• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.65-93
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• 2011

As relationship between buyer and seller has been brought closer and long-term relationship has been more important in B2B markets, the importance of service and service convenience increases as well as product. In homogeneous markets, where service offerings are similar and therefore not key competitive differentiator, providing greater convenience may enable a competitive advantage. Service convenience, as conceptualized by Berry et al. (2002), is defined as the consumers' time and effort perceptions related to buying or using a service. For this reason, B2B customers are interested in how fast the service is provided and how much save non-monetary cost like time or effort by the service convenience along with service quality. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of service convenience on relationship factors such as relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The purpose of this study is to find out whether service convenience can be a new antecedent of relationship quality and relationship performance. In addition, this study tries to examine how five-dimensional service convenience constructs (decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affect customers' relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. The service convenience comprises five fundamental components - decision convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with service purchase or use decisions), access convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with initiating service delivery), transaction convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with finalizing the transaction), benefit convenience(the perceived time and effort costs associated with experiencing the core benefits of the offering) and post-benefit convenience (the perceived time and effort costs associated with reestablishing subsequent contact with the firm). Earlier studies of perceived service convenience in the industrial market are none. The conventional studies that have dealt with service convenience have usually been made in the consumer market, or they have dealt with convenience aspects in the service process. This service convenience measure for consumer market can be useful tool to estimate service quality in B2B market. The conceptualization developed by Berry et al. (2002) reflects a multistage, experiential consumption process in which evaluations of convenience vary at each stage. For this reason, the service convenience measure is good for B2B service environment which has complex processes and various types. Especially when categorizing B2B service as sequential stage of service delivery like Kumar and Kumar (2004), the Berry's service convenience measure which reflect sequential flow of service deliveries suitable to establish B2B service convenience. For this study, data were gathered from respondents who often buy business service and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study is 119. Composite reliability values and average variance extracted values were examined for each variable to have reliability. We determine whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity by CFA, and discriminant validity was assessed by examining the correlation matrix of the constructs. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the Smart PLS 2.0 and we calculated the PLS path values and followed with a bootstrap re-sampling method to test the hypotheses. Among the five dimensional service convenience constructs, four constructs (decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, post-benefit convenience) affected customers' positive relationship satisfaction, relationship commitment, and relationship performance. This result means that service convenience is important cue to improve relationship between buyer and seller. One of the five service convenience dimensions, access convenience, does not affect relationship quality and performance, which implies that the dimension of service convenience is not important factor of cumulative satisfaction. The Cumulative satisfaction can be distinguished from transaction-specific customer satisfaction, which is an immediate post-purchase evaluative judgment or an affective reaction to the most recent transactional experience with the firm. Because access convenience minimizes the physical effort associated with initiating an exchange, the effect on relationship satisfaction similar to cumulative satisfaction may be relatively low in terms of importance than transaction-specific customer satisfaction. Also, B2B firms focus on service quality, price, benefit, follow-up service and so on than convenience of time or place in service because it is relatively difficult to change existing transaction partners in B2B market compared to consumer market. In addition, this study using partial least squares methods reveals that customers' satisfaction and commitment toward relationship has mediating role between the service convenience and relationship performance. The result shows that management and investment to improve service convenience make customers' positive relationship satisfaction, and then the positive relationship satisfaction can enhance the relationship commitment and relationship performance. And to conclude, service convenience management is an important part of successful relationship performance management, and the service convenience is an important antecedent of relationship between buyer and seller such as the relationship commitment and relationship performance. Therefore, it has more important to improve relationship performance that service providers enhance service convenience although competitive service development or service quality improvement is important. Given the pressure to provide increased convenience, it is not surprising that organizations have made significant investments in enhancing the convenience aspect of their product and service offering.

• Journal of Korean Society of Archives and Records Management
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.201-230
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• 2001

Conserving the recored cultural inheritance is actually the duty of all of us. Above all, the management and conservation of archives and documents is up to archivists who have technical knowledge about archival science. Archivists have to not only conserve archives and documents but also carry out classifying and appraising them in order to define them as current historic ones. The fundamental education about archival science is made up of history and law. Because Archive is the organisation which manage archives and documents produced by legal and administrative actions. Although there are still arguments about technical knowledge and degree archivists have to acquire, most of them prefer the studies related with history and emphasize legal studies to be the general boundary of archivits' ideology and trust. The training course about conservation of archives is conducted in about 9 National Archives of Torino, Milano, Venezia, Genova, Bologna, Parma, Roma, Napoli, Palermo. The training course in 19th was mostly based on the lectures of Phaleography, Diplomatics. There were not the education about archival science yet. Toward the end of 19th and 20th, people stressed the most basic subject in the training course of National Archive was not Phaleography and Diplomatics but archival science. The goal of archival science is to study the institution and organisation transferring archives and documents to Archive. And also it help archivists not wander about with ignorance of organisational and original procedures and divisions but know exactly theirs works. Like this, the studies on institution and organisation have got in the saddle as a branch of archival science since a few ten years. While archival science didn't evoke sympathy among people and experienced the tedious and difficult path in italy and other countries, Archive was managed by experts of other branches. As a result, there were a lot of faults in Archival Science. Specializing training course for Italian archivists came into being under the backdrop of Social Science Institute of Roma National University in 1925. The archival course of universities accomplished by the studies of history, law and economy. And such as Eugenio Casanova and Giorgio Cencetti were devoted archival science was abled to settle down in national archive. The training course for experts of 'archival science, 'Phaleography and Diplomatics' in National Archive of Bologna(Archivio di Stato di Bologna) is one of courses conducted in 17 National Archives in italy. This course is gratuitous and made up of 8 subjects(Archivistica, Paleografia, Diplomatica, Storia dell' Archivio, Notariato e documenti privati, istituzione medievale, istituzione moderna, istituzione contemporanea) students have to complete for two years. Students can receive the degree through passing twice written exam and once oral test. After department of Culture and education finally puts the marks of students, the chief Nationa Archive of Bologna confer the degree of 'archival science Phaleography and Diplomatics' on students passing the exams. This degree authenticates trainees' qualification which enables him to work at the archive in province, district and administrative capital city and archive of comunity and so on. Italian training course naturally leads archivists to keep in contact with valuable cultural inheritance through training in Archive. And it shows the intention to strengthen the affinity with each documents in the spot of archival management before training archivists. Also this is appraised as one of positive policies to conserve the local cultual inheritante in connection with the original qualitity of national archive with testify the history of each region. Traning course for archivist in Italy shows us the way how we have to prepare and proceed it. First, from producing documents to conserving than forever there has introduced 'original order that is to say a general rule to respect the first order given at the time producing documents'. Management of administrative documents is related consistently with one of historical documents. Second, the traning course for archivist is managing around 17 national archives. because italian national archive lay stress not or rducation of theory bus on train for archivest working in the first time of archival science. Third, diplomatics and phaleography for studies about historical document support archives. Forth, the studies on history id proceeding by cooperation between archivist and historian around archive. How our duties is non continuinf disputer who has to conserve and manage document and archives, but traing experts who having ability, vision and flexible thought, responsibility about archivals.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2010

Customers often experience waiting for buying service. Managing customers' waiting time is important for service providers since customers who are dissatisfied with waiting, secede from a service place at last. Not a few studies have been done to solve waiting time problem and improve customers' waiting experience. Hui & Tse(1996) identify evaluation factors in customers' behavioral mechanism as customers wait. That is, customers experience perceived waiting time, waiting acceptability and emotional response to the wait when they wait. Since customers evaluate the wait using these factors, service provider should manage these factors in order to minimize customers' dissatisfaction. Therefore, this study explores that evaluation factors of waiting are influenced by customers' situational and experiential characteristics, which include customer loyalty, transaction importance for customer and waiting expectation level. Those situational and experiential characteristics are usually given to service providers so they can't control these at waiting point. The major findings derived from two exploratory studies can be summarized as follows. First, according to the result from the study 1 (restaurant setting), customers' transaction importance has the greatest positive influence on waiting experience. The results show restaurant service provider could prevent customers' separation effectively through strategies which raise customers' transaction importance, like giving special coupons for important events. Second, in study 2 (amusement part setting) customer loyalty has large positive impact on waiting experience as well as transaction importance. This results show that service provider could minimize customers' dissatisfaction using strategies which raise customer loyalty continuously. This results show customer perceives waiting experience differently according to characteristics of service place and service itself. Therefore, service provider should grasp the unique customers' situational and experiential characters for each service and service place. It could provide an effective strategy for waiting time management. Third, the study finds transaction importance and waiting expectation level have direct influence customers' waiting experience as independent variables, while existing studies treated them as moderators. Customer loyalty which has not been incorporated in previous waiting time research is known to affect waiting experience. It suggests that marketing strategy which builds up customer loyalty for long period of time is also quite effective, compared to short term tactics to help customers endure waiting time. Fourth, this study reveals the importance of actual waiting time along with perceived waiting time. So far most studies only focus on customers' perceived waiting time. Especially, this study incorporates the concept of patient limit on waiting time to investigate effect of actual waiting time. The results show that there were various responses to the wait depending on how actual waiting time exceeds individual's patent limit on waiting time or not, even though customers wait about the same period of time. Finally, using structural equation model, conceptual path between behavioral responses is verified. As customer perceives waiting time, then she decides whether she can endure it or not, and then her emotional response occurs. This result are somewhat different from Hui & Tse(1996)'s study. The study also includes theoretical contributions as well as practical implications.