Synergistic effects of seif- and other-efficacy

2012-2013 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Strengthening customer loyalty through intimacy and passion : roles of customer–firm affection and customer–staff relationships in services

2008-2009 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Is customer participation in value creation a double-edged sword? Evidence from professional financial services across cultures

2009-2010 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

A novel anti-mycobacterial function of mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphatase-1

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Mycobacterium tuberculosis </it>(MTB) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the world. To combat against this pathogen, immune cells release cytokines including tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), which is pivotal in the development of protective granulomas. Our previous results showed that Bacillus Calmette Guerin (BCG), a mycobacterium used as a model to investigate the immune response against MTB, stimulates the induction of TNF-α via mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) in human blood monocytes. Since MAPK phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) is known to regulate MAPK activities, we examined whether MKP-1 plays a role in BCG-induced MAPK activation and cytokine expression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Primary human blood monocytes were treated with BCG and assayed for MKP-1 expression. Our results demonstrated that following exposure to BCG, there was an increase in the expression of MKP-1. Additionally, the induction of MKP-1 was regulated by p38 MAPK and extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1 and 2 (ERK1/2). Surprisingly, when MKP-1 expression was blocked by its specific siRNA, there was a significant decrease in the levels of phospho-MAPK (p38 MAPK and ERK1/2) and TNF-α inducible by BCG.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Since TNF-α is pivotal in granuloma formation, the results indicated an unexpected positive function of MKP-1 against mycobacterial infection as opposed to its usual phosphatase activity.</p

Significance of Input Correlations in Striatal Function

The striatum is the main input station of the basal ganglia and is strongly associated with motor and cognitive functions. Anatomical evidence suggests that individual striatal neurons are unlikely to share their inputs from the cortex. Using a biologically realistic large-scale network model of striatum and cortico-striatal projections, we provide a functional interpretation of the special anatomical structure of these projections. Specifically, we show that weak pairwise correlation within the pool of inputs to individual striatal neurons enhances the saliency of signal representation in the striatum. By contrast, correlations among the input pools of different striatal neurons render the signal representation less distinct from background activity. We suggest that for the network architecture of the striatum, there is a preferred cortico-striatal input configuration for optimal signal representation. It is further enhanced by the low-rate asynchronous background activity in striatum, supported by the balance between feedforward and feedback inhibitions in the striatal network. Thus, an appropriate combination of rates and correlations in the striatal input sets the stage for action selection presumably implemented in the basal ganglia