Should a firm with a reputation for outstanding service quality offer a service guarantee?
Abstract
Studies reputation for service quality as a potential moderator of the relationship between a service guarantee and its impact on consumer perceptions of service quality, risk and purchase intent. A before‐after experimental design, set in the hotel industry, was employed to explore the impacts of a service guarantee for an outstanding versus a good service provider. Contrary to what had been implied in the past, the introduction of an explicit guarantee had no negative effect for the outstanding service provider in our study. In fact, the provision of a guarantee marginally improved expected quality, reduced perceived risk, and had no effect on purchase intent. However, for the good quality provider, the impacts were all positive and strong, and apart from the impact on perceived risk, the effects were significantly stronger than those for the outstanding quality provider. Our findings thus support the hypothesized moderating role of service quality.
Keywords
Citation
Wirtz, J., Kum, D. and Sheang Lee, K. (2000), "Should a firm with a reputation for outstanding service quality offer a service guarantee?", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 502-512. https://doi.org/10.1108/08876040010347615
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited