Although relationship marketing has gained acceptance as a research area in the marketing field since the 1990's, theory development in this area, particularly as it pertains to consumer markets, lags behind applications and prescriptions. Arguably, the fundamental problem of a relationship lies in the consumer's perceptions, especially for service consumers. Some consumers are very receptive to the idea of relationship because they perceive that it can reduce service risk due to the service's intangibility. / Some researchers argue that a service quality guarantee can be an effective tool to reduce consumer risk and increase consumer trust. On the other hand, others argue that a service guarantee may seem redundant with the original promise of service, as it may seem to put the burden of proof on the customer. Much of this discussion lacks actual data, so that there appear to be some gaps in knowledge and lack of much research to understand the impact of the service quality guarantee. / This paper reports results of an empirical study on the impact of a service quality guarantee on customer relationships in Singapore's mobile telecommunication market. First, qualitative research was conducted using in-depth interviews. The results demonstrated that many, though not all, customers do perceive a relationship with their mobile service providers. Further, both customer views about the role of a service quality guarantee came up- some view it as useful, and some question why it is needed if service is really already good. This qualitative work indicated that the initial proposed conceptual framework of this study is feasible. We then conducted the quantitative study to focus on the impact of the service quality activities and customer relationship elements. / Quantitative results also indicated many customers do believe that a relationship exists in this mass B2C market. Continuous improvement in service quality did increase trust, loyalty, service recovery, satisfaction, and referral, but trust and loyalty were the significant elements which contributed to the relationship strength. / The service quality guarantee was found to moderate the relationship between improvement of service quality and trust; it leads to a weaker relationship. It did not affect the other relationships between improvement in service quality and the other relationship strength antecedents (i.e. service recovery, satisfaction, referral, and loyalty). Thus, firms who plan to adopt a service quality guarantee must carefully consider its possible impacts. The view that a service quality guarantee may be redundant where consumers already see good quality seems to be supported. / Overall, while not every single element of the developed framework works exactly as hypothesized, in general, results supported the main patterns of our proposed model. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2006.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267345 |
| Creators | Juliandri, Arkav. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds