Search results for "Custom"
showing 10 items of 488 documents
Service policies of German manufacturers: Critical factors in international competition
1992
Abstract German companies perform well in export markets, based on product quality and technology. But the competitive advantages and value-added of service are expected to grow sharply in the coming decade — especially product-focused service. Hermann Simon has identified ‘Hidden Champions’ in Germany — companies like Heidelberg Printing Machines, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which integrate market and technology as equal driving forces and provide quick and reliable customer service. But there is much room for improvement in service provided by German manufacturing companies. They could upgrade their design and marketing of service, and apply better quality control such as setting quantitative …
Investigating Customer Satisfaction in a Health Club Context by an Application of the Tetraclasse Model
2006
International audience; Although customer satisfaction is recognised as a key driver for positive organisational outcomes, the nature and the role of the service attributes contributing to satisfaction are still misunderstood, and are most often evaluated by service quality dimensions. This study attempts to explore these attributes and their contribution to satisfaction in a sport service context using Llosa's Tetraclasse model which hypothesises that some service attribute weights are performance related whereas others are not. This application on a sample composed of 184 customers from five French health clubs indicated four satisfaction contribution types. The results suggest that the q…
Linking Employees’ Extra-Role Efforts to Customer Satisfaction
2017
Abstract. Our main goal was to test the moderating role of customer complaints (“presence” vs. “absence”) in the links from extra-role customer service (ERCS) to customer satisfaction. To this end, we conducted two independent survey studies in two service settings: hotels and service-centers for individuals with intellectual disability. A total of 571 hotel customers and 876 legal guardians of individuals with intellectual disability participated in the studies. We found that the magnitude of the relationship between ERCS and customer satisfaction was higher for presence of complaints than for absence in both service settings. Results are discussed in terms of compensation-seeking, recipr…
Managing the Liberalization of Italy’s Retail Electricity Market: A Policy Proposal
2018
Italy will phase electricity retail price regulation by July 1st, 2020. This is the last step in the process of electricity market liberalization, that started in 1999. Until then, residential customers and small businesses who do not choose their supplier, will be supplied under a transitional, regulated service named “maggior tutela” (greater protection), which is supplied by the local distributor at a price set by the regulator. This paper reviews the literature on electricity retail competition – with particular regard to its expected effects on prices, innovation and customer engagement – and the condition under which its benefits may be delivered. Then a Structure-Conduct-Performance …
Value, supplier dependence and long‐term orientation
2011
PurposeIn organizational markets, many companies tend to reduce the number of providers to focus on establishing relationships with few of them. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of relationship value and dependence of supplier on long‐term orientation and customer loyalty in the setting of relationships between travel agencies and their main providers.Design/methodology/approachA partial least square regression is performed to test a proposed model that links several relational variables with outcomes in terms of customer loyalty.FindingsResults provide support for the positive indirect influence of relationship value on long‐term orientation, while customer dependence …
Different levels of loyalty towards the higher education service: evidence from a small university in Spain
2020
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) operate in a competitive environment in which the universities must address issues of customer satisfaction and loyalty. This process requires that educational institutions carefully analyse the key factors contributing to student loyalty in all its dimensions and develop strategies accordingly. Customer loyalty is a consistent commitment deeply held by customers to re-purchasing and/or recommending the product or service. This paper aims at understanding the different levels of student loyalty towards HEIs through an empirical study run with 705 graduate students from a small University. According to the students' personal and situational characteristic…
PMG-Pro: A Model-Driven Development Method of Service-Based Applications
2011
Published version of a chapter published in the book: SDL 2011: Integrating System and Software Modeling. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25264-8_12 In the Internet of Things, billions of networked and software-driven devices will be connected to the Internet. They can communicate and cooperate with each other to form a composite system. In this paper, we propose PMG-pro (present, model, generate and provide), a language independent, bottom-up and model-driven method for the development of such composite system. We envision that all devices in the Internet of Things provide their functionalities as services. From a service description, a service pre…
Consumer Information Systems as Services
2017
Consumer Information Systems (CIS) are a type of information systems that provides services to consumers instead of addressing users in traditional organizational settings, such as Internet based television. Services typically involve a trade-off between achieving high service productivity and quality. The use of service mass customization to successfully address these issues of both productivity and quality in a service context is proposed. We suggest that the development of Consumer Information Systems as Services (CISaS) may achieve such service mass customization. This paper presents a conceptual framework and investigates how it applies to a set of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) o…
Handling stakeholder uncertain judgments in strategic transport service analyses
2013
Abstract The quality level of services has to be constantly controlled, especially under conditions of competition increasing and limited resources. However, considering that service performance analyses are based on stakeholders' judgments, they can be characterized by possible uncertainties related to incompleteness for partial ignorance, imprecision for subjectivity and even vagueness. Therefore, under these conditions, unreliable results can be obtained by widely used service analysis methodologies. In the present paper, a methodology based on a recent extension of the SERVQUAL model, and that uses in combined manner the fuzzy set theory and the analytic hierarchy process method is prop…
Systemic Development of Service Innovation
2015
This chapter explores the intrinsic characteristics of services and service systems and presents systemic approach to produce service innovations. The chapter consists of elaborating the characteristics of services and the principles of systemic development, discussing service matrixes, service systems, service strategies and business models, and special challenges related to the development of services and service innovations. Services are always produced in service systems consisting of combination of service personnel and information systems. Customers are involved in these systems by interacting with the front end of service organization. The key issue in service development and innovat…