Increasing the persuasiveness of a service guarantee: the role of service process evidence

After investing in service quality improvement programs, firms may realize that they still face a daunting challenge: How should they persuade consumers that service has actually improved? One way of attempting to persuade consumers is to offer a service guarantee. But are guarantees credible? Are they really effective? Can they overcome consumers' prior negative experience? Surprisingly, the topic has received very little attention. This paper provides a conceptual and an empirical examination of the persuasive power of service guarantees. Specifically, the effects of service process evidence, compensation and prior beliefs about the service provider, are examined. The experimental data indicate that the inclusion of service process evidence significantly increases consumers' willingness to try the provider. The findings also suggest that compensation is more persuasive when service process evidence is specified in the guarantee. The synergy of presenting service process evidence and high compensation, is able to overcome consumers' prior (negative) exposure. Overall, the study supports the conclusion that consumers are primarily interested in service reliability and only secondarily in compensation for service failures. Managerial implications of the findings are discussed

Customer engagement behaviors: The role of service convenience, fairness and quality

The purpose of this study is to examine the differential impact of service quality, service fairness and service convenience on customer engagement behaviors. The study also examines the moderating role of service convenience on the relationship of service quality, service fairness and different forms of customer engagement behaviors (CEBs). The proposed research model was tested using partial least square path modelling on survey data collected from users of retail banking and mobile services. Results show that service convenience and perceived service fairness affects different forms of CEB positively. Results also show the negative moderation effect of service convenience on the relationship between service fairness and CEBs. The study provides useful insights for both researchers and practitioners on the role of service convenience, service fairness, and service quality in eliciting customers’ engagement behaviors. Our first contribution pertains to examining the role of service convenience in eliciting CEBs. We also contribute to the existing CEB literature by examining the extent to which traditional firm-based antecedents (e.g., service quality and service fairness) are effective in eliciting all forms of CEBs (word-of-mouth, customer helping company and customer helping customers)