Inside small firms the loneliness of the Managing Director provides an opportunity for the trusted outsider who can offer viable advice. A new EITB service to small engineering…
Abstract
Inside small firms the loneliness of the Managing Director provides an opportunity for the trusted outsider who can offer viable advice. A new EITB service to small engineering firms aims to take advantage of this opportunity.
Apostolos Giovanis, George Pierrakos, Ioannis Rizomyliotis and Spyridon Binioris
In contrast to the reflective approach of service quality measurement, this paper aims to propose and validate a parsimonious multidimensional second-order formatively measured…
Abstract
Purpose
In contrast to the reflective approach of service quality measurement, this paper aims to propose and validate a parsimonious multidimensional second-order formatively measured model of service quality for primary health-care services provided by hospital outpatient departments. The index’s empirical validity is examined by investigating the strength of its relationship with certain behavioral responses such as patient satisfaction and behavioral intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected through a stratified random sampling from eight hospital outpatient departments in Greece. Covariance-based structural equation modeling techniques were used to validate the proposed service quality index and further investigate its effect on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention.
Findings
The data analysis indicated that the proposed formative index is fully functional with medical care being the factor and mostly contributes to service quality perception, followed by administrative service and staff performance, and facilities condition and nursing care. It, further, confirmed the partial mediating role of satisfaction, as it enhances the high impact of service quality on behavioral intentions.
Research limitations/implications
The relationships among hospital outpatient departments service quality, patient satisfaction and behavioral intentions were validated with data from one country and a health-care system which is state driven and funded.
Practical implications
An understanding of hospital primary health-care service quality formation is important to health-care decision makers because it offers them the opportunity to consider patients’ needs and wants, and takes the appropriate actions for improving the relevant underling procedures in a more efficient manner to achieve favorable behavioral responses.
Originality/value
The paper manages to propose and empirically evaluate a formatively measured approach of service quality and investigate the effects of the proposed index on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention, especially in the hospital outpatient services context in Greece.
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The purpose of this study is to develop and examine an integrated mediating model that contains relationship benefits as the relationship antecedents; trust, relationship…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop and examine an integrated mediating model that contains relationship benefits as the relationship antecedents; trust, relationship commitment and gratitude as mediators; and repurchase intention as the relationship consequence in a service business context.
Design/methodology/approach
The study recruited 253 respondents to test the proposed model. A partial-least-square-based structural equation modeling was adopted to evaluate the measurement of research constructs and test the research hypotheses that underpinned a proposed conceptual model.
Findings
The results show that confidence benefits increase trust more than social and special treatment benefits; social benefits have the most influence on relationship commitment; and special treatment benefits most greatly enhance feelings of gratitude. Thus, depending on the improvement objectives, marketers can accordingly choose the proper relationship benefits as a primary approach. Furthermore, both the direct and indirect effects of confidence benefits and social benefits on repurchase intention were significant.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation of this study is that all research variables were measured at a static point rather than as they were developing. Ignorance of the temporal sequence may incur the concern of possible spurious causal relationship inferences.
Practical implications
The study’s findings offer several important implications for service providers, which, in this study, were separated into high (e.g. such as hairdressing, beauty and massage) and low personal contact service groups (e.g. telecommunications and equipment maintenance). First, social benefits are more effective at increasing gratitude in the low personal contact service group, and at boosting trust in the high-contact group. Second, special treatment benefits increase gratitude much more in the high-contact group than in the low personal contact group. Third, gratitude has a much stronger effect on repurchase intention in the high personal contact group than in the low-contact group.
Originality/value
The interactions among relationship benefits, mediators (i.e. trust and relationship commitment) and outcomes remain unclear. Although the importance of gratitude as a mediator in relationship marketing (RM) has been shown, little research has examined how relational benefits influence repurchase intention through the combined mediating effects of commitment, trust and gratitude. Therefore, this study advances RM theory by examining the degree of additional explaining power that gratitude contributes to the commitment–trust model. The study also makes a practical contribution by building a research model to understand the nature of mediating roles played by relationship commitment, trust and gratitude in the service industry.
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The dismissal of the ordinary and the embrace of chaos are characteristics of the thriller which has, over the last decade, accounted for nearly 25 percent of the best‐seller…
Abstract
The dismissal of the ordinary and the embrace of chaos are characteristics of the thriller which has, over the last decade, accounted for nearly 25 percent of the best‐seller market. In spite of its existential overtones, the thriller, with rare exceptions, is seldom viewed as quality fiction, yet is not generally classified as genre fiction with attendant categorization by libraries and bookstores. Readers of thrillers in pursuit of authors must either search through the general fiction or “mystery” shelves where thrillers are sometimes placed. However, the latter solution offends both mystery and thriller readers.
THE interval between the Library Association Conference and the printing of THE LIBRARY WORLD is too brief for more than a series of impressions of it. Comment is probably…
Abstract
THE interval between the Library Association Conference and the printing of THE LIBRARY WORLD is too brief for more than a series of impressions of it. Comment is probably preferable in our pages to mere record. The Association is publishing in the next few weeks all the papers that were read and, as we hope, the substance at least of the unwritten contributions. In this second particular reports in recent years have been lacking. A report that merely states that “Mr. Smith seconded the vote of thanks” is so much waste of paper and interests no one but Mr. Smith. If Mr. Smith, however, said anything we should know what it was he said. What we may say is that the Conference was worthy of the centenary we were celebrating. The attendance, over two thousand, was the largest on record, and there has not been so large a gathering of overseas librarians and educationists since the jubilee meeting of the Library Association at Edinburgh in 1927. So much was this so that the meeting took upon it a certain international aspect, as at least one of the non‐librarian speakers told its members, adding that it was apparently a library league of nations of the friendliest character. It followed that an unusual, but quite agreeable, part of each general session was devoted to speeches of congratulation and good‐will from the foreign delegates. All, with the possible exception of the United States, dwelt upon the debt of their countries in library matters to the English Public Libraries Acts and their consequences. Even Dr. Evans, in a very pleasant speech, showed that he had reached some tentative conclusions about English librarianship.
Samson Yusuf Dauda and Jongsu Lee
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions of Nigerian banking customers regarding customers’ evaluation of their banks service quality based on their banks actual…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions of Nigerian banking customers regarding customers’ evaluation of their banks service quality based on their banks actual performance on current banking service delivery.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey has been used to collect primary data and 1,245 usable questionnaires were used in the analysis. A conjoint analysis with stated preference data were used to construct the consumers’ behavior, while discrete choice method was employed to evaluate the preferences. More information was obtained by in cooperating heterogeneity into the model by the random coefficient and the test variance with the primary attributes and social demographics and individual characteristics.
Findings
Discrete choice analysis shows that bank management should focus on: reduction of transaction errors, transaction cost, waiting time and initial online learning time. This four attributes have strong impact on customer’s satisfaction depending on quality performance. Relative to other services the reduction in waiting time and transaction cost are the most important services to the Nigerian banking customers. Other findings of willingness to pay and consumer preference for other attributes reveal more information for improved banking policies.
Research limitations/implications
The sample only focussed on the urban areas and did not consider rural dwellers. Future research should aim to improve on these by including a variable in the utility set up that captures the distance of the respondent to the main city.
Practical implications
Nigerian banking customers do not care about a friendly smile as customer care. Rather, they value more on the waiting time and transaction cost showing that convenience and cost dimensions have strong and direct effect on service quality. Other dimensions identified includes, reliability, product portfolio, security and privacy, ease of use, accessibility, and competence and credibility.
Originality/value
This study has drawn on a sample of 1,245 Nigerian banking customers and evaluating how the survey respondents perceive their respective banks’ performance by their evaluation of the current banking service delivery.
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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
Abstract
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.
The management of children′s literature is a search for value andsuitability. Effective policies in library and educational work arebased firmly on knowledge of materials, and on…
Abstract
The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.
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The Library Association Conference has once more been held, and in spite of the smaller attendance and the omission of most of the usual social and local functions, there was a…
Abstract
The Library Association Conference has once more been held, and in spite of the smaller attendance and the omission of most of the usual social and local functions, there was a spirit of camaraderie and interest displayed that has made the meeting a decided success. It met at a time of such national strain that we may surely hope will never recur during the experience of the present generation, a time when all professions, occupations and business enterprises seem of small interest in comparison to the great national effort being made to defend the positions of ourselves and our Allies, against the overbearing aggression of a military despotism, so organised and trained, so powerful and unscrupulous as to call for the highest self‐devotion and sacrifice of all and every member of our immense Empire. It is therefore not a matter of surprise that although the number of members present was somewhat smaller than usual the tone of the Conference was kept at a high level, and attention was mainly focussed upon business matters.
The purpose of this article is expository in the main; critical to a lesser degree. It will attempt to show how Karl Marx, enraged by the imperfections and inhumanity of the…
Abstract
The purpose of this article is expository in the main; critical to a lesser degree. It will attempt to show how Karl Marx, enraged by the imperfections and inhumanity of the capitalist society, “fought” for its supersession by the communist society on which he dwelt so fondly, that society which would emerge from the womb of a dying capitalism. It asks such questions as these: Is it possible to create the truly human society envisaged by Marx? Is perfection of man and society a mere will‐o'‐the‐wisp? A brief analysis, therefore, of the imperfections of capitalism is undertaken for the purpose of revealing the evils which Marx sought to eliminate by revolution of the most violent sort. In this sense, the nature of man under capitalism is analysed. Marx found the breed wanting, in a word, dehumanised. An attempt is, therefore, made to discuss the new man of Marxism, man's own creation, and the traits of that new man, one freed at last from the alienating effects of private property, division of labour, money, and religion. Another question that springs to mind is this: how does Marx propose to transcend alienation?