Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore conceptually and examine empirically the impact of market competitiveness on employee satisfaction, service quality, and customer satisfaction in high‐contact service industries. Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study was...

In their well-known conceptual framework of the Service-Profit Chain (S-PC), Heskett et al. (1994) suggest that there are strong relationships among employee satisfaction and loyalty, service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and firm profitability. However, there is little empirical...

Purpose Many small-to-medium sized service shops (e.g. jewelry shops, fine-dining restaurants etc.) operate in a unique service environment. They often face customers in transit (i.e. transient delivery) and with minimal information of their preferences (i.e. high uncertainty). This study...

Drawing on the perspective of transaction cost economics (TCE), we explain the operating contexts in which supplier partnership is likely to be an effective strategy to reduce operational costs in the manufacturing industry. We posit that supplier partnership, which falls in the category of...