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Managers in organizations make investment decisions all the time. These decisions have an impact on the bottom-line profits and on the market penetration of the organization. Some decisions have more impact than others do and not all such decisions are evaluated for their impact. The Service-Profit Chain (SPC) framework brings together several components like operational attributes, customer perceptions, customer behavioral intentions and customer loyalty to evaluate the service operation. This research augments the SPC with another component — uncontrollable factors (environmental variables and competition) that are exogenous to the operation but definitely have an effect on the service delivery process. Further, this research develops a dynamic model to evaluate investments made in operational attributes (e.g. number of tellers in a bank, number of airline flight options to a particular city available to customers) and determine the behavior of customer perceptions, customer intentions, customer loyalty, profit, market penetration and marginal rate of return over time. The above is accomplished by incorporating a hill-climbing algorithm into the dynamic SPC model. This hill-climbing algorithm senses the current state of the system and compares it to a certain goal to determine the discrepancies and make additional interventions. The objective is to determine an optimal path to steady state and to evaluate if certain goals are realistic. Next, the Service Sustainability Chain is developed to be applicable to training services. This is accomplished by building key relationships specific to training services into separate modules. The Dynamic SPC module is based on the SPC framework. The Customer Base Growth module captures the structure for referrals and how this enables the growth of the customer base mimicking the infectious model for epidemic diseases in the literature. A methodology based on Chi-Square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) developed to explore, uncover and identify relationships and mathematical equations is used to determine the structural input-output representation of the SPC. Next, the model and the methodology developed are applied to a case study in a training services organization, simulated and validated. / Ph. D.

För att förbättra servicekvaliteten är kartläggning och mätning av kundupplevelse en viktig del av förbättringsarbetet. Detta är mestadels studerat ur den externa kundens perspektiv, och inte lika ofta ur den interna kundens. Syftet med denna studie var att utforska förekomsten av olika dimensioner av intern kundupplevelse inom en organisation och undersöka deras relation till andra mått på kundupplevelse. Dessutom syftade studien till att utforska de interna kundernas perspektiv på kvaliteten på den levererade servicen. Fokus för studien var eftermarknadsavdelningen i den svenska delen av ett globalt företag inom tillverkande industri. En kvalitativ metod användes och data samlades in med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer och analyserades med en induktiv tematisk ansats. Resultatet visar sex dimensioner som påverkar den interna kundupplevelsen: Kommunikation, Beteende, Systemstöd, Personlig kontakt, Teknisk kompetens och Fungerande processer. Denna studie ger insikt i viktiga faktorer för att möta interna kunders behov och förväntningar. Även om det finns vissa skillnader, kan dessa dimensioner jämföras med andra dimensioner av kundupplevelse och servicekvalitet. Resultaten indikerar att befintliga mätverktyg utformade för extern kundupplevelse också bör kunna tillämpas i interna sammanhang. Denna studie bidrar till att utöka den begränsade kunskapen om intern kundupplevelse. / In order to improve service quality, mapping and measuring customer experience is a vital part of improvement efforts. This is however mostly studied from the external customers point of view, and studies on internal customer experience are scarce. The aim of this study was to explore the existence of different dimensions of internal customer experience within an organisation and examine their relationship to other measures of customer experience. In addition, the study aimed to explore the internal customers’ perspectives on the quality of the service delivered. The focus of the study was the after sales department in the Swedish branch of a global manufacturing company. A qualitative method was used and the data was collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed by an inductive thematic approach. The result shows six dimensions that affect the internal customer experience: Communication, Behavior, System support, Personal contact, Technical competence and Functional processes. This study provides insight into significant factors in meeting internal customer needs and expectations. Although there are some differences, these dimensions compares with those found in other studies on customer experience and service quality. The results indicate that existing measurements of external customer experience should also be applicable to internal settings. This study contributes to expanding the limited knowledge of internal customer experience.

<p>In today’s society, there is a growing interest in, and demand for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Reasons for this can be multinational corporations’ increasing influence on world economy as well as scandals revealing horrible working conditions in different industries. In spite of the fact that the demand for CSR is growing, there has always been critics. The most influential critic is Noble Prize winner Milton Friedman, who claims CSR to be a waste of stockholders’ money. However, several articles claim, opposite Friedman, that CSR rather increases a company’s financial performance in the long run. These claims have made us curious about in what way CSR is related to a company’s performance. Moreover, it has led to us wanting to find out how CSR can influence customer perceptions on a product or service offering, and how these influenced perceptions affect company performance.</p><p>In order to concretize our problem we have chosen to use the clothing industry as a framework for our study. The choice of industry has its reasons in an increasing public interest in how clothes are manufactured, which is largely because of continuous scandals concerning poor working conditions in the clothing industry.</p><p>To find out how CSR can influence customer perceptions and company performance we have studied literature concerning the subject. Furthermore, these theoretical studies have led to us coming up with a model for how CSR can influence customer perceptions and ultimately affect company performance. This model is influenced by Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser and Schlesinger‘s (1994) the Service-Profit Chain as well as by Carroll’s (1991) Pyramid of CSR and Levitt’s (1980) Total Product Concept. We call the model the Value Linking Chain and it depicts how different elements are put into an offer. Furthermore, how this offer is evaluated, both before and after the purchase, by customers and how those evaluations affect the company performance. In order for us to test this model empirically, we have interviewed representatives from companies, customers and non-government organizations.</p><p>The analysis indicates that customers are ready to boycott companies that do not behave socially responsible. This has lead to us widening our theoretical scope and revising the Value Linking Chain, which evolved into the CSR-Performance Chain.</p><p>In conclusion, CSR can influence customer perceptions on a product or service offering and in the end affect company performance through the links in the CSR-Performance Chain. Furthermore, we have found that companies’ level of CSR must lie on or above customers’ baseline (i.e. minimal acceptable level) in order for them to avoid boycotts, since boycotts affect company performance negatively.</p>

The movement or flow of employees into, around and out of organisations (‘employee flow’) has long been a central issue in human resource management and industrial psychology. This is especially so for the specific element of employee turnover, but also applies to staffing and internal talent development. Employee flow is especially salient in a South African context characterised by scarce skills. The voluminous literature on employee flow has tended to view each element such as recruitment or turnover separately, and has generally focused on internal outcomes (e.g. commitment or satisfaction). This thesis attempts to add two crucial features, namely EF as a whole system (i.e. inflows, intraorganisation flows and outflows of staff in conjunction), and customer-based outcomes. Something of a synthesis is thus sought between EF and ideas of marketing productivity. Marketing productivity has been proposed as one of the most important foci of the marketing discipline (Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar, & Srivastava, 2004; Sheth & Sisodia, 2002). It refers to links between marketing and organisational performance or value. Models such as the ‘service profit chain’ (Heskett, Sasser & Schlesinger, 1997) identify the antecedents of marketing productivity to be internal organisation characteristics such as staff satisfaction or loyalty. This thesis seeks to expand such models in the context of a system of EFs. Advanced decision theoretic utility theories of EF (e.g. Boudreau & Berger, 1985) allow for the complete, integrated value of employee movements over time to be modelled. Such a model is constructed and links to marketing metrics, notably service perceptions, investigated. Organisational value arising via the outcomes for customers are further investigated. Thus increased value of employee movements is proposed to generate organisational value, mediated by improved customer equity (e.g. Gelade & Young, 2005). An empirical, survey-based study was conducted to assess the model. EF was assessed in business-to-business relationships from the perspective of the customer using conceptions of decision theoretic utility analysis, and both intermediate and outcome-based customer perceptions of service quality used as dependent variables. Moderation effects from frequency of interaction and integration of the customer into the supply chain were also tested, as well as controls for characteristics of the transaction, organisation and industry. Results suggest that EF does significantly affect various stages of service quality provision, notably ‘potential quality’, which it appears mediates links to other aspects of service provision, especially final service outcomes. In addition, EF was also found to affect outcomes through the intermediate relational element of 'soft process quality', possibly highlighting the importance of relationship management and soft skills in B2B relationships. Employee outflows in particular showed evidence of relatively strong effects, possibly highlighting the ongoing salience of turnover, in particular effective identification and management of functional versus dysfunctional turnover instead of a sole focus on retention. Results were significantly stronger for service industries than others (presumably as service is the outcome), and when there were relatively few supplier contact staff (perhaps due to social networking, bonding, exchange or emotional contagion). This thesis adds substantially to the methodologies underlying service profit chain models. It explicitly included new constructs (EF utility). Contextually, it was the first proper test of this model in South Africa. Theoretical contributions arose from new inter-disciplinary syntheses of utility models, finally linking employee and customer utilities to the organisation. Ultimately, practical significance may arise for managerial models, estimating and justifying human resource interventions.

In today’s society, there is a growing interest in, and demand for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Reasons for this can be multinational corporations’ increasing influence on world economy as well as scandals revealing horrible working conditions in different industries. In spite of the fact that the demand for CSR is growing, there has always been critics. The most influential critic is Noble Prize winner Milton Friedman, who claims CSR to be a waste of stockholders’ money. However, several articles claim, opposite Friedman, that CSR rather increases a company’s financial performance in the long run. These claims have made us curious about in what way CSR is related to a company’s performance. Moreover, it has led to us wanting to find out how CSR can influence customer perceptions on a product or service offering, and how these influenced perceptions affect company performance. In order to concretize our problem we have chosen to use the clothing industry as a framework for our study. The choice of industry has its reasons in an increasing public interest in how clothes are manufactured, which is largely because of continuous scandals concerning poor working conditions in the clothing industry. To find out how CSR can influence customer perceptions and company performance we have studied literature concerning the subject. Furthermore, these theoretical studies have led to us coming up with a model for how CSR can influence customer perceptions and ultimately affect company performance. This model is influenced by Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser and Schlesinger‘s (1994) the Service-Profit Chain as well as by Carroll’s (1991) Pyramid of CSR and Levitt’s (1980) Total Product Concept. We call the model the Value Linking Chain and it depicts how different elements are put into an offer. Furthermore, how this offer is evaluated, both before and after the purchase, by customers and how those evaluations affect the company performance. In order for us to test this model empirically, we have interviewed representatives from companies, customers and non-government organizations. The analysis indicates that customers are ready to boycott companies that do not behave socially responsible. This has lead to us widening our theoretical scope and revising the Value Linking Chain, which evolved into the CSR-Performance Chain. In conclusion, CSR can influence customer perceptions on a product or service offering and in the end affect company performance through the links in the CSR-Performance Chain. Furthermore, we have found that companies’ level of CSR must lie on or above customers’ baseline (i.e. minimal acceptable level) in order for them to avoid boycotts, since boycotts affect company performance negatively.

This study empirically examines the impact of IT capability on firms' performance and evaluates whether firms' IT capabilities play a role in improving employee capability, customer value, customer satisfaction, and ultimately business performance. The results were based on comparing the business performance of the IT leader companies with that of control companies of similar size and industry. The IT leader companies were selected from the Information Week 500 list published annually from 2001 to 2004. For a company to be selected as IT leaders, it needed to be listed at least twice during the period. Furthermore, it had to be listed in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) so that its customer satisfaction level could be assessed. Standard & Poor's Compustat and the ACSI scores were used to test for changes in business performance. The study found that the IT leaders had a raw material cost measured by cost-of-goods-sold to sales ratio (COGS/S) than the control companies. However, it found no evidence that firms' IT capability affects employee capability, customer value, customer satisfaction, and profit. An important implication from this study is that IT becomes a commodity and an attempt to gain a competitive advantage by overinvesting in IT may be futile.

Title: Application of the theory Service-Profit Chain on the example of sport event Gigathlon Czech Republic 2016 Objectives: The main objective of this thesis is application of the theory Service-Profit Chain on the example of sport event Gigathlon Czech Republic 2016. Another partial task is to evaluate the internal and external environment of the race Gigathlon Czech Republic and on the basis of data analysis to determine the suggestions and recommendations for improvement that will be passed to race organizers. Methods: Using the theory of Service-Profit Chain and its individual parts, the sport event Gigathlon Czech Republic 2016 is analyzed. Data concerning internal environment of the event are obtained using methods of semi-structured interview with the main event organizers. To analyse the external environment is used the online questionnaire distributed among the participants of the race. These methods are supplemented by own participant observation during the sport event. Results: After application of the theory of Service-Profit Chain on the example of Gigathlon Czech Republic in 2016 it is not possible to fully confirm all the supposed relationship between different parts of the chain. Despite the fact that the internal environment and services do not completely correspond to the ideas...

本研究主要探討服務創新所具備的關鍵成功因素與所影響的企業經營績效指標的評估架構。並進一步探討影響企業經營績效指標的服務創新關鍵成功因素間的比例權重。 本研究歸納相關次級資料後進行分析，並採用「量化研究」方法-AHP層級分析法，建立「服務創新關鍵成功因素與經營績效評估架構」。再針對台灣進行服務創新且擁有自有品牌的製造業進行專家問卷以探討「服務創新關鍵成功因素與經營績效」各因素的權重關係。 研究結果顯示： 一、 整體台灣進行服務創新且擁有自有品牌的製造業，其四大服務創新經營績效主要影響因子相對權重，依重要程度排序以「顧客滿意度」（0.405）為最高，其次是「顧客忠誠度」（0.339）、「外部服務價值」（0.139）、「內部服務品質」（0.114）。 二、 整體台灣進行服務創新且擁有自有品牌的製造業，其影響服務創新事業經營績效的服務創新關鍵成功因素重要性前六名，以「根據品牌精神創造新的服務價值主張」（0.176）為最重要的服務創新關鍵成功因素。再依序為「顧客感受的產品與服務的品質」（0.113）、「消費前後顧客感受到企業行銷服務品質」（0.101）、「對服務創新事業的持續性投資與承諾」（0.089）、「具有競爭力的產品與服務的價格」（0.079）、「在服務體系中維護價值共創共識與技術傳遞機制以維持企業在價值體系中的地位」（0.074）。 最後，本研究根據研究結果進行理論及實務意涵的討論，並提出後續研究建議。

The objectives of this research are to explore the relationships among service chains of electronic government services. This research proposes models (1) to explore the linkages among internal marketing, internal service quality, and internal customer satisfaction in electronic government services, i.e. the internal service chain; (2) to explore the linkage between external service quality and external customer satisfaction, i.e. the external service chain; and (3) to employ the concept of the service profit chain model and the public sector service value chain model to explore the linkage between internal and external service chains. Two kinds of surveys, employee and citizen surveys, were conducted to collect data for this research on two cases including the Kaohsiung Citizen Electronic Complaint System and the National Science and Technology Museum Collection Management System. Internal and external customer data was matched through individual-level instead of group-level used in most studies. Structural equation modeling and Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis were used to test proposed models. The research results support the proposed hypotheses, including (1) internal marketing positively influences internal service quality; (2) internal marketing positively influences internal customer satisfaction; (3) internal service quality has positive influence on internal customer satisfaction; (4) external customer satisfaction is influenced by external service quality; with the exception of (5) the relationship between internal customer satisfaction and external service quality receiving no significant support. Managerial implications are presented for public managers to better serve internal and external customers. Further studies are encouraged to include service-specific variables and technology-specific variables to examine the internal-external link of customer perceptions.