The aim of this thesis is to investigate the difference between front-line employees' perception of service versus the customer's perception of the service delivery within the New Zealand Real Estate Industry. This research examines the service perception of the service delivery within the real estate industry using an exploratory study, pre-test and a survey. The lack of knowledge within real estate particularly around the importance of services has been a major motivator for this research. In reviewing the literature, a substantial amount of literature was available on service delivery however there was a gap in the literature on the service delivery in the real estate industry. This research addresses this gap through analysing the real estate industry, focusing on the Auckland market. Four dimensions of service were identified using SERVQUAL. Findings from the factor analysis showed that employees and clients have different perceptions of service. The management implications are wide and will positively impact the industry. For the industry, increasing service delivery will ensure the industry gains a more professional image and standing within New Zealand business.

It is now well recognised that an effective service recovery program is an essential part of firms??? service quality programs and critical to generating customer satisfaction and loyalty. A number of studies have investigated the impact of service recovery efforts (compensation, speed of response, etc.) on post-recovery satisfaction, mostly in Western countries. However, despite the importance of global markets, very few have examined how Eastern consumers react to service recovery efforts. Furthermore, none have examined the impact of cultural value orientation (cultural values measured at the individual level) in implementing effective service recovery programs. This is one of the few studies that have attempted to avoid the ecological fallacy, i.e., assume all consumers within a country are culturally homogeneous. Based on Justice Theory, this research conducted in Thailand, employed an experimental design to investigate how customer evaluations of service recovery efforts are influenced by interplay of the consumer???s cultural value orientation and service recovery attributes (apology, compensation, cognitive control, recovery initiation, and formality). The results reveal that cultural values of power distance, uncertainty avoidance and collectivism do indeed interact with a firm???s recovery tactics to influence perceptions of justice. In other words, the impact of a firm???s tactics is culturally dependent, and consumer expectations and perceptions of service recovery efforts vary, depending on customers??? cultural value orientation. Finally, all three forms of justice (distributive, procedural, interactional) along with disconfirmation of expectations, positively impact on overall service recovery satisfaction. Unlike previous studies, we found evidence to indicate that there is a temporal sequence associated with the three justice dimensions i.e., interactional and procedural justice precede and thus impact perception of distributive (outcome) justice. The results have implication for marketing theory as well as managerial action.

The focus of this study is the effective prioritization of customer requirements in collaborative product development. The CR priorities are often retrieved by questioning and interviewing targeted customers. But the targeted customer might not always be easily questioned, because they might not always be obvious or clearly known. If customers might be known, they might not be able to distinct the priorities for CR's, because everything is important to them. Moreover concerns of the developer's organization and the society might not get the necessary attention and it might be asked too much from the customer to trade off all customer requirements (CR's) by their own. Because the resources for an extensive customer interviewing might lack anyway the stakeholders might prioritize the CR's on their own. Efforts have already been undertaken to support cross-functional stakeholder groups in finding priorities of CR's. Most of the investigated methods lacked the ability to distinct the importance of CR's by a relative amount or were not able to integrate the interdependency of stakeholders in other ways than a tiresome negotiation processes. With the proposed Urn-Scheme approach the stakeholders register their own individual priorities based on their perceptions of what the relative priorities of the CR's might be. Furthermore the method supports the stakeholders in considering the opinions of all other stakeholders. The extent of taking others and own opinion into account is based on quantified social interdependencies, i.e. in this study measured trust and trustworthiness into the capability of every voter to understand costumers' perceived desired product quality. The summed up trustworthiness in prioritizing CR's of every stakeholder is used in a further step to finally transform the individual priorities to relative priorities of CR's from the whole group. With the amplification of votes from the stakeholders, who are trusted to prioritize better than others, an improvement of the decision making process will be achieved. A careful developed, easily to understand mathematical framework builds the fundament for manifold analysis of the obtained voting results, e.g. consensus analysis, priority significance check. Moreover the framework makes the proposed method transparent and the obtained results well documented for later reference. / Graduation date: 2005

Since the advent of the Internet, online shopping has grown substantially across the globe. Understanding how to increase customers¡¦ loyalty through lifting up the level of satisfaction has been emphasized by both researchers and practitioners. Through integrating expectation-confirmation theory and IS success, this study attempts to examine how consumers¡¦ expectation, perception and confirmation and satisfaction on information quality, system quality, and service quality affects their continuance intention toward online shopping. Different from prior research focusing on overall satisfaction and continuance intention, this study proposed an extended model to examine consumers¡¦ satisfaction and continuance intention. The model and relationship were tested and validated by using data collected from 368 full- and part-time students in four universities in Taiwan. The results showed that confirmation and satisfaction are strongly affected by perceived quality but not expectation. However, the impact of satisfaction on continuance intention is not as strong as expected. The implication for research and practice are also discussed.

With the ongoing innovation of production technology, the quality and properties of NoteBook (NB) are more advanced, and the price is getting lower. Due to the low price and the rising of Chinese consumption level, the demand of NB is progressively increasing. On the other hand, compared with other items, NB is a high unit price item. Therefore, the brand name of products becomes a factor for consideration in consumer purchases. It also leads to the consequence of NB industrial concentration. According to MIC¡¦s report, the global market share of top 5 NB brand (Acer, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Lenevo, and Toshiba) is up to 74% in 2010. Due to the circulation in information technology, NB functions and services provided by brand companies become similar. Under this condition, the discrepancy between different brand NBs is shortened. In the consumer-oriented market, only consumer satisfaction cannot create the consumer loyalty. Despite the consumer satisfaction, brand companies should consider other factors that affect the brand loyalty. The research is to discuss the factors affecting brand loyalty from the aspects of involvement, using habits, and demographic variables. In addition, statistic analysis is based on collecting questionnaires, in which the analysis includes factor analysis, regression analysis, and ANOVA analysis. The research found that: 1. Consumer satisfaction still affects brand value ,and be a essential factor of brand loyalty. 2. Regarding to involvement, product pleasure will be factor between consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty; others will be not. 3. Using habit and Demographic Statistic will be factors between consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

With the growth of the overall economy, various kinds of new-type service industries have developed well and rooted in Taiwan around the past 20 years, and become the crucial industry in our society. To succeed under the keen competition, most the owners of the retail stores look forward to raise the level of the satisfaction of shopping from the material level to the spiritual one; they want to attract the consumers with the comfortable and cozy shopping environment they mold. Crowding is a common phenomenon in Taiwan. The department stores and other retail stores are often packed with the crowd on weekends and special festivals. Such crowded shopping spaces always make consumers feel uncomfortable and even scare them away for that it is hard to enjoy the happiness of shopping under this kind of circumstance. Consumers can make themselves feel better by changing their behaviors or their mind set, which is called coping. The emotions caused by the crowdedness may influence the adoption of the coping behaviors, also, lead to the change of the consumer satisfaction. Many research have studied the implication of the coping behavior in the crowded situation, but few were focused on the retail crowding one; therefore, based on the theories of the coping behaviors and the results of the focus group interview, this study developed a set of operational definitions of the coping behaviors under the retail crowding situation. To measure the response of the consumers in the retail crowding situation, this study use two different levels of crowding pictures to design eight different scenarios. The results conclude a path which shows how does the retail crowding influence the consumer satisfaction through the motivation and the occasion of shopping, emotion, and the coping behaviors. The finding of the research is as followed. ¢¹. The more crowded the retailers are, the stronger sense of the negative emotions the consumers have. Besides, the negative emotions toward the others are especially stronger than the negative emotions toward the environment. Both type of the emotion have direct effects on the consumer satisfaction. ¢º. The motivation and the occasion (holiday effect) for shopping can not be the moderators between perceived crowding and emotion. ¢». Consumers will adopt different kinds of coping behavior according to their emotion. ¢¼. Behavioral coping and emotional coping are the intervening factors between emotion and consumer satisfaction. ¢½. The adoption of the behavioral coping will decrease the consumer satisfaction; however, the adoption of the emotional coping can increase it.

The purposes of this study include: (1) investigating the reasons why drinking water quality degrades during transportation in the distribution system and developing an easy and effective tool to evaluate the status of distribution system; (2) investigating residents¡¦ satisfaction with advanced treated drinking water. It is found that the main reason of drinking water degradation is that most people don¡¦t flush the drinking water storage facilities routinely. It is also found that although most respondents are satisfied with advanced treated drinking water, nearly 40% of local residents still buy bottle water instead of drinking tap water. Therefore, Taiwan Water Supply Corp. (TWSC) should let people know the importance of flushing water storage facilities routinely and what TWSC has done to improve drinking water quality. The LSI (Langelier Saturation Index) of most water samples is negative, which means that the drinking water is corrosive when too much hardness is removed to comply with the regulations. A simple, efficient and cost-effective method is developed to provide TWSC sufficient information to solve the problems regarding water quality degradations in distribution systems. By using contour maps of different water quality parameters, TWSC can easily identifies locations with potential problems and easily assesses the necessity and appropriate locations of building re-chlorination stations, even though the lack of information regarding pipeline material, hydraulic conditions, thickness of biofilm¡Ketc.

Thesis (doctoral)--Linköping University, 1996. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management