Understanding how employees understand customers: A commentary essay

Young, Meterko, Mohr, Schwartz, and Lin empirically examine how service employees interpret behavioral cues and assess customers' satisfaction in the context of a large healthcare system. This commentary explores the authors' contribution to the multidisciplinary service quality literature. The commentary also considers how Young et al.'s findings align with important, emerging work in the healthcare domain.Customer service Healthcare management Service management Service quality

Consumer judgment of service fairness

Vita.Issues related to justice and exchange equity have bee

Consumer judgment of service fairness

Vita.Issues related to justice and exchange equity have bee

(electronic) Do Satisfied Customers Buy More? Examining Moderating Influences in a Retailing Context

In this research, the authors propose that the relationship between satisfaction and repurchase behavior is moderated by customer, relational, and marketplace characteristics. They further hypothesize that the moderating effects emerge if repurchase is measured as objective behavior but not if it is measured as repurchase intentions. To test for systematic differences in effects, the authors estimate identical models using both longitudinal repurchase measures and survey measures as the dependent variable. The results suggest that the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase behavior is contingent on the moderating effects of convenience, competitive intensity, customer involvement, and household income. As the authors predicted, the results are significantly different for self-reported repurchase intentions and objective repurchase behavior. The conceptual framework and empirical findings reinforce the importance of moderating influences and offer new insights that enhance the understanding of what drives repurchase behavior

Opportunities for Innovation in the Delivery of Interactive Retail Services

In today's volatile economy, innovation in providing interactive services to consumers through a variety of channels is critical in retailing. Interactive service innovations offer opportunities for retailers by creating new markets or offering new benefits in existing markets. They also pose threats as existing customers encounter new alternatives offered by competitors. This article explores some of the most promising opportunities in interactive retail services; namely, the increasing power of consumers, channel synergies, pre- and post-transaction service, optimal use of resources, and consumer heterogeneity. In discussing these areas of opportunity we identify knowledge gaps and suggest research questions relevant to these gaps that warrant attention. Collectively, these questions offer a research agenda for the topic of interactive retail service innovation