• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.177-200
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• 2009

AIn the advanced - economy, the services industry hasbecome a dominant sector. Evidently, the services sector has grown at a much faster rate than any other. For instance, in such developed countries as the U.S., the proportion of the services sector in its GDP is greater than 75%. Even in the developing countries including India and China, the magnitude of the services sector in their GDPs is rapidly growing. The increasing dependence on service gives rise to new initiatives including service science and service-dominant logic. These new initiatives propose a new theoretical prism to promote the better understanding of the changing economic structure. From the new perspectives, service is no longer regarded as a transaction or exchange, but rather co-creation of value through the interaction among service users, providers, and other stakeholders including partners, external environments, and customer communities. The purpose of this study is the following. First, we review previous literature on service, service innovation, and service systems and integrate the studies based on service dominant logic. Second, we categorize the ten propositions of service dominant logic into conceptual propositions and the ones that are directly related to service provision. Conceptual propositions are left out to form the research model. With the selected propositions, we define the research constructs for this study. Third, we develop measurement items for the new service concepts including service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and convergence of service with product. We then propose a research model to explain the relationship among the factors that affect the value creation mechanism. Finally, we empirically investigate the effects of the factors on firm performance. Through the process of this research study, we want to show the value creation mechanism of service systems in which various participants in service provision interact with related parties in a joint effort to create values. To test the proposed hypotheses, we developed measurement items and distributed survey questionnaires to domestic companies. 500 survey questionnaires were distributed and 180 were returned among which 171 were usable. The results of the empirical test can be summarized as the following. First, service providers' network which is to help offer required services to customers is found to affect customer network, while it does not have a significant effect on value co-creation and product-service convergence. Second, customer network, on the other hand, appears to influence both value co-creation and product-service convergence. Third, value co-creation accomplished through the collaboration of service providers and customers is found to have a significant effect on both product-service convergence and firm performance. Finally, product-service convergence appears to affect firm performance. To interpret the results from the value creation mechanism perspective, service provider network well established to support customer network is found to have significant effect on customer network which in turn facilitates value co-creation in service provision and product-service convergence to lead to greater firm performance. The results have some enlightening implications for practitioners. If companies want to transform themselves into service-centered business enterprises, they have to consider the four factors suggested in this study: service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and product-service convergence. That is, companies becoming a service-oriented organization need to understand what the four factors are and how the factors interact with one another in their business context. They then may want to devise a better tool to analyze the value creation mechanism and apply the four factors to their own environment. This research study contributes to the literature in following ways. First, this study is one of the very first empirical studies on the service dominant logic as it has categorized the fundamental propositions into conceptual and empirically testable ones and tested the proposed hypotheses against the data collected through the survey method. Most of the propositions are found to work as Vargo and Lusch have suggested. Second, by providing a testable set of relationships among the research variables, this study may provide policy makers and decision makers with some theoretical grounds for their decision making on what to do with service innovation and management. Finally, this study incorporates the concepts of value co-creation through the interaction between customers and service providers into the proposed research model and empirically tests the validity of the concepts. The results of this study will help establish a value creation mechanism in the service-based economy, which can be used to develop and implement new service provision.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2008

Based on the multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), we present a survey method to measure consumer preferences. The multi-attribute utility theory has been used to make decisions in OR/MS field; however, we show that the method can be effectively used to estimate the demand for new services by measuring individual level utility function. Because conjoint method has been widely used to measure consumer preferences for new products and services, we compare the pros and cons of two consumer preference survey methods. Further, we illustrate how swing weighing method can be effectively used to elicit customer preferences especially for new telecommunications services, Multi-attribute utility theory is a compositional approach for modeling customer preference, in which researchers calculate overall service utility by summing up the evaluation results for each attribute. On the contrary, conjoint method is a decompositional approach, which requires holistic evaluations for profiles. Partworth for each attribute is derived or estimated based on the evaluation, and finally consumer preferences for each profile are calculated. However, if the profiles are quite new and unfamiliar to the survey respondents, they will find it very difficult to accurately evaluate the profiles. We believe that the multi-attribute utility theory-based survey method is more appropriate than the conjoint method, because respondents only need to assess attribute level preferences and not holistic assessment. We chose swing weighting method among many weight assessment methods in multi-attribute utility theory, because it is designed to perform in a simple and fast manner. As illustrated in Clemen and Reilly (2001), to assess swing weights, the first step is to create the worst possible outcome as a benchmark by setting the worst level on each of the attributes. Then, each of the succeeding rows "swings" one of the attributes from worst to best. Upon constructing the swing table, respondents rank order the outcomes (rows). The next step is to rate the outcomes in which the rating for the benchmark is set to be 0 and the rating for the best outcome to be 100, and the ratings for other outcomes are determined in the ranges between 0 and 100. In calculating weight for each attribute, ratings are normalized by the total sum of all ratings. To demonstrate the applicability of the approach, we elicited and analyzed individual-level customer preference for new telecommunication services-WiBro and HSDPA. We began with a randomly selected 800 interviewees, and reduced them to 432 because other remaining ones were related to the people who did not show strong intention for subscription to new telecommunications services. For each combination of content and handset, number of responses which favored WiBro and HSDPA were counted, respectively. It was assumed that interviewee favors a specific service when expected utility is greater than that of competing service(s). Then, the market share of each service was calculated by normalizing the total number of responses which preferred each service. Holistic evaluation of new and unfamiliar service is a tough challenge for survey respondents. We have developed a simple and easy method to assess individual level preference by estimating weight of each attribute. Swing method was applied for this purpose. We believe that estimating individual level preference will be quite flexibly used to predict market performance of new services in many different business environments.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.28-41
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• 2014

The study focuses on verifying the effects of service education and empowerment on job satisfaction, job performance, and customer orientation. 290 salespeople working for fashion companies participated by completing a survey. The collected data was then analyzed with SPSS 16.0 and AMOS 7.0. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the goodness of fit. Looking at the results of this study, the service education of salespersons in fashion companies was shown to affect their level of satisfaction with their compensation, whereas empowerment affected their psychological satisfaction. These findings indicate that the service training and empowerment as experienced by salespersons working for fashion companies affect their customer orientation and job performance. Specifically, psychological satisfaction as part of the overall level of job satisfaction was found directly to affect their customer orientation, whereas their satisfaction with their compensation did not affect their customer orientation. Customer-orientation as influenced by service education and empowerment was revealed to have direct effect on job performance. The results of this study indicate that the service education of salesperson working for fashion companies and their level of empowerment create job satisfaction and customer orientation in these individuals. This study will be a valuable source of information for those who create salesperson empowerment programs and salesperson management strategies for fashion companies. Such programs and management strategies can facilitate efficient job performance by salespersons working for fashion companies and increase their level of job satisfaction.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.483-503
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• 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the service quality factors in terms of customer trust, satisfaction and loyalty of the Korean telecommunication companies(SKT, KT, LG U+). Specifically, this study presents new business strategies of the each company, thereby pursuing the innovation for mature stage. Methods: To analyze the telecommunication service quality factors that contribute to customer trust, satisfaction and loyalty, this study conducted a survey targeting customers of each company. Using the data collected, the research model was built, and empirical analysis was performed through statistical processing to verify the model. Furthermore, the clarification of each hypothesis were held including the comparison analysis of each company data. Results: The results of this study are as follows; (1) When it comes to total dataset, all quality factors including trust, satisfaction and loyalty showed significant relationship, accepting every hypothesis. (2) However, for SKT and LG U+, empathy showed no significant impact on trust while the others showed significant effect. (3) Finally for KT, all service quality factors such as responsiveness, empathy, security, and customer enablement had a significant effect on trust. Conclusion: As the development of platform industry are intensified, telecommunication companies are required to manage service quality factors thoroughly, especially focusing on customer privacy and security.

• IE interfaces
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.140-152
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• 2006

Today, many companies realize that the effort to develop new products / services faster that customers want and continue to purchase is crucial for their survival. As the service sector is rapidly growing, one of the challenges faced by the service industries is the lack of effective methodologies for new service development. This paper proposes a systematic framework for developing new service concepts, with an emphasis on generating innovative, convergence-type service concepts from the customer‘s perspective. The framework consists of three phases-identification of customer needs (Phase I), extraction of new service opportunities (Phase II), and generation of new service concepts (Phase III). The proposed framework is demonstrated through a case study in the telecommunications industry. In the case study, a survey was conducted on ten customers to identify the latent customer needs; 61 new service opportunities were extracted; and 129 new service concepts were generated.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2014

Every organization needs to maintain its long-term effectiveness through the positive perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of its members. Customer orientation, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) are the important functioning aspects for the long-term organizational effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of service-worker's customer orientation on OCB within Korean bank and insurance sector by analyzing the relationship of constructs in the conceptual model. To achieve research objectives, survey method is employed. Findings of this research reveal that both need and enjoyment dimension of CO are very important in predicting OCB. We sent 220 questionnaires to service workers of the bank and insurance then received 200 valid responses. The research was conducted in bank and insurance agency in J city. The choice of these two types of organizations was dictated by the fact that they have large number of service worker with diverse background at multiple levels in these industries. Results also indicated that the moderating effect of pay satisfaction on the relationship between their OCB and CO had a weak effect.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2019.07a
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• pp.401-402
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to find specific service quality factors of enterprises that can maximize the perception of banks' services to users of commercial banks in China, and to establish empirically how these quality factors affect the bank's image. They also want to verify the impact of the positive image of the bank on the user's satisfaction and the willingness to use the bank's services. For empirical verification of this study, questionnaires will be used to customers who have used the services of each of the four commercial banks in China, and the survey was conducted. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS using statistical techniques such as Cronbach' ${\alpha}$, Investigative Factor Analysis, Reliability Analysis, Correlation Analysis, Regression and Difference Verification. The results of the verification were summarized below. First, the quality of service of commercial banks has a partial positive effect on the bank's image. Second, the image of a commercial bank has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Third, the image of a commercial bank has a positive effect on the purpose of use. Fourth, the image of commercial banks has a partial mediated effect between service quality and customer satisfaction. Fifth, the image of a commercial bank has a partial mediated effect between the quality of service and its intended use.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.373-380
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• 2022

Today, customer satisfaction is the most important issue for Vietnamese banks. There are numerous factors that influence bank customers' satisfaction. The study investigates the factors that influence customer satisfaction with deposit services at the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank) in Bac Giang province, Vietnam, and analyses the impact of each component. The authors used 5-point Likert scales to assess whether elements were related to the factors determining consumer satisfaction with Agribank's deposit service. To perform this study, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multiple regression were used to find factors determining customer satisfaction with Agribank services. Customers that use deposit services at Agribank in Bac Giang province, Vietnam, provided samples of 300 survey questionnaires for this study. SPSS software is used to examine the data. Customers' satisfaction with Agribank's deposit service is influenced by six factors, including reliability, responsiveness, service capabilities, empathy, tangible means, and service price, according to the study. This finding also offers some recommendations for improving service quality in local Vietnamese banks to gain a competitive advantage.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.123-143
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• 2018

This research examines empirically the causal relationship among service quality, CSR, trust, customer-company identification(=CCID), customer's behavioral intention as well as the mediating effect of trust and CCID on the relationship between service quality, CSR and customer's behavioral intention in insurance industry. With this background, this study conducted a statistical analysis based on survey data collected from insurance customers. The result of this empirical study is as follows. First, insurance company's CSR activity has a positive impact on customer's trust and customer-company Identification( =CCID). Second, both customer's trust and CCID have positive and significant effect on customer's behavioral intention. Third, we also find that both trust and CCID has a mediating effect on the relationship between service quality, CSR and customer's behavioral intention. This research shows that CSR activity of insurance company can enhance both customer's trust and CCID, in turn, when CSR activity and service quality is mediated by customer's trust and customer-company identification, it could be linked to customer's behavioral intention such as repurchasing, positive WOM(=word of mouth). This study is likely to contribute to CSR and service marketing research of insurance company.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.269-277
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• 2010

Previous studies have shown that the most important factor affecting customer loyalty in the service industry is service quality. However, on the subject of whether service quality has a direct or indirect effect on customer loyalty, scholars' views apparently vary. Some studies suggest that service quality has a direct and fundamental influence on customer loyalty (Bai and Liu, 2002). However, others have shown that service quality not only directly affects customer loyalty, it also has an indirect impact on customer loyalty by influencing customer satisfaction and perceived value (Cronin, Brady, and Hult, 2000). Currently, there are few domestic articles that specifically address the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty in the mobile communication industry. Moreover, research has studied customer loyalty as a whole variable, rather than breaking it down further into multiple dimensions. Based on this analysis, this paper summarizes previous study results, establishes an effect mechanism model among service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty in the mobile communication industry, and presents a statistical test on model assumptions by using customer investigation data from Heilongjiang Mobile Company. It provides theoretical guidance for mobile service management based on the discussion of the hypothesis test results. For data collection, the sample comprised mobile users in Harbin city, and the survey was taken by random sampling. Out of a total of 300 questionnaires, 276 (92.9%) were recovered. After excluding invalid questionnaires, 249 remained, for an effective rate of 82.6 percent for the study. Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficient was adapted to assess the scale reliability, and validity testing was conducted on the questionnaire from three aspects: content validity, construct validity. and convergent validity. The study tested for goodness of fit mainly from the absolute and relative fit indexes. From the hypothesis testing results, overall, four assumptions have not been supported. The ultimate affective relationship of service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty is demonstrated in Figure 2. On the whole, the service quality of the communication industry not only has a direct positive significant effect on customer loyalty, it also has an indirect positive significant effect on customer loyalty through service quality; the affective mechanism and extent of customer loyalty are different, and are influenced by each dimension of service quality. This study used the questionnaires of existing literature from home and abroad and tested them in empirical research, with all questions adapted to seven-point Likert scales. With the SERVQUAL scale of Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988), or PZB, as a reference point, service quality was divided into five dimensions-tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy-and the questions were simplified down to nineteen. The measurement of customer satisfaction was based mainly on Fornell (1992) and Wang and Han (2003), ending up with four questions. Based on the study’s three indicators of price tolerance, first choice, and complaint reaction were used to measure attitudinal loyalty, while repurchase intention, recommendation, and reputation measured behavioral loyalty. The collection and collation of literature data produced a model of the relationship among service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty in mobile communications, and China Mobile in the city of Harbin in Heilongjiang province was used for conducting an empirical test of the model and obtaining some useful conclusions. First, service quality in mobile communication is formed by the five factors mentioned earlier: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. On the basis of PZB SERVQUAL, the study designed a measurement scale of service quality for the mobile communications industry, and obtained these five factors through exploratory factor analysis. The factors fit basically with the five elements, indicating the concept of five elements of service quality for the mobile communications industry. Second, service quality in mobile communications has both direct and indirect positive effects on attitudinal loyalty, with the indirect effect being produced through the intermediary variable, customer satisfaction. There are also both direct and indirect positive effects on behavioral loyalty, with the indirect effect produced through two intermediary variables: customer satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty. This shows that better service quality and higher customer satisfaction will activate the attitudinal to service providers more active and show loyalty to service providers much easier. In addition, the effect mechanism of all dimensions of service quality on all dimensions of customer loyalty is different. Third, customer satisfaction plays a significant intermediary role among service quality and attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, indicating that improving service quality can boost customer satisfaction and make it easier for satisfied customers to become loyal customers. Moreover, attitudinal loyalty plays a significant intermediary role between service quality and behavioral loyalty, indicating that only attitudinally and behaviorally loyal customers are truly loyal customers. The research conclusions have some indications for Chinese telecom operators and others to upgrade their service quality. Two limitations to the study are also mentioned. First, all data were collected in the Heilongjiang area, so there might be a common method bias that skews the results. Second, the discussion addresses the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty, setting customer satisfaction as mediator, but does not consider other factors, like customer value and consumer features, This research will be continued in the future.