Over 20 years ago internal marketing was first proposed as a solution to the problem of delivering consistently high service quality. However, despite the rapidly growing literature, very few organisations actually implement the concept in practice as there does not, as yet, exist a single...

Studies reputation for service quality as a potential moderator of the relationship between a service guarantee and its impact on consumer perceptions of service quality, risk and purchase intent. A before‐after experimental design, set in the hotel industry, was employed to explore the...

An experiment was conducted to examine the relationship between patient satisfaction and patients’ freedom to choose a physician and the outcome of a health service encounter. Each construct with corresponding measurements is discussed and their relationship with satisfaction is reviewed....

A survey was conducted using conjoint analysis to determine how consumers perceived the relative importance of price vs. quality of service in the selection of restaurants. The use of conjoint analysis enables one to mimic the trade‐off situation in a consumer’s choice process. The results...

Examines determinants of service loyalty under the assumption that consumers perform a cost/benefit analysis when deciding whether or not they want to be “regular customers”. It develops potential determinants of service loyalty based on the service quality, transaction cost, and switching...

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?...

The research literature on service quality has indeed swelled enormously over the past few years with numerous researchers administering various models across the world. Nevertheless, the SERVQUAL instrument forms the basis on which all other works have been actualized. Interestingly, the...

Trust is a key factor in the establishment of long‐term relationships between service representatives and their customers. Prior research has documented that both “person‐related” (e.g. empathy, politeness and customer/service representative similarity) and “offer‐related”...

This study extends the Mehrabian‐Russell environmental psychology model to include both emotional states and cognitive processing as mediators of the music‐intended behavior relationship. Our model specifically suggests that music affects customers’ perceptions of service quality and...

Service quality has attracted considerable attention within the service marketing literature, but despite this, high profile consumer education has not been considered a valuable strategy. Argues that consumer education is a powerful quality strategy in a variety of service contexts and that it...