Individual Differences and Service Quality: Limitations on the Benefits of Good Service

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Individual Differences and Service Quality
Limitations on the Benefits of Good Service
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Service Quality and Satisfaction Research

• Research has suggested that measuring and
  promoting SQ and satisfaction is crucial for firm
  financial performance
• (Peterson and Wilson 1992)
• Most research has focused on firm-controllable
  factors affecting service quality and satisfaction

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More on SQ and Satisfaction

• Treating customers as partners
• (Bettencourt 1997)
• Retaining customers through increased quality and
  satisfaction (Reichheld and Sasser 1990 Lemon,
  White and Winer 2002)
• Understanding individual customer behaviors
  (Jones and Sasser 1995 Keaveney 1995 Ganesh,
  Arnold and Reynolds 2000)
• Firm-focused what the provider can do to
  increase quality and satisfaction (Tax and Brown
  1998 Tax, Brown and Chandrashekaran 1998)

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Is Zero Customer Defection Possible?

• Reichheld and Sasser 1990
• Are there individual differences in customers
  that are uncontrollable from the firms
  perspective?
• Emotional Intelligence SQ
• Satisfaction

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Emotional Intelligence

• The ability to process social information from
  the environment in a way that integrates that
  information for problem solving, leading to a
  change in ones own behavior that is appropriate
  for solving the problem at hand.
• (Gardner 1993 Mayer and Salovey 1993 Goleman
  1994)

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Covariates of Emotional Intelligence

• Costa McCraes FFI (1992)
• Neuroticism
• Extraversion
• Openness
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• IQ

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Covariates of Service Quality

• Mood has been shown to affect ratings on quality
  (Peterson and Wilson 1992)
• Two dimensions of mood
• Positive Affect
• Negative Affect

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Overall Model

• Emotional Intelligence Service Quality

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Research Hypotheses

• H1 Consumers with higher scores on emotional
  intelligence will report higher levels of
  perceived service quality
• H2 When variance in emotional intelligence due
  to personality and IQ has been accounted for, the
  relationship between emotional intelligence in
  consumers and service quality will remain.
• H3 When the effect of mood on perception of
  service quality has been accounted for, consumers
  with higher scores on emotional intelligence will
  report higher levels of perceived service quality
  (satisfaction).

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Model For Study 1

• Personality Factors
  SQ Dimensions
• Neuroticism SQ Dependability
• Extraversion SQ Trustworthy
• Openness SQ Helpful
• Agreeableness SQ Caring
• Conscientiousness
• IQ

Positive/Neg. Affect
Emotional Intelligence
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Sample For Study 1

• N 237 students, 5 courses
• 47 female, 53 male
• Mean age 22 yrs.
• Mean credit hours 89

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Scales Used

• PANAS (Watson, Clark, and Tellegen 1988)
• Emotional Intelligence (Schutte, et al. 1998)
• Modified SERVQUAL (ZBP 1988)
• NEO-FFI (Costa and McCrae 1992)
• Demographics/standardized test scores

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Results

• Personality Factors Rsq .41 SQ Dimensions
• Neuroticism SQ Dependability
• Extraversion r .19 SQ Trustworthy
• Openness SQ Helpful
• Agreeableness SQ Caring
• Conscientiousness

Emotional Intelligence
Positive/Neg. Affect
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What Did We Learn?

• There is some effect of emotional intelligence on
  service quality perceptions
• Trust is an internally motivated characteristic
  of the customer, while other SQ measures are
  externally driven
• The finding on trust is consistent with past
  research
• Found that 4 of variance in SQ is due to
  customer characteristics

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Contribution and Future Research

• Lends insight into how much variance in SQ firms
  cannot improve upon
• Service failure recovery
• Servicescapes (Bitner 1992)
• Zone of Tolerance (ZBP 1993)
• Current study underway