Word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions in the service context: Beauty salon

Yoon Na Cho, Purdue University

Abstract

The revolution in service marketing began as early as the 1960s. According to Vargo and Lusch (2004), the use of market and goods has increased in order to achieve higher-order benefits, such as satisfaction and self-fulfillment, as humans became more specialized. Overtime, the importance of service marketing emerged, but the characteristics of service have made it difficult to evaluate the service offered. Moreover, there is an apparent lack of research upon which to build an integrated model that captures the interaction between customers and stores (Baker et al. 2002). The current study examines the extent to which store, price, and employee integrate together to create the perceived customer satisfaction. The level of satisfaction will eventually affect customers in making an overall assessment of the store. Alternative evaluative variables that affect patronage intentions, such as word-of-mouth and perceived value will be examined. The purpose of this paper is to observe the effects of perceptions of store, price, employee, and hairstylist on customers' satisfaction in a beauty salon context. The context of this study, beauty salon was found to be appropriate service setting in that it involves a high level of interaction between hairstylists and customers (McDougall and Levesque 2000). For data analysis, the measurement model was evaluated via confirmatory factor analysis and then followed by a series of regression. In general, the results indicate that positive perceived service qualities can enhance customer satisfaction, perceived value, word-of-mouth referrals, and repatronage intentions. One of the most important findings of this study is that in a highly interactive service setting, not only the store, but also the hairstylist is a critical component that influence customers' word-of-mouth behavior and repatronage intentions. By cultivating interpersonal bonds between employees and customers, service providers could attract more customers and retain them.

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Rutherford, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Marketing|Behavioral psychology

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