There\u27s a fly in my soup : the influence of service guarantees and personal requests on customer voice

Anecdotal evidence suggests that service guarantees and personal requests by service workers encourage customers to voice following failure. However, empirical support for these tactics in facilitating complaints to the organisation is limited. To address this deficiency, a 3 (guarantee treatment: none, unconditional or combined) x 2 (personal request to voice: yes or no) x 2 (failure severity: minor or major) full factorial, between subjects experiment was conducted in a restaurant context. Findings suggest that offering a service guarantee, regardless of whether it is unconditional or combined, can encourage voice. Severity of the failure was also found to be associated with voice. Surprisingly, however, a personal request to voice was not related to customers&rsquo; voice intentions. Implications of the findings are discussed.<br /

Service recovery in a service guarantee context

This study employed a 2 x 2 full-factorial, between-subjects design experiment examining the influence of service failure severity and fix on hotel guests&rsquo; satisfaction following invocation of a service guarantee. The study involved a sample of 130 online panel members. As expected, guests are less dissatisfied following a minor (versus a major) service failure while satisfaction is enhanced when the problem is corrected. Surprisingly, fix has a stronger influence on satisfaction when a severe failure occurs, and satisfaction evaluations are approximately equal regardless of the severity of the failure when the problem is fixed.<br /

Walley School Community Arts Center Feasibility Study

The Walley School community arts center initiative began in the fall of 2011 as a joint project between the Town of Bristol and Roger Williams University’s School of Architecture. Shortly thereafter, the Gabelli School of Business was asked to development a business case for the project. Four students in the course “Management 439: Business Planning” took on the Walley School as their team project for the semester. The business case study was developed in conjunction with the Town of Bristol, the initiative’s steering committee, Roger Williams University’s Community Partnerships Center, the School of Architecture and the School of Construction Management. After a year of student work and public workshops, the conclusion has been made that it would be programmatically, architecturally and financially feasible to reopen the Walley School as a community arts and education facility for the Town of Bristol

A novel romance : conceptualising emotional attachment as a barrier to adoption

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) aims to understand consumers&rsquo; adoption of new technologies. Some 30 years after TAM was first proposed, it is still widely used today. This paper proposes an extended version of the TAM, with the primary addition to it being the construct of consumers&rsquo; emotional attachment to an existing product. The expanded TAM, Technology Acceptance Model with Emotional Attachment (TAME), is applied to the understudied area of e-book reader technology and its adoption by consumers who read for pleasure versus for academic purposes, as has been the focus of past research on e-book readers. The extended model considers consumers&rsquo; emotional attachment to paper books (pbooks) as a likely barrier to the take up of e-book reader technology.<br /

The effect of attitudes and experience on respondent answers to demographic questions in on-line surveys

Survey response rates and response quality are declining in most markets, threatening the viability of many established research techniques. One attempt to combat this has been to make survey completion more convenient for respondents, with on-line surveys being an example of this. This paper looks at respondent attitudes to demographic questions in on-line surveys &ndash; questions that are crucial for many analysis practices and yet often have the highest non-completion rates. The exploratory survey conducted here (n=198) examined attitudes towards surveys and empirically examined the reasons behind non-completion and intentions to give misleading information. The results suggest that general attitudes towards providing demographic data in on-line surveys are related to the likely response behaviour, and the more uncomfortable someone claims to be with providing this data, the more likely they will be to either omit a response or exit the survey altogether. Past experience with on-line surveys increases the chances of respondents answering completely and accurately and in most cases, significantly reduces the likelihood of exiting the survey completely if asked these questions. Finally, there is some evidence that providing broad categorical response options is preferred to more specific categories or open text boxes, and this may represent the best technique for improving response rates and quality.<br /

The influence of procedural and interactional justice, and disconfirmation on customers post recovery satisfaction evaluations

This study examines the influence of distributive and interactional justice and disconfirmation on customers&rsquo; postrecovery satisfaction evaluations, and in so doing, combines, for the first time, two existing instruments to operationalise the interactional justice construct. Using Structural Equation Modelling, the findings suggest that while both disconfirmation and justice are important predictors of satisfaction, distributive justice has the greatest influence. The research presented here reports on a section of a larger experiment-based study examining how customers&rsquo; postrecovery satisfaction evaluations are influenced by the way in which the organisation responds to the failure.<br /

Understanding and addressing ‘modern slavery’ in DRC-UK cobalt supply chains

The UK’s – and the world’s – ‘green industrial revolution’ is intrinsically tied to the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This largely informal sector produces approximately 12–21% of the world’s cobalt each year – a vital component in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries powering the global transition to a low carbon economy and employing as many as 200,000 cobalt miners in DRC as well as supporting hundreds of thousands more people in related livelihood activities. Yet many artisanal cobalt miners suffer dangerous working conditions, human rights abuses, and abuses relating to child labour. Addressing these issues of modern slavery in ASM is therefore vital to the achievement of all 17 of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG1 No Poverty, SDG13 Climate Action, and crucially, SDG8 Decent Work Economic Growth which includes Target 8.7 to ‘end modern slavery’ – the first international framework specifically using the term modern slavery.However, with ASM largely absent from modern slavery policy formation, there are significant gaps in how the concept is applied and addressed in ASM and overlaps with existing responsible mineral sourcing legislation and initiatives. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to enhance understanding of how the term modern slavery is applied to ASM activities, examine the accompanying modern slavery legislation regarding ASM, including the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act, and explore how communities and companies perceive, report, and address such issues in their mineral supply chains. Based on an in-depth review of the literature and drawing on the findings of practical research and training workshops held in the UK and DRC (January–March 2020), four recommendations are made to better address modern slavery in DRC-UK cobalt supply chains. To maximise the development potential of DRC’s ASM cobalt industry, the chapter argues that aside from the moral responsibility, there is a need to clearly demonstrate the market-driven ‘business imperatives’ for companies to engage directly in ASM formalisation initiatives that unlock shared value and move beyond compliance with modern slavery and responsible mineral sourcing and reporting requirements

Driving Simulators – More than a Video Game!

Background: This study aimed to investigate teenager, young adult, and adult knowledge levels on distracted and impaired driving through the use of educational driving simulators. The distracted and impaired driving simulators were customized to instruct participants on the dangers of driving distracted or impaired utilizing consequence videos. The simulators were taken to high schools, colleges/universities, and businesses over a four year period where we hypothesized that they would play a significant role in raising knowledge about the dangers and penalties of these risky driving behaviors and would also help to increase seat belt usage. Setting: High schools, colleges / universities, and businesses in northeastern central Pennsylvania September 2012 through May 2016. Sample: 22,801 pre-surveys were taken by mainly students that participated through their high school. Methods: An electronic pre-survey was administered to all participants wanting to drive the simulators. The survey questions were designed to test the participant’s knowledge of driving distracted while driving alone or with somebody else, driving impaired while driving alone or with somebody else, and the use of a seat belt every time they get into a vehicle. Demographic information was collected prior to driving the simulators such as the driver’s age and gender. Based upon their driving outcome, the post survey collected data was based on which drive they did (distracted vs. impaired) and if they thought the consequences for their actions were what they thought they would be. Also questioned was how likely they were to wear their seat belt in the future. Results: In the 22,801 completed pre-surveys, males completed 53% of the surveys, females 47%. Participants of teen driver age (16 to 18) made up the largest number of participants at 49%, with 30% being of non-driver age, and 21% over age 18; 88% of participants have not or rarely checked e-mail or talked on the cell phone within the last 30 days while driving; while 44% have ridden with a driver that was frequently or occasionally texting, checking email, or talking on a cell phone while driving in the last 30 days. Understanding that impaired includes: alcohol, over the counter prescription or other drugs, and drowsy/overly tired, 95% have rarely or not driven impaired in the last 30 days and 95% reported rarely or never going to drive impaired in the future. Those who stated they always wear a seat belt when getting into a vehicle were 77%; however post survey reports showed in the future 87% said they would always wear a seat belt, a 10% gain in knowledge after their driving experience. Conclusions: Driving simulators used on new drivers showing real life consequences, does raise awareness about texting, cellphone use, impaired driving, and not wearing a seat belt. Sixty seven percent of the participants stated the consequences to driving distracted were worse or much worse than they thought