Managers have long known intuitively that relationships are important to business. In certain cultures, such as in the East, the emphasis on relationships may typically be more explicit, but a good salesperson knows that building trust and commitment with buyers are essential for long-term...

Since the early 1980s there has been a growing interest globally in service quality, driven by the supposition that high service quality will lead to more satisfied customers. Satisfied customers will remain loyal and spread positive word-of-mouth advertising, and therefore improving service...

The objective of this paper is to enhance our understanding of international business-to-business relationships by presenting empirical evidence on the nature and relative importance of various relationship functions performed by the suppliers and the customers in trading relationships. Using...

Sales force automation refers to the automation of sales activities within an organization. Depending on the context, SFA may refer to the concept, the tools or the system. Because the literature refers to the importance of customer value creation and competitive advantage in considering SFA,...

This paper sets out to consider the scale and scope of the value relationship functions of trading partners and of their connected relationships created in a cross-cultural framework. Using a previously-developed framework of relationship and network functions the paper presents the findings...

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate a method for estimating the tradeoffs that banking customers make between different attributes of a service, thus allowing businesses to estimate the likely impact on customer loyalty of changes in different attributes of a service. The data were...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance and complexities of the knowledge transfer process in the provision of effective managed after-sales IT support, when the web is used for service delivery. Design/methodology/approach – The paper features an interpretive case...

The extent to which service quality is linked to satisfaction, value and behavioural outcomes continues to be debated in the literature. This research investigated two models involving the linkages between service quality, satisfaction, perceived value, repurchase intention and willingness to...

This paper makes a detailed comparison of two major financial services in Singapore: life insurance and stockbrokerage. Relationships of perceptions and expectations of service quality, mean service adequacy (MSA) and mean service superiority (MSS) with service satisfaction and loyalty are...