Customers' Relationship with the Service Firm and Its Sales Personnel

Customers' Relationship with the Service Firm and Its Sales Personnel

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of research paper is to form and test a model that analyzes the relationships between customers and service provider, and its personnel, in connection to customers' repurchase intention. It also aims to evaluate the role of gender-difference on the above mentioned relationships.Study setting and Unit of Analysis: The study setting for the proposed model is a hair-care setting where beauty salon is acting as a service provider, hair-stylists as service personnel and, randomly selected, students of public Midwestern University are subjects (customers). The choice of beauty salon as the service setting is very suitable for this study, as it involves a large number of detailed interactions between the concerned parties i.e. service personnel and customers. It is the hairstylists who are the service providers for the beauty salon, and customers' who avail the services directly. The unit of analysis for the research paper is the group.Synopsis: It is a well known fact that the influence of post-purchase evaluation, of the customer, on his/her future purchasing decision is massive. The understanding of the process is very vital for organizations and service providers as this whole process leads to re-patronage intentions. The researches indicate that perceived value and word of mouth, of both the service provider and service personnel, are the basis of re-patronage intentions. So the paper, studies and analyzes, one of the behavior models having perceived value, repurchase intention (RPI) and word of mouth (WOM), in the context of service. It also tries to assess the effect of gender difference on the post-purchase evaluation.

The proposed model has three independent variables and one moderating and one dependant variable. The independent variables are; “service provider's word of mouth communication”, “service personnel word of mouth communication”, and “perceived value”, whereas the dependant variable is “re-purchases intention”. The moderating variable in the model is the “gender”.

Six hypotheses are developed using the aid of the extensive literature review. The hypotheses developed are the following.

“As the customers' WOM referrals for the service provider increases, the customers' RPI toward the service provider will increase” (Cho and Rutherford, 2011, p.327).

“As the customers' WOM referrals for the service personnel increases, the customers' RPI toward the service provider will increase” (Cho and Rutherford, 2011, p.327).

“As the customers' level of perceived value increases, the customers' RPI toward the service provider will increase” (Cho and Rutherford, 2011, p.328).

“The relationship between service provider WOM and RPI toward the service provider will be moderated by the gender of the customer; specifically, the relationship between service provider WOM and RPI toward the service provider will be stronger for females than males” (Cho and Rutherford, 2011, p.328).

“The relationship between service personnel WOM and RPI toward the service provider will be moderated by the gender of the customer; specifically, the relationship between service personnel WOM and RPI toward the service provider will be stronger for females than males” (Cho and Rutherford, 2011, p.328).

“The relationship between perceived value and RPI ...