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This research seeks to examine how the expectation process and its components evolve over time and purchase experience.

A longitudinal study was conducted over the period of one year using a sample of university students who were purchasing an undergraduate education. The sample was surveyed three times over the year. Structural equation analyses and regression were used to test various research hypotheses.

Key findings include confirming two significantly different levels of expectations: a lower, predictive “will” level and a higher normative “should” level. Expectation antecedents change in their degree of influence on expectations, weakening over time and service purchase experience.

There is a need to extend the results to other service contexts.

The consumer's expectation formation process changes over service purchase experience, thus indicating a need to segment on experience with the service firm.

The application of an expectation formation process to a longitudinal study provides the first partnership of the theoretically‐based model and longitudinal methodology.

Among the areas which need to be addressed in service quality research is the nature of consumer expectations across the range of intangibility. Previous research has compared consumers’ service quality expectations across services, but different groups of subjects were evaluated for each different service. The problem with using different subjects for each service is that the subject’s demographic characteristics may be responsible for the significant differences in expectations of quality. This research uses a controlled, repeated measures design where subjects were each asked to evaluate three services, varying in their degree of intangibility, over a ten week period. This made it possible to look at service quality expectations without risking the problem that demographics would account for most of the differences in the data. A classification matrix for services based strictly on the feature of intangibility is proposed. The managerial implications of this simplified classification scheme for services are discussed.

With the rapid increase in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in many firms and the development of social enterprises (SE), questions regarding the ways in which CSR affects consumers’ attitudes and behaviours have become crucial. This study aims to investigate how consumers’ CSR expectations and knowledge relate to their attitudes and purchase intentions regarding SE products.

This study investigates how consumer expectations of CSR and their own social responsibility affects purchase intention of SE products. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 397 individuals recruited through snowball sampling online. The research hypotheses are tested by structural equation modelling. Most of the hypotheses are supported by the data analysis.

The results show that consumers’ CSR expectations, subjective knowledge and consumer’s perceived social responsibility (CPSR) have positive effects on their attitudes and purchase intentions concerning SE products. The results contribute to the literature on marketing of SE products and demonstrate that consumer CSR expectation and their CPSR are important antecedents of intention to purchase SE products.

There is limited empirical study on the purchase intention of SE products. The findings provide the empirical evidence that individual-level antecedents, including consumer’s CSR expectations, perceived social responsibility and subjective knowledge, have a significant relationship to their intentions to SE products. This study also supports the view that the general rise in CSR expectations and CPSR creates a favourable context for the marketing of SE products.

Drawing from a life course theory, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between material reliance and quality of life for consumers going through a life transition, with attention given to individual differences and transition-specific characteristics.

Study 1 uses qualitative interviews with transitioning consumers, while Study 2 tests a survey-based conditional mediation model.

For liminal consumers, perceived personal control mediates the effect of material reliance on quality of life, but having negative expectations of the transition can override this effect.

Although previous research has given attention to material reliance, personal control and quality of life in various combinations, the impact of their combined effect has not been examined. Furthermore, these constructs have not been examined within the context of life transitions.

This paper aims to re‐examine the role of traditional service quality in an e‐banking environment by providing a review of how traditional service quality perceptions have evolved through the current and continuing stream of change in banking technology and the corresponding changes in the nature of how banks interact with their customers.

Data were collected from a mail survey sent out to a commercially purchased mailing list of 2,500 business names and addresses. The overall usable response rate was 30.6 per cent. Quadrant analysis was performed on the service quality dimensions from the SERVQUAL scale.

While the importance ranking of the five SERVQUAL dimensions has not changed dramatically over the years, large discrepancies were found between customer expectations and their perceived performance of traditional banking services.

Quadrant analysis produced specific recommendations on how banks should prioritise the allocation of their resources to maintain high perceived service quality in their human interactions.

This is the first study which revisits and re‐examines traditional service quality in the e‐banking era. It highlights how high levels of traditional service quality may lead to increased customer trust and thus more successful cross‐selling of e‐banking products to customers.

There has been an explosion in the number of retail Web sites since 1995, e‐retail offering shares a few common elements specifically a product search facility (often augmented by a product evaluation facility), an on‐line purchase function and a product delivery capability. There is a body of theory and empirical research in the study of customer loyalty drivers in the services sector, which demonstrates that customers evaluate services on the basis of tangibles, responsiveness, empathy, assurance, reliability and control. These service qualities depend on the customer’s perception of the overall service experience. The most influential element in the service experience is the relationship between the service provider and the customer. The Internet is a poor service delivery medium, it lacks the capacity for direct personal interaction enjoyed by non‐Internet based services. Sets out a number of marketing and Website design implications for e‐retailers and suggests means by which e‐retailers can manage customer perceptions to increase sales and develop greater customer loyalty.

Social networks offer consumers the ability to voice their opinions of brands in a real-time, public setting. This represents a unique challenge for firms as brand managers must develop new strategies for properly communicating with consumers, especially in the event of a service failure. The purpose of this research is to explore the impact of various adaptive service recovery strategies via social media, specifically Twitter.

Through a series of experimental manipulations, four service recovery strategies are tested alongside two variations of consumer complaint tweets. The service recovery responses vary in their degree of adaptiveness, which have differential impacts on numerous consumer outcome variables.

The findings indicate that highly adaptive recoveries responses positively impact consumers’ evaluations of service recovery satisfaction, leading to greater consumer behavioral intentions. Additionally, the type of tweet the consumer sends may further reveal their expectations for adequate service recovery responses.

This study is the first to empirically test the use of social media platforms in the service failure and recovery context. Although social media is commonly used for such purposes by practitioners, academic research up to this point has predominately focused on social media for generating word-of-mouth. Further, this study seeks to examine how service adaptability is perceived from the customer perspective, as opposed to the more traditional employee viewpoint.

Boundary‐spanning personnel such as tax preparers, travel agents and hairdressers interface directly with customers. In their unique position, between the organization and customer, these service providers market the service to consumers while they simultaneously carry out operational functions. Both the customer and the provider bring certain expectations to the service encounter. These expectations then shape the perceptions of the service encounter. The research reported uses script methodology to compare the expectations between boundary‐spanning service providers and consumers of the same service. Draws its theoretical foundation from the expectations and scripts literatures. In Phase One, scripts of the service were elicited in order to test hypotheses based on the discovery and comparison of consumers′ and service providers′ subgoals for a typical service encounter (H1). A hypothesis also tested the point at which providers and consumers enter their respective scripts of a typical service encounter (H2 ). In Phase Two, the subgoals mentioned most frequently in Phase One were used as stimuli to elicit the specific actions which comprise the complete script. These complete scripts enabled a comparison of the elaborateness of provider and consumer scripts (H3). The results of Phase One revealed that a portion of consumers′ subgoals for a service encounter are shared by providers of the service while other subgoals are unique, supporting H1. The point of activation of the script differed dramatically between customers and providers, supporting H2. The Phase Two findings provide support for the hypothesis that service providers have more elaborate scripts. Overall, the results support the notion that scripts operationalize expectations. Closes with implications for management and suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and examine a theoretical framework that evaluates the effects of banking consumers’ justice perception on their post-complaint mindsets. It also aims to help business strategists to customize service failure management activities to achieve a competitive advantage.

To examine the proposed framework using partial least square structural equation modeling, the authors collected data through a survey. The authors also evaluated the proposed framework through multi-group analysis and importance-performance map analysis (IPMA).

Results show that recovery disconfirmation mediates the relationship between banking consumers’ perception of justice and recovery satisfaction. Moreover, after a service failure, brand equity and loyalty mediate the relationship between recovery satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth behavior. IPMA analysis at the construct level shows that fostering the perception of recovery satisfaction is crucial for creating a positive post-failure impression in the mind of the banking consumer.

For banking practitioners, the findings of this research provide a strategic blueprint for managing service failure by developing relationships with consumers, thus creating an opportunity to gain competitive advantage.

Anchored in the theoretical framework of justice theory (Adams, 1963), expectation disconfirmation theory (Oliver, 1977) and social exchange theory (Kelley and Thibaut, 1978), the research adds to the literature by providing a critical evaluation of how to influence banking consumers’ post-complaint behavior from a more systematic perspective.

This study sheds some light on factors that affect customer switching intention in the Malaysian mobile phone service industry. More particularly, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of service quality (SQ), customer satisfaction, switching cost and consumer innovativeness (CI) on service switching intention (SWI); the mediating role of customer satisfaction; and the moderating role of service switching cost on the relationship between CI and SWI.

Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire survey that yielded 535 responses. Using structural equation modelling approach, the partial least square software, version 3 was utilised to test the study hypotheses.

Results reveal that customer satisfaction, service switching cost and CI directly affect SWI. However, no significant relationship was found between SQ and SWI. Again, data supported the mediating effect of customer satisfaction as well as the moderating effect of service switching cost.

It is expected that the findings from this study will enable policymakers, managers and marketers to formulate better strategies and effectively implement loyalty programs, preventing their customers from switching.

This study contributes to the existing literature by testing switching costs as the quasi moderator. Moreover, this is a pioneer study to consider CI as the antecedent of SWI.