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Determining the importance that customers place on the product and service attributes that drive their satisfaction with, and loyalty to, service providers is an essential part of a firm's resource allocation process. An unsettled issue is whether importance measures should come directly from customers or be derived statistically and, if so, how. The authors compare direct importance ratings with a variety of methods for statistically deriving attribute importance in a customer satisfaction model. Using three data sets, the methods are compared on criteria that include their ability to explain variation in satisfaction, to identify customers'more important attributes, and to be interpretable. The findings suggest that because each of the tested methods has its strengths and weaknesses, it is essential to choose a method that is compatible with the research goals and context.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how the environment surrounding a decision-making event affects whether decision-makers consider the credibility of their advisors and take their advice.Design/methodology/approachIn two experiments, the characteristics of the event and credibility of the advisor were manipulated, the extent to which participants considered the information from the advisor was measured, and whether participants took advice was determined.FindingsDecision-makers are more likely to take advice from advisors when the decision-making event is of low urgency or high criticality because they are more likely to consider information provided by high-credibility advisors.Practical implicationsWithin organizations, decision-makers may be making suboptimal decisions when faced with highly urgent decisions or decisions with low criticality. This study suggests that under these conditions, decision-makers are less likely to consider the information provided by high-credibility advisors. Organizations may consider encouraging decision-makers to override their tendency to disregard advice from credible advisors.Originality/valueThis study introduces a contextual factor relevant to managers, event characteristics, which has an effect on whether decision-makers take advice. A unique experimental design was utilized in which credibility was manipulated across two studies with an explicit (Study 1: resume) vs implicit (Study 2: video) method, and advice-taking was measured with a decision that was clearly right or wrong.

Perceived equity is a key psychological reaction to the value that a service company provides. Yet equity research has focused on a customer's satisfaction with relatively well-defined service episodes or transactions. The authors argue and show that equity plays a very different role in affecting customer loyalty as one moves from transaction-specific to cumulative evaluations. Whereas equity is an important driver of transaction-specific satisfaction, equity is more of a postsatisfaction evaluation when modeling cumulative satisfaction. The research also demonstrates the superiority of cumulative evaluations toward explaining service loyalty and providing a balanced view of loyalty drivers. The results have important implications for how equity, satisfaction, and loyalty are modeled and managed in a service context.

The authors argue that product-sharing services, where companies offer customers the use ofa physicalproduct on a limited basis at a lower cost, offer an overlooked opportunity for growth. The primary advantage of productsharing services is that they leverage afirm 's core product development and production capabilities to expand their portfolio of offerings and market segments. A framework is developedfor distinguishing likely candidates for product sharing from unlikely candidates based on product, customer; and company-strategy considerations. An empirical study of a new car-sharing service at Daimler-Benz is then used to illustrate the development of such a service, its strategic advantages, and the challenges involved.

1 An Introduction to Quality, Satisfaction, and Retention-Implications for the Automotive Industry -- 2 Linking Satisfaction to Design-A Key to Success for Volvo -- 3 Improved Customer Satisfaction Is Volvo Priority -- 4 Design of Lines as a Product-Policy Variant to Retain Customers in the Automotive Industry -- 5 From Value-Orientated Quality Improvement to Customer Satisfaction-A Case Study for Passenger Cars -- 6 Achieving Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Retention Through Strategic Alignment -- 7 The Complex Relationship between Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty for Automobiles -- 8 Method Supplied Investigation of Customer Loyalty in the Automotive Industry-Results of a Causal Analytical Study -- 9 Strategic Loyalty Management-Some Reflections Regarding Customer Retention Instruments in the Automotive Industry -- 10 The Case of Mercedes-Benz-Quality in Customer Retention Management -- 11 The BMW Customer Report-Dealer Satisfaction as a Strategic Success Factor for High Brand Loyalty -- 12 Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty in the Automotive Industry-Results of an Empirical Study -- 13 Customer Retention in the Automotive Industry-An Economic Analysis -- 14 The Value of Passenger Car Customers.

The authors explore two important topics related to this special issue. One is how corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities impacts stakeholders, more specifically customers and shareholders/investors. Second is understanding customer recognition and demand for CSR activities. Insight into these topics is gained through the study of contextual differences in this value creation. Previous studies suggest that two important contextual differences have the potential to impact CSR-based value creation, the product versus service nature of the firm and whether the firm operates primarily in a business-to-business (B2B) versus business-to-consumer (B2C) channel. The lower innovative capabilities of service firms and the relative intangibility of services should hamper the impact of CSR activities in service versus product contexts. The impact should be higher, however, in a B2B versus B2C context based on the need for greater organizational alignment, adaptation, and relationship-specific investments. Results from a large-scale secondary dataset reinforce prior findings that CSR activities influence firm value through customer satisfaction. Moreover, the results reveal that this effect is weaker for service (vs. product) firms and stronger for B2B (vs. B2C) firms. The findings offer important implications for marketing theory and practice.

ABSTRACTIn recent years, there have been increasing calls from the government and other organizations to provide easy public access to student evaluations of teaching. Indeed, the increasing ease of displaying and viewing large quantities of information, and competition among universities and majors for students, makes it likely that an era of greater transparency of this type of information is at hand. While students' evaluation of teaching (SET) is one quantitative metric that rates the instructor, it may be influenced by factors that are often beyond the instructor's control. In this study, we analyze a longitudinal data set from both engineering and business schools of a large public university, and identify factors that influence SET. We show which factors have the highest influence on overall SET scores, and contrast these between engineering and business colleges. Colleges within the same university may have differences in the factors affecting SET, and recognition of this is important in effectively and fairly evaluating SET scores. We also provide recommendations regarding information that should be displayed along with the SET, particularly when SET scores are made public, so that instructors are not unduly penalized when their evaluations can be influenced by factors over which they have no control.

We draw on eight different lab and field samples to delineate the effects of expressed humility on several important organizational outcomes, including performance, satisfaction, learning goal orientation, engagement, and turnover. We first review several literatures to define the construct of expressed humility, discuss its implications in social interactions, and distinguish expressed humility from related constructs. Using five different samples, Study 1 develops and validates an observer-report measure of expressed humility. Study 2 examines the strength of expressed humility predictions of individual performance and contextual performance (i.e., quality of team member contribution) relative to conscientiousness, global self-efficacy, and general mental ability. This study also reveals that with regard to individual performance, expressed humility may compensate for lower general mental ability. Study 3 reports insights from a large field sample that examines the relationship between leader-expressed humility and employee retention as mediated by job satisfaction and employee engagement as mediated by team learning orientation. We conclude with recommendations for future research.