Information forms, information technology and customer satisfaction in the services sectors | |
| Author | Shawyun, Teay |
| Call Number | AIT Diss. no.SM-96-2 |
| Subject(s) | Information technology Customer services Information technology Customer services |
| Note | A doctoral dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | To own the customer in today's market has evolved into a more complex, competitive, changeable, and challenging exercise for the organization. Organizational priority is placed on establishing a real-time information based customer-organization partnership to increase customer satisfaction and commitment. In this information intensive era, information plays a key role in keeping the customer aware of the organization's product and service offer. This information is usually developed within a traditional information system that focuses internally on the organization's perspective and user's needs while the external focus of customer's information needs is ignored. This research aims at studying the customer's information needs by determining the information forms important to customer expectation and customer satisfaction, with a view of incorporating the customer's information requirements as design parameters when developing and designing a more effective information technology system. A theoretical Information technology-Information-Customer satisfaction model is developed to show the linkages amongst the 3 major domains. This tries to establish a proposition of the theoretical linkage that the structured technicalities of an information technology domain are a function of the unstructured utilization of the information forms domain important to customer expectation and customer satisfaction. In this study, it is proposed that the important variable for study is the information forms, and not the information technology as information technology is only the enabling agent or tool. The information forms as operated in the study are divided into 5 groups of Product, Service, Organization, Characteristics and Communication information forms. In the study, the Group I (Characteristics and Communication) information forms are used to define Group II (Product, Service and Organization) information forms to form the 210 performance attributes which are the measures of the information forms. The research is comprised of 3 phases. The Phase I preliminary study reduced the 210 performance attributes to 108 performance attributes for the Phase II exploratory survey. From the Phase I study, it appears that Product information forms are more important than Service information forms and Organization information forms are completely eliminated, whereas Characteristics information forms and Communication information forms are similarly important to customers. The Phase II study identified some generic sets of performance attributes important to and basic to all the different sectors regardless of the sectors as follows : • Updated, Reliable, Easy to Understand and Easy to Receive Product Benefits, Product Features and Product Value information forms are generic information forms important to the customer regardless of the sectors. iv • Timely and Accurate Product Benefits and Product Value information forms also feature prominently in all the different factors. This suggests that Product Benefits and Product Value information forms are important the customer regardless of the sectors. • For the Service information forms, it appears that Service Response information form feature prominently and are an important indicator of a customer's continued patronage of the organization services regardless of the sectors. The Phase II survey reduced performance attributes to be used in the Phase III field survey from 108 to 92, 87 and 79, which is doubled to 184, 174 and 158 (as Phase III also include the customer expectation of information forms perspectives) for the hotel service sector, securities trading service sector and the life assurance service sector respectively. Commonly used statistical techniques of Manova, multiple regression analysis and factor analysis are used to analyze and interpret the result. The general findings of Phase III can be surmised as : • each service sector has its own unique set of basic information forms, and the demographic profile of each basic information set is also sector unique. • the set of information forms important to customer expectation is different from the information forms important to customer satisfaction for all the sectors. This implies that meeting the minimum expectation of the information forms does not necessarily lead to an increase in customer satisfaction • the components of the basic information forms are also different, and 5 regression equations indicating their contribution to customer expectation and customer satisfaction of information forms were derived. • the information forms based on its product utilities (which is high on the search continuum) and service performance commitment aspects (which is high on the experience and credence qualities continuum) indicate that these aspects are also sector w1ique and those important to customer expectation and customer satisfaction within the same sector are also unlike. Relative importance is given to product benefits and service assurance information forms, and also to those information forms important to customer satisfaction as there is a lower significance for information forms that meets the customer minimum expectation. The implication of this research suggests that information forms and their components important to customer expectation and customer satisfaction are sector unique and are different within the same sector. It implies that the traditional system development life cycle should be adapted to consider the customer information needs as a design parameter so that the approach is oriented towards the use of information by the organization's users to serve and satisfy customer needs based on the customer requirements. A framework for a market-oriented approach to information technology is also proposed in this study. The above implications have also been illustrated with some managerial propositions and suggestions for each of the service sectors to adapt their information technology system to incorporate such information forms requirement. The relevance of the findings for replication internationally is also discussed in this study. |
| Year | 1996 |
| Type | Dissertation |
| School | School of Management |
| Department | Other Field of Studies (No Department) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (Publication code = DBA-SM, SM) |
| Chairperson(s) | Gupta, Jyoti P.;Gupta, Jyoti P.; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Bumbacher, Urs;Phien, H.N.;Rieser, Ignaz; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Assumption University; |
| Degree | Thesis (Ph.D.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1996 |