Relationship benefits in service industries: a replication in a Southeast Asian context

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Abstract Because service encounters and service relationships are first and foremost social encounters, norms and expectations related to such encounters are likely to vary from culture to culture, but especially between high context Eastern, collectivist and low context, Western individualistic cultures. The purpose of this study was, in part, to replicate and then extend the work of Gwinner et al. in the USA, but this time in a Southeast Asian context. Gwinner et al.'s work examined the benefits customers perceive they receive from engaging in long-term relationships with a variety of service-providers. The current sample comprised 155 respondents in Bangkok, Thailand who each completed a series of questionnaires concerning their relational behavior with service suppliers. The results support the earlier study showing relational benefits can be categorized into three distinct benefit types. However, compared with the past research results in a Western context (USA), the results indicate some clearly discernible variations. It is apparent that we should not rely wholly on empirical research emanating from Western cultures, but also develop reliable models of how various marketing phenomena work in the rapidly expanding Asian economies.Whereas uncorroborated research outcomes must be considered tentative, their successful replication promotes confidence in the veracity of a discipline's cumulative knowledge base. Other things being equal, replication protects against the uncritical assimilation of spurious empirical results into the literature. Replications with extensions serve to determine the scope and limits of empirical findings by seeing if they can be generalized to other populations, contexts. . . The research register for this journal is available at

Ambicultural blending between Eastern and Western paradigms: Fresh perspectives for international management research

“…Western 'heartless' objectivity applied to this Thai business context could have meant sacrificing a long-term business relationship for a short-term gain. A similar orientation was identified in Patterson and Smith's (2001) study on relationship benefits in service industries. Thai consumers were found to be loyal to serviceproviders because of a perceived Bunkhun relationship which guarantees them special treatment if needed.…”

Exploring how inter-organizational relational benefits affect information sharing in supply chains

“…Prior research has shown that relational benefit is an antecedent to building a long-term relationship [25,31]. Relational benefits refer to the benefits that customers receive from long-term relationships above and beyond the core product or service performance [25].…”

How do Service Encounters Impact on Relationship Benefits

“…As Homans (1950) argued, trust is produced through a gradual process of interpersonal interaction. In IBSE, a customer can directly communicate with the service providers, and so the dyad is more likely to communicate the mutual intention (Patterson and Smith, 2001). There are a number of IBSE between the service provider and the customer, including various series of moments of truth.…”

“…For instance, one measure was obtained by the following question "In service process, my needs would be fulfilled by the technological equipment such as Internet and ATM". To operationalize the relationship benefit, we used 11 items that sought to evaluate various relationship benefits, which was adapted from scales developed and validated by Gwinner et al (1998), Hennig-Thurau et al (2002), and Patterson and Smith (2001). Special treatment benefit and confidence benefit both included four items, respectively.…”