<p>Den ekonomiska strukturen har under de sista decennierna genomgått en stor förändring. Service sektorn har vuxit till att bli en drivande kraft i de utvecklade länderna. Därför är konceptet med tjänstemarknadsföring relativt nytt. Fastän fler och fler tjänsteföretag är numera medvetna om hur viktigt det är att marknadsföra sitt företag och dess varumärke, finns det fortfarande många tekniska tjänsteföretag som inte har tillämpat konceptet. Det svenska konsultföretaget SWECO, som kommer att användas som fallstudie i uppsatsen, är en av dem.</p><p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur viktigt det är för tekniska tjänsteföretag att marknadsföra sitt varumärke och hur de kan förbättra sin image samt sitt varumärke.</p><p>Undersökningen har tillämpats med hjälp av elektroniska enkäter. Som ytterligare förstärkning, har tre teorier använts som analysverktyg.</p><p>Studien visar att SWECO är ett relativt okänt företag. Trots att företaget agerar på ett internationellt plan, så har det inte utvecklat en marknadsföringsstrategi. De slutsatser som kunde dras demonstrerar att ett starkt varumärke för tekniska tjänsteföretag är väldigt viktigt eftersom de 7 p:na för tjänster anses vara otillräckliga som marknadsföringsmedel. Den högt upplevda kvaliteten av företagets tjänster samt deras finansiella styrka ger företaget goda förutsättningar för att marknadsföra sitt varumärke internationellt.</p> / <p>The economical structure has faced a great change during the last decades; the service industry has grown into a dominant force in the developed countries. Therefore, the concept of services marketing is relatively new. Although more and more service companies are realizing the importance of marketing and branding, there are still technical service companies that has not adapted the concept. The consultancy firm SWECO, which will serve as a case study, is one of them.</p><p>The purpose with this essay is to examine the importance of branding for technical service firms and how they do to improve their image and brand. The research issue has been studied with the assistance of electronic surveys. As further assistance, three theoretical models has been used as instruments for the analysis.</p><p>The study shows that SWECO is a relatively unknown company. Although the company is operating in an international arena, it has not developed a marketing strategy. The conclusions attained demonstrate the importance of creating strong brands for technical service companies since the 7 P’s of services are insufficient as marketing tools. The highly perceived quality of the company’s services and their financial strength give the company good prerequisites for marketing their brand internationally.</p>

No description available.

Our purpose of this paper is to seek an understanding of which service quality factors that affects customers in their decision making progress regarding purchasing financial services such as pension products. We also seek to evaluate the different service quality factors by compare their relative strength against each other. The study aim to investigate if there are any connections between customer behavior variables such as gender, age and income in comparison to these service quality factors related to pension products.The findings aim to help a small financial institute such as our case company Plain Capital to understand how their customers experience service quality regarding pension products. In order to find empirical results we conducted a qualitative research as well a quantitative research. The qualitative research employed both a focus group interview with pension savers and an interview with our case company Plain Capital. We were able to identify the service quality factors for pension’s products with help from the focus group interview. The quantitative research employed a visited survey, which measure connections between customer behavior variables such as gender, age and income in comparison to these service quality factors related to pension products. The qualitative endings show that the service quality experience regarding pension products is based on eight service quality factors. The eight service quality factors identified in this study are physical environment, Webb environment, phone environment, financial performance, pension advising, level of individualization, characteristics of financial advisors and level of feedback. The quantitative findings show that characteristics of financial advisors are the one with the highest average out of the eight service quality factors, followed by level of individualization and Webb environment. The hypotheses tests show that there are four significant connections between the eight service quality factors and consumer behavior variables. This study identifies eight service factors that together represent the total service quality for pension products in Sweden. The financial institutions that offer pension products can, by improving these eight service quality factors, increase their customers perceived service quality. The finding of this study shows that small and local companies like our case company Plain Capital should focus on their characteristics of financial advisors to build a long term customer relations, increase their individualization in their offers depending of gender and level of income and finally increase their quality of their Webb environment in order to expand in new geographical locations.

The concept of ‘customer experience’ has evolved as an imperative area of study within the marketing discipline. Despite its importance and the positive attention this concept has received during the last few years, the explanation of customer experiences have remained vague and lack a thorough theoretical foundation. Furthermore, practitioners across many industries claim that there is a connection between customer experience and loyalty, yet there is a paucity of research to validate this theoretical assumption. This study aims to address this gap in the literature and to facilitate better understanding of the concept of 'customer experience' and its antecedents and focus on brand loyalty as consequence from the consumer perspective. Accordingly, a mixed-method research design was adopted that consisted of two phases. The first phase involved a netnography study to gain better understanding of the notion of customer experience and refine a conceptual framework that has been developed on the basis of the existing literature. In the second phase this framework was tested by means of a survey of British customers to examine their experience with resort-hotel brands in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the survey responses. The structural model showed a very good fit to the data and good convergent, nomological and discriminant validity and reliability stability. The findings of this study identified four aspects of customer experience in the resort-hotels in Egypt; i.e. educational, aesthetics, relational and novelty. Those aspects are congruent with prior work in the tourism literature. Additionally, the study found that customers rely on some service cues such as: price, core service and WOM to predict and assess their experiences. The findings also indicated that perceived service quality has a mediating role in the relationship between customer-contact employees and core service and customer experience. A key contribution of this research is offering a robust model that explains the nascent phenomenon of customer experience and demonstrating that experience has a definite positive impact on brand loyalty. The use of netnography to identify customer experience dimension is also considered as a methodological contribution in the area of marketing research. Moreover, the present study adds novel perspective to the growing body of brand literature (particularly service brand) and suggests directions for future research. Finally, the study provides managerial implications for service managers to identify the experiential needs of their customer and properly design the customer experience.

Perceived quality in the context of e-commerce was defined and examined in numerous studies, but, to date, there are no consistent definitions and measurement scales. Instruments that measure quality in e-commerce industries primarily focus on website quality or service quality during the transaction and delivery phases. Even though some scholars have proposed instruments from different perspectives, these scales do not fully evaluate the level of quality perceived by customers during the entire decision-making process. This dissertation purports to provide five main contributions for the e-commerce, service quality, and decision science literature: (1) development of a comprehensive instrument to measure how online customers perceive the quality of the shopping channel, website, transaction and recovery based on the customer decision making process; (2) identification of the determinants of customer satisfaction and the key dimensions of customer behavioral intentions in e-commerce; (3) examination of the relationships among perceived quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty intention using empirical data; (4) application of different statistical packages (LISREL and PLS-Graph) for data analysis and comparison of how these methods impact the results; and (5) examination of the moderating effects of control variables. A survey was designed and distributed to a total of 1126 college students in a large southwestern university in the U.S. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling with both LISREL and PLS-Graph are used to validate the comprehensive instrument and test the research hypotheses. The results provide theoretical and normative guidelines for researchers and practitioners in the e-commerce domain. The research results will also help e-commerce platform providers or e-retailers to improve their business and marketing strategies by providing a better understanding of the most important factors influencing customer behavioral intentions.

Thesis (M. Tech. (Faculty of Management Sciences, Dept. of Human Resources Management) -- Vaal University of Technology / The buzzwords in South African business today is quality service and customer satisfaction. Service quality is an important determinant of customer satisfaction. It is therefore important to measure customer satisfaction and to solicit internal customers perceptions on service received. This research was primarily undertaken to evaluate the quality of services rendered by administrators to Sasol Technology R&D employees. The research is supported by a detailed study of quality and customer service. An adapted internal service quality scale (INSERVQUAL) was used to measure service quality. A thirty item scale was developed, for the empirical study. The instrument was then subjected to a scale purification process through exploratory factor analysis. Both the expectation and perception elements were used in measuring service quality. The five dimensions of service quality namely Accessibility and Tangibility, Assurance, Empathy, Reliability and Responsiveness were identified as internal service quality dimensions. Aspects of Accessibility and Tangibility were incorporated as a single dimension in this study. A six- point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire. The low end of the scale represented a negative response, whilst the high end represented a posit,ive response. With a response rate of 63% from internal customers, the researcher was able to provide evidence that service quality dimensions may influence an employee's perception of the administrators' service quality. The finding in this study also suggests the need for further research to examine customers' expectations in other related services as well as in different culture contexts. The testing of the modified internal customer model of internal marketing developed and described in this study indicates that Access, Assurance, Empathy, Reliability and Responsiveness dimensions may be a useful approach to enhancing service quality.

A qualidade dentro da hotelaria, segundo a perspectiva dos hóspedes pode ser igual, inferior ou superior às suas expectativas. Para estimar esta qualidade é preciso estabelecer atributos, medi-los e elencá-los. Este trabalho propôs-se a através de um levantamento bibliográfico, chegar a atributos de qualidade nos serviços de hotelaria, e posteriormente medi-los junto aos hóspedes dos hotéis de Ribeirão Preto, visando contrastar as diferentes necessidades dos clientes hoteleiros de lazer e negócios. Para isso foi utilizada a aplicação de questionários com o método SERVQUAL em clientes de hotéis da cidade. Esta ferramenta compara as expectativas e percepções dos mesmos. Os dados obtidos foram analisados estatisticamente. O estudo aponta para hóspedes de lazer e negócios com perfis diferenciados de gênero, renda, frequência de viagens. Quanto às questões comparativas do SERVQUAL, conclui-se que os hóspedes de lazer estão quase totalmente satisfeitos com os hotéis nos quais se hospedaram na cidade. Porém, aponta hóspedes de negócios que desejam mais do que encontram nestes estabelecimentos. Há pontos a melhorar em quase todas as dimensões: tangibilidade, confiabilidade, responsividade e segurança. Para o atendimento de excelência dos indivíduos que viajam com este tipo de motivação torna-se necessário ampliar o conhecimento sobre os mesmos e adotar medidas efetivas para sua satisfação. / The quality in the hotel industry, in conformity to the guests perspective can be equal, lower or higher than they expected. To appraise this quality it is needed to establish attributes, measure and order them. This study intends to make a bibliographical research to find quality attributes in hotel services and after that, to test them among Ribeirão Pretos hotel guests. The objective is to contrast different needs of these business and leisure guests. For that, SERVQUAL Method it was used and required questioner applications to the citys hotel clients. This instrument compares the expectations and the perceptions of these two different types of costumers. The data obtained was statistically analyzed. The study has as aim either to leisure and business guests with distinct profiles of gender, income, travel frequency. When it comes to SERVQUAL comparative questions, it was concluded that leisure guests are very much satisfied with the hotels that they are lodged in town. Meanwhile, the study shows business guests that wish more than they find in these establishments. There are aspects to work on almost every dimension: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness and security. To have an excellence attend of individuals who travel with this kind of motivation, some increasement in knowledge about them and adoption of effective ways to measure for their satisfaction are necessary.

O tema central desta dissertação é o uso da evidência física como forma de gerar percepções de qualidade de serviços por parte de clientes. A realização de um estudo exploratório justifica-se pela baixa produção acadêmica sobre o tema no Brasil. Na primeira parte da dissertação é feita revisão bibliográfica em que se abrange: importância dos serviços; definições de serviços; características de serviços; classificações de serviços; serviços de saúde; encontros de serviço; qualidade de serviços; e evidência física. Na segunda parte do trabalho, apresentam-se a metodologia e os resultados de uma pesquisa de campo, realizada para verificar como os conceitos estudados são praticados por três hospitais brasileiros. Na conclusão do trabalho são apresentadas as principais contribuições práticas e teóricas, um resumo das principais descobertas da pesquisa de campo, as restrições e limitações do trabalho e recomendações de pesquisas futuras para outros autores que tenham interesse pelo tema. / The aim of this dissertation is the use of physical evidence as a way to generate service quality perceptions from clients. The realization of an exploratory research is justified by the low academic production on the subject in Brazil. In the first part of the dissertation is presented a bibliographic review including: the importance of services; service definitions; service characteristics; service classification; health services; service encounters; service quality; and physical evidence. In the second part of this work are presented the methodology and the results of a field research in order to verify how the concepts reviewed are practiced by three Brazilian hospitals. At the conclusion are presented the main practical and theoretical contributions, a summary of the main findings of the field research, the restrictions and limitations of the study and recommendations for future researches to other authors who have interest on this subject.

O tempo é importante para o homem nas diversas áreas do conhecimento porque tem uma finalidade em cada área, por isso, é estudado, medido, analisado, avaliado de maneira tanto qualitativa como quantitativa. A questão do tempo de serviço, neste caso, o serviço de saúde, em algumas situações em que ocorre a demora no atendimento leva a formação de fila que faz a espera inevitável. A qualidade é reconhecida como um constructo multidimensional, com vários atributos e visões. Vários pesquisadores desenvolveram ou adaptaram um instrumento para medir qualidade de serviços de saúde e muitos estudos realizados revelaram que ainda ocorre a formação de longas filas para atendimento do paciente. O objetivo deste trabalho é a avaliação da perspectiva do paciente da qualidade de serviços de saúde na rede pública e privada de saúde, focada na análise do tempo de consulta médica. Visa fornecer informações para melhorar e auxiliar a tomada de decisão dos gestores de instituições de saúde sobre a qualidade de serviços de saúde prestados. A análise quantitativa de dados usou o teste de significância não-paramétrico, com o teste com sinais Wilcoxon, usado para pares conjugados e a análise qualitativa usou a técnica descritiva. O instrumento de coleta de dados baseou-se na SERVQUAL, utilizada para avaliação de qualidade de serviços de saúde. O desenvolvimento da pesquisa empírica ocorreu nas instituições de saúde da cidade de Ribeirão Preto devido sua importância no campo da saúde. Concluiu-se que as instituições de saúde que apresentaram o menor tempo de consulta médica também receberam um grau menor sobre a avaliação de qualidade em relação às outras instituições. / Time is important for the man in various areas of knowledge because it has a specific purpose in each area; therefore, time is studied, measured, analyzed and evaluated in a qualitative and quantitative way. The duration of the service provided by an organization, in this case a health care organization, sometimes leads to situations in which the delay in the appointments may result in queue lines, obliging the patients to wait, in order to receive health care assistance. The quality of the service provided by these organizations is mostly recognized as a multidimensional construct, with many attributes and points of view. Several researchers have developed or modified instruments to measure health care service quality and, most of the surveys conducted, have revealed that there is still formation of long queues for attendance of the patient. The objective of this study is the evaluation of the patient?s opinion about the quality of the health care service provided by public and private organizations, with emphasis on the analysis of the duration of medical consultation. This study also aims to gather data that could improve the decisions which have to be made by managers from health care institutions, regarding mainly the health care service quality rendered to patients. The quantitative data analysis, on one hand, was done using the significance test nonparametric, in addition with the Wilcoxon signed ranks test, which was used for conjugated pairs. The qualitative analysis, on the other hand, was done with the descriptive technique. The tool used to collect data was based on SERVQUAL, which evaluated the quality of health care services. The site chosen for the development of the empirical research was the city of Ribeirão Preto, state of São Paulo, Brazil, due to its importance in the area of health care assistance. The conclusion revealed that the health care facilities, which presented the shortest length during appointments with the patients, also received a smaller grade regarding the quality evaluation, in comparison to the other facilities.

The rapid development of information technology in the recent years has added a range of new featuresto the traditional information environment, which has a profound impact on university library services and users. The Quality of Service parameter in library services has reached a broader consensus,which directly reflects customer satisfactions and loyalty. Exploring the evaluation frameworks for service quality in university libraries cannot be undermined in this context. Besides, existing evaluation frameworks of service quality of university library services are also facing numerous challenges due to their imperfections. Thus,there is an urgency and necessity to explore and enhance the efficiencies of the evaluation frameworks of service quality. To this end, this thesis conducts a systematic analysisof evaluation frameworks with a motivation of identifying the core components that needs enhancements for achieving effective service quality in Chinese university libraries through empirical methods. Furthermore, the inferences extracted from the analysis has been exploited to provide suitable recommendations for improving the service quality of university libraries.