Julie Baker, Kara Bentley and Charles Lamb, Jr
This paper aims to explore the evolution of the service environment literature and speculates about future research in this area. This paper focuses on studies regarding how the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the evolution of the service environment literature and speculates about future research in this area. This paper focuses on studies regarding how the interior and exterior environments of physical service settings (including retail stores) influence consumer response. Web atmospherics are not covered in this paper. In addition, while a number of studies have been conducted on retail and service atmospherics elements in other disciplines, such as environmental psychology and leisure and hospitality, the focus is on research published in marketing and consumer-related journals.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reports the results of empirical studies; however, as there are few empirical studies on the effects of exterior environmental characteristics (e.g. storefronts) in marketing, two conceptual papers on this topic will be reviewed to set the stage for future research on exterior design.
Findings
Over the past 40 years, there has been a proliferation of articles on how service environments influence consumer responses. The review covers illustrative examples of articles in several categories of environmental topics. The areas for future research based on the review are suggested.
Originality/value
An up-to-date review of service environment research that is broad in scope is provided. The authors also propose 41 different research questions based on the review that services scholars can use to take this area of inquiry forward.
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Kara Lee Daly, Gemma Pike, Victoria Clarke and Vanessa Beck
This qualitative study aims to explore general perceptions of a woman experiencing negative menopausal symptoms in the workplace. It examines the socio-cultural understandings…
Abstract
Purpose
This qualitative study aims to explore general perceptions of a woman experiencing negative menopausal symptoms in the workplace. It examines the socio-cultural understandings informing the responses of a mixed participant group, including those unlikely to have experienced menopause, to a hypothetical scenario involving a woman disclosing negative menopausal symptoms in the workplace – to either a female or male manager.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an innovative hybrid vignette-story completion (SC) technique, data were generated from 48 employees of a single UK-based organisation. Participants were presented with a vignette featuring a protagonist (Julie) experiencing negative menopausal symptoms, asked questions about their imaginings of Julie and how she might be perceived by others in the workplace, then presented with a story stem and asked to continue the story in the third person. The stem depicted Julie preparing to tell her manager about her symptoms and featured either a male or female manager, with one variation randomly presented to each participant. Responses were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Findings
This study reports four themes: (1) the burden of menopause; (2) managing menopause at work; (3) menopause as not belonging in the workplace; and (4) menopause as unlocking new life potential? Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.
Originality/value
Using the innovative hybrid vignette-SC technique, this study contributes to the current discourse on menopause in the workplace by providing insight into how menopausal employees experiencing negative symptoms are perceived by others and the social understandings that shape these perceptions.
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Stephanie Gillison, Alexa Martinez Givan, Sharon E Beatty, Kyoungmi (Kate) Kim, Kristy Reynolds and Julie Baker
This paper aims to explore the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip to better understand the experiences and process that occur during these shopping trips. Adolescent girls…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip to better understand the experiences and process that occur during these shopping trips. Adolescent girls and their mothers are an important shopping companion pair that has received minimal study.
Design/methodology/approach
This research investigates the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip using in-depth interviews with 28 mothers, adolescent daughters and retail employees in the USA.
Findings
The interviews reveal that the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip consists of three important developmental experiences: conflict and struggle, education and influence and bonding between mother and daughter. Similarities and differences between middle- and high-school daughters relative to these issues are explored.
Originality/value
This study is the first to bring together the interplay processes of conflict, education and influence and bonding during mother–adolescent daughter shopping trips. This study extends research regarding family identity interplay, companion shopping, adolescent identity development and consumer socialization. The authors find that the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip involves daughters’ efforts to separate from their mothers and form their own identities, often producing struggle and conflicts; daughters developing as consumers and individuals; and an opportunity to bond.
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As conceptualizations of expectations in consumer evaluations continue to evolve, researchers have been exploring multiple levels of expectations in satisfaction and service…
Abstract
As conceptualizations of expectations in consumer evaluations continue to evolve, researchers have been exploring multiple levels of expectations in satisfaction and service quality evaluations. In 1993 Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman proposed that consumers use both desired and adequate expectations in service quality evaluations and a “zone of tolerance” separates these levels. This study extends the Zeithaml et alwork by investigating the zone of tolerance as it relates to consumer experience with the service provider, perceived competitive choice opportunities, and the essentialness of differing service dimensions. Results indicate that consumers readily distinguish between desired and adequate expectation levels; and understanding both expectation levels is important. Although perceptions of what a firm should offer remain relatively stable, perceptions of acceptable performance vary by service dimensions and as consumers acquire experience. In comparison with the traditional SERVQUAL framework, this multiple expectation conceptualization offers service marketers the opportunity to fine‐tune resource allocations.
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Greg W. Marshall, Julie Baker and David W. Finn
An often overlooked aspect of service delivery in business‐to‐business settings is the issue of service quality among internal organizational units. Yet, in practice many…
Abstract
An often overlooked aspect of service delivery in business‐to‐business settings is the issue of service quality among internal organizational units. Yet, in practice many organizational departments are service providers primarily to customers within the organization. For example, management information systems, human resources, and purchasing departments all share an important function supporting other employees as they perform their jobs. Managers of those internal service functions are becoming more concerned with delivering high levels of service quality to their internal customers. This article explores the dimensionality of customer service quality as perceived by a set of internal customers of an organizational buying unit, and examines the potential for segmentation of internal customers. Managerial implications and recommendations are presented to aid organizations desiring to improve internal service quality.
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Shahrzad Amirani and Julie Baker
Offering higher quality is a strategy which has been demonstratedto be instrumental in improving performance for many firms. Retailservice customers, at the decision‐making stage…
Abstract
Offering higher quality is a strategy which has been demonstrated to be instrumental in improving performance for many firms. Retail service customers, at the decision‐making stage, tend to form expectations about the service quality they will receive from cues which are available to them. Presents a methodology for identifying service quality cues, isolating the cues most important to consumers, helping retailers to segment customers on the basis of quality cues, and determining which cues should be promoted to lure competitors′ customers.
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Prachi Jain and Vijita Singh Aggarwal
The purpose of this paper is to check the reliability and validity of a well-acknowledged scale developed by Pratibha A. Dabholkar (1996) in the context of Indian organized…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to check the reliability and validity of a well-acknowledged scale developed by Pratibha A. Dabholkar (1996) in the context of Indian organized grocery retail and also to identify new aspects of service quality with respect to grocery retail from literature that have not been taken into account in earlier studies and to finally develop a new scale to measure service quality of organized retail grocery stores with consultation from several experts.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to achieve the objectives of the research, both descriptive and exploratory research designs have been employed such that a survey of 800 respondents was undertaken as part of descriptive research whereas exploratory research was conducted to add new dimensions to the existing service quality measurement model so as to develop a new comprehensive scale.
Findings
The results of the study suggest that all the five dimensions of Dabholkar’s model are not suitable to measure service quality in Indian organized grocery retail stores. Therefore, a new instrument with total four dimensions has been developed.
Practical implications
The study is of great importance for the retailers as it offers a more comprehensive and specific scale to measure service quality of organized grocery retail stores.
Originality/value
This research supports and makes contribution to the previous research on development of service quality measurement scales in Indian context.
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The chapter presents the gospel festival as a significant postmodern religious tourism phenomenon which has not thus far been recognized or critically theorized. To date…
Abstract
The chapter presents the gospel festival as a significant postmodern religious tourism phenomenon which has not thus far been recognized or critically theorized. To date, conceptualizations of religious tourism, specifically pilgrimages, have been dominated by Turnerian concepts of liminality and communitas. It is suggested that these concepts, while valuable, do not sufficiently account for the heterogeneous and contested nature of these event spaces or their potentiality for the performance of alternative modes of social ordering. The Foucauldian notion of heterotopia is adapted as a more apposite theoretical framework and an example of a gospel festival in Australia is drawn on by way of explication.