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Explains how tangibility can be a useful concept for the services marketer, enabling a firm to identify its position relative to competition by measuring tangibility at various levels such as product class, brand, segment and thus develop specific strategies for improvement. Provides a scale, based on three empirical studies, for measuring tangibility and shows how the results can be used strategically.

Points out that customer satisfaction and retention are critical for retail banks, and investigates the major determinants of customer satisfaction and future intentions in the retail bank sector. Identifies the determinants which include service quality dimensions (e.g. getting it right the first time), service features (e.g. competitive interest rates), service problems, service recovery and products used. Finds, in particular, that service problems and the bank’s service recovery ability have a major impact on customer satisfaction and intentions to switch.

When designing a guarantee, service firms have a choice ‐the unconditional that guarantees customer satisfaction or the specific, which guarantees a major aspect of the service such as on‐time delivery. To date, this decision has been based primarily on anecdotal observations. This investigation examined consumer reactions to unconditional versus specific service guarantees in terms of risk reduction, preference, and trust in the service provider. In an experimental setting, respondents preferred firms which offered an unconditional guarantee. However, specific guarantees were favoured when subjects considered the ease of getting their money back. For a service firm, the implementation of an unconditional guarantee with a specific payout would have the broadest appeal in the market.

Prior work has examined antecedents and behavioral outcomes of satisfaction in an offline setting but few studies explore whether the findings hold for increasingly important online settings. This paper extends the prior work to explore the antecedents of e‐satisfaction and the relations between e‐satisfaction and two new behaviorial outcomes related to an online setting; customers' stated purchasing behavior (i.e. conversion) and actual browsing behavior (i.e. stickiness). Using a sample of 145 predominantly multi‐channel retail firms, the paper highlights two main results. First, existing models that examine the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction in the offline setting, also apply to an online setting. Second, Web site characteristics had a significant impact on all three types of behavioral outcomes, while Web site customer service was a significant driver of only retention/referral outcomes. Further, Web site customer service may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieving favourable outcomes in online settings.

This research investigated the relationship between three elements – core service quality, relational service quality‐ and perceived value – and customer satisfaction and future intentions across four services. The results revealed that core service quality (the promise) and perceived value were the most important drivers of customer satisfaction with relational service quality (the delivery) a significant but less important driver. A direct link between customer satisfaction and future intentions was established. The relative importance of the three drivers of satisfaction varied among services. Specifically, the importance of core service quality and perceived value was reversed depending on the service. A major conclusion was that both perceived value and service quality dimensions should be incorporated into customer satisfaction models to provide a more complete picture of the drivers of satisfaction.

With the “internationalisation” of tastes amongst wine consumers, the need to export wine has become ever more acute for wine producers worldwide. As an example of how wine producers have attempted to gain access to overseas markets, this case study examines the export drive of a major Australian winery.

Two experiments examined the effectiveness of service recovery strategies in situations where the service firm made customers wait even though they had made a reservation. The recovery strategies ‐ apology only, assistance, compensation, assistance plus compensation ‐ which reflected industry practices, did not lead to positive future intentions towards the service firm. While assistance plus compensation was the most effective strategy, respondents still held negative future intentions towards the service firm. Other factors that had an impact included the type of hospitality service, restaurant or hotel, and the purpose for buying the service. The major implication was that current industry recovery practices were inadequate in mitigating negative intentions. When service firms break a promise, effective recovery requires considerable effort to overcome customers’ negative intentions.

Effective segmentation is a challenge for financial service managers. Investigates the use of service quality, convenience, and competitiveness as a basis for benefit segmentation. Identifies two segments, a performance driven segment that in the retail bank sector is primarily interested in having the bank “get it right the first time” and a convenience driven segment that wants location. An important benefit for both segments was competitive rates. Results indicate that the segments differ with respect to evaluation of their main financial institution and satisfaction levels.

In developing a corporate imagery for a product, the importance of various marketing mix variables such as product appearance, brand names, advertising strategy and channels used is firmly established. However, an additional factor should be considered, that is national origin of the product or the imagery of the country of origin has often been overlooked by marketers and importers alike. The phrase “made in…” as a fifth element of the marketing mix can have tremendous influence on the acceptance and success of a product over and above the specific advertising techniques used. While the phenomenon of consumer bias against foreign products has been empirically demonstrated in such works by Baumgartner and Jolibert, there is relatively little understanding of the factors underlying such bias. There seems to have been no real advancement in the development of theories which might explain why consumers view foreign products differently than they do domestic products.

This paper utilizes a new data base on the international activities of small, new ventures in Korea to examine the impact of internationalization on firm performance. Main findings are two‐fold: first, the degree of internationalization by new ventures is related to firm performance in a non‐linear fashion with four phases resulting in the new M‐shaped curve; and, second, the internationalization of the new ventures in the home region of the triad moderates positively the non‐linear M‐shaped relationship between the two as their degree of internationalization increases.