Abstract

A plethora of studies in psychology, communication and advertising indicate that the first and last phases of an event are predominant in customer evaluations. Many practitioners also argue that the first and the last impressions made by an advisor in a selling context have the most important influence on clients' evaluations. However, few researchers have studied this phenomenon in the marketing literature. We conducted a survey of more than 500 clients. Following structural equation modeling analyses, our results indicate that perceived quality and trust were found to be influenced by the initial impression, whereas satisfaction was mostly impacted by the final impression. Several managerial recommendations and research avenues are presented in this article.

Un très grand nombre d'études en psychologie, en communication et en publicité montrent que les phases d'introduction et de conclusion d'un événement sont prépondérantes dans l'évaluation d'ensemble des consommateurs. Plusieurs praticiens considèrent d'ailleurs que la première et la dernière impression effectuée par un conseiller dans une rencontre de vente constituent les moments qui influencent le plus les évaluations des clients. Pourtant, peu de chercheurs ont étudié ce phénomène dans la littérature en marketing. Nous avons réalisé un sondage auprès de plus de 500 clients. Suivant des analyses de modélisation d'équations structurelles, nos résultats indiquent que la qualité perçue et la confiance sont influencées par l'impression initiale, alors que la satisfaction est influencée par l'impression finale. Des recommandations stratégiques et des opportunités de recherche sont présentées.

The turbulent environment in which financial institutions evolve motivates strategic thinking aimed at competitive advantage. Drawing from the literature on relationship marketing, one potentially successful strategy at the level of front line service is for financial advisors to behave in a pleasantly surprising way toward their clients (e.g., acknowledging a family member's birthday; covering a parking expense; giving tickets to an entertainment venue). We examine both antecedents and consequences of clients' perceptions of their advisors behaving in a pleasantly surprising way toward them. Antecedents included advisors' customer orientation, knowledge of client, and sense of humour. Consequences included clients' trust, satisfaction, purchase intentions, and word‐of‐mouth intentions. Several strategic recommendations and research avenues following from these findings are offered. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.