Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration (MBA), Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology in the Faculty of Commerce, 2008 / The conditions for doing business are changing rapidly. In the last decade, the resin market has witnessed a substantial growth and rapid changes globally as well as domestically. Customer satisfaction is a critical issue in the success of any business system, hence, one of the key challenges of this market is how to satisfy and retain their customers. This issue is strongly related to how service quality is managed and which holds a significant importance to customers’ satisfaction and their perceived performance of companies. In order for companies to survive and grow, they must find new ways of thinking, which has led to doing marketing researches, especially those related to customer satisfaction. In this study, the SERVQUAL model was employed to establish the customers’ perceptions versus their expectations of service quality at Cray Valley Resins. Both primary and secondary data were used to inform this particular research. The research was quantitative in nature and conducted in the form of a self-administered survey. The type of study used was the cross-sectional analytical survey method. The summary of the findings reveals that the dimensions with the highest expectation were tangibles followed by responsiveness. Coincidently these two dimensions also had the largest gap scores. The overall mean gap score (-0.326) is relatively small. Thus, it can be concluded that although the customers hold a good opinion of the quality of the services provided, expectations of the services were higher.

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master's Degree in Technology: Marketing, Durban University of Technology, 2009. / Store layout is an important factor affecting consumer behaviour and a critical determinant towards the creation of store image. Well designed layouts are extremely important because they strongly influence in-store traffic patterns, shopping atmosphere, shopping behaviour, and operational efficiency (Vrechopoulos et al., 2004: 13). When an inconsistency occurs, some consumers will abandon that establishment in search of another one which offers fast, convenient and better services (Andersen, 1997: 118). Taking a more strategic approach to store layout can reap big rewards by boosting sales, increasing customer loyalty and ultimately increasing turnover (Clark, 2003: 42). The overall aim of the study was to ascertain if independent convenience stores in Kwa Mashu are aware of the impact of store layout on purchasing patterns of consumers. In order to accomplish the objectives of the study, a quantitative study was conducted at the convenience stores at Kwa Mashu by means of self-administered questionnaires. A sample of 400 respondents was asked questions pertaining to the study. The respondents were selected through non-probability sampling within which convenience sampling was applied. Conclusions and recommendations were thereafter drawn from the literature and the findings of the study. The results of this study show that consumers experience problems with store layout. It was found that appearance of the store, merchandise display, store atmosphere, instore service and accessibility are the major causes of this discomfort. Therefore, it is recommended that convenience retail owners in Kwa Mashu attend to those areas and see to it that necessary strategies are implemented to help customers where there is a need.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

M.Com. (Informatics) / This dissertation's objective is to supply a general, functional and business orientated discussion of the measurement of information system users' satisfaction. The result of this measurement acts as a measure of the data-processing function's success. It is however, not the purpose of this study to prescribe or develop a new standard method of measurement. This discussion also supplies a grounding for any further doctoral studies in this field. The dissertation's contents, highlights and exposition are being discussed in this synopsis. The motivation of this study lies first of all in the economical and strategic importance [2,3,44,20,17] of the data processing function for an organisation. Secondly, it lies in the importance of satisfied users, or clients, for the success of the data processing function. It is therefore important to always ensure the success of the data processing function, as well as to measure the subjective user satisfaction, accurately and effectively. This study is based on a previous study by Prof. JHP Eloff and DNJ Mostert [7,43], who created a general measurement process that determines the satisfaction of information system users; as well as various other research projects regarding the development and evaluating of these methods of measurement. The various, existing methods of measurement which were found in the literature, i.e: Pearson [6,33]; Baroudi [4,15]; Bailey [16]; Raymond [5] and Tan and Lo [36] , are being discussed in this dissertation. Due to the objective of this dissertation and the business orientated nature of this study, the statistical and critical evaluation of these methods are not being discussed. An attempt is however made to supply a broad view of the available methods of measurement, as well as the various contributions to the field of study by these research projects.

Ph.D. (Marketing Management) / As more retailers gain access to similar technologies, information and processes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to establish a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace, ensure customer satisfaction and encourage repurchase intention. This is especially true for high fashion retailers, since their higher margin customers have greater expectations to receive value from these high fashion retailers. To succeed in a highly competitive marketplace, high fashion retailers must become adept not just at providing quality products, but also at providing value to their customers. Only those businesses that truly offer the value that customers want and expect, remain competitive in the long term and are able to increase customer satisfaction levels. Higher levels of customer satisfaction leads to improved repurchase intention. It is therefore important for high fashion retailers to ensure that they offer value to their customers. Despite research undertaken in customer value, much debate still exists as to what contributes to customer value and what the relevant customer value dimensions are. Customer value is of managerial interest to high fashion retailers, as these retailers need to identify the dimensions they should focus on to increase the value they are delivering to their customers in order to obtain or retain a sustainable competitive advantage. Customer value leads to customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction in turn is a strong indicator of repurchase intention. This study therefore focuses on uncovering the concept of customer value, with specific emphasis on determining the underlying customer value dimensions from the perspective of the customer shopping at high fashion retail stores. The aim of this study is to propose a multidimensional model of customer value for high fashion retailers, including the interrelationship between customer value, customer satisfaction and repurchase intention.....

Many systems in services, manufacturing, and technology, feature users or customers sharing a limited number of resources, and which suffer some form of congestion when the number of users exceeds the number of resources. In such settings, queueing models are a common tool for describing the dynamics of the system and quantifying the congestion that results from the aggregated effects of individuals joining and leaving the system. Additionally, the customers themselves may be sensitive to congestion and react to the performance of the system, creating feedback and interaction between individual customer behavior and aggregate system dynamics.This dissertation focuses on the modeling and performance of service systems with congestion-sensitive customers using large-scale asymptotic analyses of queueing models. This work extends the theoretical literature on congestion-sensitive customers in queues in the settings of service differentiation and observational learning and abandonment. Chapter 2 considers the problem of a service provider facing a heterogeneous market of customers who differ based on their value for service and delay sensitivity. The service provider seeks to find the revenue maximizing level of service differentiation (offering different price-delay combinations). We show that the optimal policy places the system in heavy traffic, but at substantially different levels of congestion depending on the degree of service differentiation. Moreover, in a differentiated offering, the level of congestion will vary substantially between service classes. Chapter 3 presents a new model of customer abandonment in which congestion-sensitive customers observe the queue length, but do not know the service rate. Instead, they join the queue and observe their progress in order to estimate their wait times and make abandonment decisions. We show that an overloaded queue with observational learning and abandonment stabilizes at a queue length whose scale depends on the tail of the service time distribution. Methodologically, our asymptotic approach leverages stochastic limit theory to provide simple and intuitive results for optimizing or characterizing system performance. In particular, we use the analysis of deterministic fluid-type queues to provide a first-order characterization of the stochastic system dynamics, which is demonstrated by the convergence of the stochastic system to the fluid model. This also allows us to crisply illustrate and quantify the relative contributions of system or customer characteristics to overall system performance.

Arguably, two conflicting norms may have been activated simultaneously for communal consumers in a service failure. The first norm focuses on self-obligation, that is, because s/he is my good friend, I have to tolerate his/her mistakes. The second norm focuses on other-obligation, that is, because s/he is my good friend, s/he has to provide me with good services. The relative salience of these two conflicting norms may influence communal consumers' dissatisfaction level to be different from exchange consumers. Building on the psychological contract theory (Rousseau 1989), it is proposed that promise breach type would reconcile the original prediction and the reverse finding in study 1. Specifically, communal (vs. exchange) consumers would be less dissatisfied in an implicit promise breach, but the reverse pattern would occur in an explicit promise breach. Moreover, self-construal would moderate the interactive relationship between relationship type and promise breach type on consumer dissatisfaction. In particular, the discrepancy in dissatisfaction between communal and exchange consumers would be larger for interdependents (vs. independents) in both implicit and explicit promise breach conditions. Two additional experimental studies with different consumption contexts provide convergent evidence of the proposed hypotheses. These results have broad implications for theory and practice, and point to fruitful opportunities for future research. / This dissertation examines the impact of relationship type on consumer dissatisfaction in service failures. According to the communal-exchange relationship framework (Clark and Mills 1979), whereas the central norm of communal relationships is to demonstrate a concern for others, that of exchange relationships is to give benefits to others with an expectation of immediate return. It follows that communal (vs. exchange) consumers would be less dissatisfied in service failures because enduring mistakes made by a service provider is more compatible with the communal (vs. exchange) central norm. Surprisingly, this argument was not supported and a reverse result was found in study 1. / Wan, Chun Ying. / Adviser: Hui King Man. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-09, Section: A, page: . / Thesis submitted in: December 2008. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-144). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Thesis (M.Com.(Tourism Management))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Executive summary in English. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the moderating role of hedonic shopping value in shopping experience satisfaction in the context of clothing shopping. Hedonic shopping value is an emotional and hedonic appreciation of shopping. According to the existing literature, consumers' hedonic shopping value is associated with several antecedents such as involvement, variety seeking, and physical environment of stores. Involvement may heighten consumers' excitement with the shopping experience. Hedonic shoppers tend to seek variety and use exploratory buying behavior to experience the emotion of pleasant arousal in a retail setting. Emotional responses in stores can be affected by the store's environment, arguing positive mood is a significant predictor of both extra time, unplanned spending in shopping, and shopping satisfaction. To test the proposed model, a convenience sample of male and female Korean college students was employed. Pearson correlation, chi-square statistics, t-test, ANOVA, and EQS for structural equation modeling were utilized. The results of the study showed that people who, in general, enjoy clothing shopping feel more satisfied with their clothing shopping. It appears that the shopping skills acquired by consumers who are more involved in and enjoy shopping may lead to higher satisfaction. Female respondents were more involved in clothing shopping, were more satisfied with clothing shopping, and had a higher level of hedonic shopping value. Expectedly, the structural model for female subjects confirmed the existence of the mediating role of hedonic shopping value in shopping experience satisfaction whereas the model for male respondents and for all respondents in which male and female respondents combined did not. For the female group, involvement and variety seeking had no direct influences on shopping experience satisfaction. Rather, they influenced shopping experience satisfaction indirectly through hedonic shopping value. Hedonic shopping value did not play a role as an intervening variable for male consumers. This may be attributed to the fact that male respondents had considerably low levels of hedonic shopping value to be an intervening determinant. This result implies that male respondents may have greater utilitarian construct for clothing shopping satisfaction rather than hedonic constructs. / Graduation date: 2002

Abstract With China's rapid economic growth, the turnover of restaurants also will correspondingly. In 2005, for example, the Chinese restaurant industry retail sales to $RMB 888.68 billion, a net increase of $RMB 133.6 billion over the previous year, the annual operating revenue 48.88 billion yuan, annual sales for 15 years to maintain 10% growth at least. Domestic retaurant sales of catering industry in 2009 was about $RMB 1.8 trillion, representing an increase of 16.8% than year 2008. In the highly competitive environment, business model of restaurants are going to be more flexible and diversified.Under the large number of impacts of foreign cultures, thelocal consumers of China have more alternatives such Japanese food or Western cusines in addition to the traditional Chinese rice. Foreign entrepreneurs (especially Taiwan's business) not only positively encounter with local restaurants, but also face the same competitive situation against other outsiders. Based on this, as Taiwan's restaurant operators, how to how to effectively control the local consumer demand, taste preferences and build up the customer loyalty is coming to be an important subject of running local restaurants. The study purpose is to understand the service quality and customer satisfaction of Y restaurant which is lacatedin Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, of China. In this study, the questionnaires were delivered by the proportion of meal-time of cluster sampling, and issued from April 25 to May 9.A total of 201 questionnaires are got back, 170 valid samples were gathered at the 95% confidence level with the sampling error of 3.3%.After the questionnaire data of statistically testing analysis, conclusions are followed as below, 1. In aspects of positive customer satisfactory, A. The objective dimensions of satisfaction, the both of "message" and "convenience" are significantly lower than the overall average value of objective satisfaction. In the construct of "message", the Y restaurant is recommended to reinforce the message sufficiency, such as the way of consumption and prices, website information, external signs and so on. In the construct of "convenience", the study recommends that the Y restaurant be more easily found, such as clearer web map instructions and more obvious signs. B. the "objective satisfaction,"(X value) "customer loyalty" (Y value) showed in a linear regression model, the significant linear relationship exsists (R square = 23.5%). Similarly, the subjective satisfaction and customer loyalty are also represented as positive linear relationship. C. satisfaction of all objective dimensions, the "price" construct has the highest correlation (Pearson's correlation coefficient = 0.562) with subjective satisfaction. And that means higher prices of satisfaction, the subjective satisfaction will be higher accordingly. 2. In aspects of demographics and consumer behavior, A. in the frequency of consumption, 2nd consumption satisfaction, is significantly better than the "2-5 times" consumption customers. (B) in the meal-time aspect, customer satisfaction of the weekday hours is better than holiday time satisfaction. 3. Other fators, A.The holiday dinner customer emphasize significantly higher than "weekday lunch" customers¡¦ in aspects of tastes of food. (B) Of "The provision of parking spaces", the "income", and "age", there is a significant difference. The degree of emphasis of the consumers with more than $RMB 2000 of monthly income is significantly more than that of less than %RMB 2,000 of monthly income.; The degree of emphasis of consumers at the age of above 35 customers is significantly more than that at the age of below 35 years. Key words: Consumer Satisfaction, Restaurant Industry, Cheng-du City