Customers often receive expert advice related to their health, finances, taxes or legal procedures, to name just a few. A noble stance taken by some is that experts should empower customers to make their own decisions. In this article, we distinguish informational from decisional empowerment and...

To assess the attitudes with respect to the quality of banks’ service levels, we use survey data amongst more than 250 Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of a range of Netherlands-based companies. These companies range from small to very large (including multinationals as Philips and Shell)...

Product-harm crises are among a firm’s worst nightmares. Since marketing investments may be instrumental to convince consumers to purchase the firm's products again, it is important to provide an adequate measurement of the effectiveness of these investments, especially after the crisis. We...

We develop two models to test hypotheses on the specific impact of brand and category characteristics on consumer stock-out responses. Our empirical results show that both characteristics are important determinants. Consumers are more product loyal in hedonic product groups than in utilitarian...

Stijn van Osselaer (1971, Ph.D. (Marketing), University of Florida 1998) is Professor of Marketing specializing in Consumer Behavior at the Rotterdam School of Management/Faculteit Bedrijfskunde of Erasmus University in Rotterdam. His research focuses on the study of basic psychological...

This paper will discuss the phenomenon Mystery Shopping in the field of customer satisfaction measurement techniques. By using the literature about Mystery Shopping definitions and restrictions of this instrument will be presented. Also, possible ways to present and use the gathered data will be...

This study contributes to the retail adoption literature by explicitly focusing on the role of both profit-related and relationship variables in explaining new product adoption decisions by retailers, instead of considering either one of these groups of variables in isolation as has been done by...

Distributors, across sectors and countries, are faced by the threat of disintermediation. In many industries, horizontal consolidation and advances in information technology have made it easier for manufacturers to bypass distributors and do business directly with consumers. Distributors have...

We examine the effect of relational constructs, such as satisfaction, trust and commitment on relationship performance (that is, positive word-of-mouth communication and the margin provided by each customer) of customers of an insurance company. A central issue concerns the effect of duration on...