The impact of service delivery system effectiveness on service quality: A hierarchical approach

Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. This article focuses on the effectiveness of the service delivery system (SDS) and re-examines its influence on customers' perceived service quality. In this study, the influence of four specific indicators of the SDS' effectiveness (namely front line employees' role performance, their adaptability to individual customer needs, the effectiveness of their coordination and the effectiveness of the service process' control) on perceived service quality is tested. In doing so, a hierarchical approach integrating both managers' and customers' views have been taken. The results confirm the positive influence of three variables on perceived service quality (role performance, effectiveness of coordination and effectiveness of process' control). On the contrary, the influence of employees' adaptability was not found significant

Linking internal marketing with customer outcomes

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore how the adoption of an internal marketing (IM) programme in a retail banking setting enhances some positive employee behaviours that promote customer perceived service quality. Design/methodology/approach – A multilevel research design is adopted which draws evidence from branch managers, employees and customers in order to investigate whether branch manager’s adoption of an IM philosophy affects front-line employee responsiveness to the firm’s IM strategies and their levels of motivation, empowerment and organizational identification (OI), respectively. Findings – Results indicate that manager’s IM adoption can enhance employee adoption of IM and raises their levels of motivation, empowerment and OI. The moderating role of manager-employee dissimilarity is also discussed. Finally, findings confirm that employee motivation, empowerment and OI affect customer perceptions of service quality. Originality/value – This study provides an important shift by formally including IM into multilevel marketing research and establishes another link in the IM-organizational performance relationship, uncovering some behavioural routes through which the positive effects of IM can add to the achievement of firm’s external marketing objectives

Computational Homogenization of Architectured Materials

Architectured materials involve geometrically engineered distributions of microstructural phases at a scale comparable to the scale of the component, thus calling for new models in order to determine the effective properties of materials. The present chapter aims at providing such models, in the case of mechanical properties. As a matter of fact, one engineering challenge is to predict the effective properties of such materials; computational homogenization using finite element analysis is a powerful tool to do so. Homogenized behavior of architectured materials can thus be used in large structural computations, hence enabling the dissemination of architectured materials in the industry. Furthermore, computational homogenization is the basis for computational topology optimization which will give rise to the next generation of architectured materials. This chapter covers the computational homogenization of periodic architectured materials in elasticity and plasticity, as well as the homogenization and representativity of random architectured materials

Unveiling front-line employees’ brand construal types during corporate brand promise delivery: A multi-study analysis

Marshalling empirical insights from three empirical studies, this work unveils the heterogeneous nature of front-line employees’ (FLEs) corporate brand construals. Our insights contest corporate brand perspectives that assume employees respond to internal branding initiatives in a homogeneous manner. In Study 1, four types of FLEs’ corporate brand construals are identified (i.e. brand enthusiasts, brand conformists, brand deviants, brand skeptics). Study 2a develops and validates the measurement scales of these four types. Through a Bayesian SEM approach, Study 2b reveals the existence of multifaceted cognitive and affective FLEs’ responses to corporate branding initiatives. Our findings substantiate the significance of the social identity theory to both corporate/internal branding by revealing the link between corporate brand construal and corporate brand identification. In instrumental terms, this typology explains variations in FLEs’ corporate brand promise delivery and renders practitioners more equipped to implement corporate branding initiatives. © 2021 Elsevier Inc

How Do Different Service Employees Deliver the Brand to Consumers? An Abstract

An important aspect of service employees’ performance is related to their ability to demonstrate brand-congruent behaviour, given that customers’ brand experience is a function of their encounter with them (Akdeniz & Calantone, 2015). An extensive amount of work in the area examines how frontline employees affect customers’ experience with the brand (Xie et al., 2014), and scholars examine a variety of organizational, interpersonal and intrapersonal factors which affect employees’ ability to deliver the brand consistently (e.g. Dean et al., 2016). Much of the published work espousing the importance of employees assumes that employees share a common understanding of their role, despite evidence showing that individuals may frame their work quite differently and have different motives when it comes to fulfilling various work-related objectives. Second, current internal branding conceptualizations view employees as a homogenous group of stakeholders who respond to the firm’s internal branding efforts in an unvarying way (Punjaisri et al., 2009). These assumptions are inaccurate, as interpersonal variations among individuals need to be taken into account when examining each employee’s ability to meet existing brand delivery standards when interacting with customers (Di Mascio, 2010). Without accommodating these intrapersonal variations into existing internal branding frameworks, managerial insights cannot be uniformly applied to entire service staff. This study departs from investigating traditional service employee management models which implicitly assume that all employees share homogeneous brand perceptions and introduces an individual-level perspective in the internal branding literature. This perspective is unique in that it accounts for intrapersonal variations among frontline employees and illustrates how different types of employee respond to the firm’s human resource management practices and how they deliver the brand to consumers. This study extends the service employee and the internal branding literature in introducing an individual-level perspective which takes into account intrapersonal variations of frontline employees when delivering the brand to consumers. Drawing from schema theory (Daft & Weick, 1984) and action identification theory (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987), a typology of service employees is introduced by exploring how each of these types perceives the firm’s brand and how they understand their role in the brand delivery process. Building on these findings, this study empirically confirms that the role of various human resource management practices (i.e. training, coaching) is not equally effective for all types of employees and also that employees’ responses to the firm’s efforts (i.e. brand mindfulness, brand attachment) vary significantly depending on their perceptions of the firm’s brand. Results also indicate that different employee types’ responses affect their extra-role brand-related behaviour (as captured by brand development and brand resilience) in different ways. © 2018, Academy of Marketing Science

We survived this! What managers could learn from SMEs who successfully navigated the Greek economic crisis

Small and medium size enterprises in both business to business and consumer markets are particularly vulnerable to economic downturns. Concentrating on the Greek economic crisis, one of the toughest and most prolonged on a global scale, the present research sheds light on both anthropocentric and business-centric factors that helped SMEs survive, therefore, providing a valuable survival manual. Per findings of two studies performed under the given economically intense conditions, it is evidenced that the right answer to survival rests upon: (a) the entrepreneurs' personality traits and skills that affect the market and entrepreneurial orientations of SMEs, (b) the adoption of such orientations that keep impacting the firms' performance, and finally (c) the implementation of strategy relevant to reaching higher quality standards for products and services, combined with tactics relevant to downsizing, marketing actions, extroversion, and financial management. © 2020 Elsevier Inc