corporate social responsibility (CSR), CSR associations, CSR participation, employee–company identification (E–C identification), perceived external prestige (PEP),

Examines determinants of service loyalty under the assumption that consumers perform a cost/benefit analysis when deciding whether or not they want to be “regular customers”. It develops potential determinants of service loyalty based on the service quality, transaction cost, and switching cost literature, and estimates their relative influences with survey data from customers currently using banks and travel agencies. The results indicate that, in addition to service quality perceptions, transaction/switching cost factors have a significant impact on service loyalty. Implications of the results are discussed.

A growing number of US fast‐food franchises are expanding operations to overseas markets. Critical to the success of these service firms is an understanding of the way consumers in foreign markets evaluate their services. Reports the findings of a study that examined and compared the expectations and perceptions of US customers with those of South Korean clients about an international fast‐food chain. Reveals several important differences between the two groups of customers. Discusses the implications of the results for US fast‐food companies in international markets.

Based on conjoint analysis technique, this study investigates how consumers utilize intrinsic and extrinsic cues in determining the quality of a product. The focus is on the effects of consumer individual difference variables on the relative importance of such product cues. The results show that product familiarity, enduring involvement, and price-reliance schema have a significant influence on consumer utilization of extrinsic cues. The implication of the results are discussed.

M etrics for the architectural quality of Internet businesses are essential in gauging the success and failure of e-commerce. This study proposes six dimensions of architectural metrics for Internet businesses: internal stability, external security, information gathering, order processing, system interface, and communication interface. The metrics are based on the three constructs that have been used to evaluate buildings in the real world. The structural construct indicates that Internet businesses need to be stable internally and secure externally. The functional construct implies that Internet businesses should provide convenient functions in the information-gathering and order-processing phases. Finally, the representational construct indicates that they need to provide a pleasant interface both to the system and to those using it. For each of the six metrics, we have constructed questionnaires to measure the perceived level of architectural quality and identified feature lists that may be closely related to the perceived quality level. Large-scale empirical studies were conducted both to validate the proposed metrics and to explore their relevance across four Internet business domains. The validity of the metrics has been obtained in three ways. First, the content validity of the metrics was assured by pretests and pilot survey. Second, the results from the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the metrics had high convergent and discriminant validities. Finally, the reliability coefficients were found to be high enough to establish the reliability of the proposed metrics. The relevance of the metrics has been explored in two ways. Structural equation models were used to test the causal relations between the three constructs and user satisfaction, as well as customer loyalty, in four domains. Correlation analyses were used to explore the relations between the perceived architectural quality and objective design features in four domains. This paper ends with the implications and limitations of the study results.