Judging Credence Service Based on Experience Service Evaluation: Moderating Effect of Ease of Assessing and Extrinsic Cues

The impact of service failure on customers\u27 perception of service quality is of vital importance to service providers. Prior research reveals little about how services that are purchased jointly by consumers are evaluated. My dissertation investigates the effect of failure of an experience service on the evaluation of a credence service that is purchased at the same time. In experimental study 1 carried out in the context of automobile services, it is found that the effect of service failure on trust is mediated by evaluation of service quality, and moderated by the ease of assessing service. In study 2 carried out in the same context, it is found that trust in the service provider mediates the effect of evaluation of experience service on evaluation of quality of credence service. The experience service evaluation to trust in service provider path and trust in service provider to evaluation of credence service path are moderated by service guarantee and type of relationship (pseudo- vs. true-). Together, study 1 and study 2 findings provide an explanation for how failure of an experience service impacts the evaluation of a credence service purchased simultaneously

Moderating Effects of Service Guarantee, Service Relationship, and Perceived-risk on Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction has been one of the most frequently used terms in marketing. With the benefits of customer satisfaction, service providers can save more costs doing customer retention and advertising. Premium pricing, for example, is also the benefit derived from the service’s buffering effect. In service industry, service guarantee and building up service relationship with customers are very common and useful strategies to gain customer satisfaction. Due to the growing competitive industry, marketers have made efforts building the customer-service relationship in order to attract new customers and secure existing relationships with customers. After experienced a service delivery or consumption, customers would be able to assess the service quality; however, when customers are unable to evaluate service quality due to intangibility or lack of knowledge about the service, they are likely to adopt an indirect approach to completing the evaluation. In fact, it is common for customers to judge service by accessing their knowledge stored in their minds and seeking for information as signals of service quality. In some services, customers may act as the service quality co-producer since customers are also required to perform the service delivery. Interaction with service employees, for example, is deemed a participation that provides service providers with a potential source of competitive advantage in service industry. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of factors before and after service delivery on the customer’s satisfaction. In the case of credence service, the difficulty in evaluation prior to and even after purchase is partly because customers are unable to estimate perceived risks. Thus the indicators of credence service observed prior to purchase could effectively enhance the customer’s objective knowledge about the service and then reduce the customer’s perceived risks after the service delivery. The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of how service guarantee and service relationship affect perceived risk and how they interact with antecedents of customer satisfaction. A survey of 411 consumers in a car-repair service context was conducted by using a 2 x 2 x 2 experimental design for moderating tests to test the hypotheses. Findings show that service guarantee has positive moderating effects on both perceived expertise and perceived-risk reduction .Service relationship also acts as a moderator between perceived expertise and perceived benevolence which have positive mediating effects on customer satisfaction. Results suggest that service providers should pay more attention to physical environment or surroundings in which customers are more likely to find any signal of service expertise to reduce their risk perception. Specifically, certainty impacts the constructs of trust and in turn impacts customer satisfaction. The findings are consistent with previous studies which suggest that customer satisfaction was found to be lower after service failure than in the case of error-free service and that technical and functional service quality is key to building customer trust in a firm. In addition to the direct effects of certainty and trust, results of the study also show that the service guarantee has a moderating impact on perceived risk. It suggests that service providers should pay more attention to physical environment or surroundings in which customers are more likely to find any signal of service expertise to reduce their risk perception

Cultural Impacts on Cognitive Dissonance and eWOM/eNWOM

The purpose of this study is to contrast individualist culture (e.g., United States) with collectivist culture (e.g., China) in regards to the Internet-involved customer purchase process (IICPP), specifically the customer’s involvement before purchase, the cognitive dissonance after purchase and the post-purchase behavior in terms of the online world of mouth (eWOM) and online negative word of mouth (eNWOM). This study also explores the influences of culture on product attributes that are associated in IICPP. Based on the related literature, this study applies the existing concepts to the Internet context. The study adopts 40 cases of online customer reviewers regarding their vehicle purchase to illustrate similarities and differences between individualist culture and collectivist culture. Findings show that culture does affect the customer’s involvement, their cognitive dissonance, eWOM/eNWOM, and a product’s attributes that are more important in the purchase process. Collectivist customers are relationship and social oriented. They take the advices from family and friends seriously. Collectivists are also influenced by the public opinions regarding their social status as well. On the other hand, individualistic customers would do research by reading online reviews, and then they compare the possible alternatives to make a purchase decision. Individualists tend to overweight a product’s attributes that are related to the personal priority. At the point of purchase, collectivist customers are sensitive to price and efficiency while Individualist appreciates a product’s long-term value

Cognitive Dissonance and Online World of Mouth

A growing number of customers use online consumer review as a means to express their opinions about the purchasing experience or the products through online feedback forums. The online forum not only provides customers with a powerful communicative tool but also impacts potential customers’ intention to patronize a brand or its association by publishing compliments or complaints. It seems to be appropriate to explain the motivation of word of mouth (WOM) when customers tend to reduce post-purchase dissonance by engaging in selective exposure, attitude change, and spreading WOM. Online word of mouth (eWOM) is basically WOM communication through the Internet; yet different from traditional WOM, eWOM serves as a useful tool for marketers to gather product information from customers who use online feedback. By providing reviews and comments about the purchase of products, eWOM could be triggered by the desire to help potential customers to make purchase decisions wisely. However, opposite to eWOM, online negative word of mouth (eNWOM) has more serious impacts on customers’ trust in the company than traditional negative WOM (NWOM) since eNWOM spreads over quickly and remains online permanently. eNWOM serves as an advice from someone unknown to inform others of the failure of company’s product to meet desired expectations, and convince the public the negative associations with the company. The paper examines the consequent online word of mouth behaviors derived from cognitive dissonance in the context of cross culture. To comprehend the perception of cognitive dissonance, this study built on previous research of online reviews and both positive and negative word of mouth and then conducted both quantitative and qualitative methods. The source of data collection comes from online third party consumer forums in both China and US. The observed period of time ranges from 2009 to 2011. A total of forty cases were observed and selected based upon the complete involvement in the purchase process from the stages of prepurchase to the post-purchase. The data examined the behaviors related to the customers’ cognitive dissonance development and eWOM/eNWOM. Attributes of cognitive dissonance and contents of eWOM and eNWOM were recorded and classified based upon their frequency of occurrence from the customer’s positive or negative comments/feedbacks on the web. The study unveils that culture does play important role in forming customers’ online word of mouth behaviors. The theoretical model proposed in this paper suggests that compared to individualistic customers, collectivist customers are basically relationship oriented as their behavior relates to purchase process, the advice from family and friends, and the ride performance. Relationship orientation could be the best reason to explain the cognitive dissonance pattern in China. Chinese customers generally rely on the advice from their relatives when making expensive purchase decision. Results show that Chinese who purchase cars for strictly social reasons tend to place greater value on the exterior visual aspects of the vehicle. On the other hand, American customers are more independent than Chinese customers. They will put efforts in asking around and doing research instead of asking advice from their family or friends before they make purchase decision. To reduce the uncertainty derived from cognitive dissonance, US customers are likely to engage in doing research and reading product reviews before the purchase is made. Compared to Americans, Chinese customers are more likely to rely on the follow-up after-sales service to maintain their positive attitudes toward the vehicle or company. If the after-sales service provided by the dealer does not meet their expectation, the cognitive dissonance takes place and then eWOM will be replaced by eNWOM

Mobile APPs and Global Markets

In this research, we examine the popularity of mobile applications across different categories by using the measures of monthly active users (MAUs) of each app. It is the authors’ intention to inspect the key characteristics of mobile apps and the relationship those characteristics have with market share and growth rate in global markets. The ease of use of mobile apps leads to a subsequent impact on the global users’ mobile behavior in daily life. Mobile apps have flooded the market, however, the acceptance and use of individual apps relies on a combination of the preference of users and the operational strategies employed by app developers. Based on secondary data collected from multiple sources including both publications and online data, the global market growth of mobile apps including China (the world’s largest market of mobile apps) has shown a correlation between apps’ market share and the users’ mobile behavior based on messaging, networking, shopping, video watching, and gaming. This research categorizes users’ mobile behavior in terms of age groups and time spent on certain mobile apps. The objective of this investigation is better understanding of the dominance of leading mobile apps and the future trend of mobile apps designed for the global market

Cultural Impacts on Cognitive Dissonance and eWOM/eNWOM

The purpose of this study is to contrast individualist culture (e.g., United States) with collectivistculture (e.g., China) in regards to the Internet-involved customer purchase process (IICPP),specifically the customer’s involvement before purchase, the cognitive dissonance after purchaseand the post-purchase behavior in terms of the online world of mouth (eWOM) and online negativeword of mouth (eNWOM). This study also explores the influences of culture on product attributesthat are associated in IICPP. Based on the related literature, this study applies the existingconcepts to the Internet context. The study adopts 40 cases of online customer reviewers regardingtheir vehicle purchase to illustrate similarities and differences between individualist culture andcollectivist culture. Findings show that culture does affect the customer’s involvement, theircognitive dissonance, eWOM/eNWOM, and a product’s attributes that are more important in thepurchase process. Collectivist customers are relationship and social oriented. They take theadvices from family and friends seriously. Collectivists are also influenced by the public opinionsregarding their social status as well. On the other hand, individualistic customers would doresearch by reading online reviews, and then they compare the possible alternatives to make apurchase decision. Individualists tend to overweight a product’s attributes that are related to thepersonal priority. At the point of purchase, collectivist customers are sensitive to price andefficiency while Individualist appreciates a product’s long-term value

The “Buffer” effects of Service Quality Cues on Credence Service Quality

The purpose of the current study is to understand how customer will respond to a service failure when they are exposed to service quality cues. Two managerial moderators of service relationship and service guarantee as the signals of service quality are added into the hypothesized model and employed as extrinsic cues. The findings indicate that trust in the service provider mediates the effect of evaluation of experience service on evaluation of quality of credence service. Service guarantee has stronger positive effect on perceived expertise as service failure occurs, and the “buffer” effect is identified as negative effect of service failure is alleviated not only when the service is difficult to evaluate but also when service guarantee is presented as strong