• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.17-25
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• 2013

Purpose - This study analyzes the effect of customers' perceived service innovativeness of service centers for electronic goods, on repurchase intentions of customers, using behavior intentions of service centers as a mediator variable. In customer management and customer relationship marketing, service centers can be the most representative customer relationship management departments because they are most closely placed at the interface with customers. In addition, this study intends to investigate if continuous relationship with customers during one-time product-selling can affect their repurchase intentions. Specifically, this research aims to investigate if the expansion of the saturated physical market of the manufacturing business, to intangible service markets, can be competitive enough to satisfy customer needs. Research design, data, and methodology - This study targets college students, and especially those who have computers, digital cameras, or cell-phones, and often use electronic products and services. In order to investigate our hypothesis, we analyzed dates through SEM (structural equation modeling) using SPSS for Windows 18.0 and AMOS 18.0. In addition, we measured Cronbach's α coefficient using SPSS for Windows 18.0 in order to measure reliability. Further, using AMOS 18.0, this research statistically measured convergent validity as well as discriminant validity, and examined mediation models and path models in which service innovativeness leads to customers' repurchase intentions of electronic products. Results - As a result, this research shows that customers' perceived service innovativeness of service centers for electronic goods has significant positive influence on customers' behavior intentions of service centers. In addition, service innovativeness of electronic goods' service centers also has significant positive influence on repurchase intentions of customers. Conclusion - This study investigates the effect of customers' positive relation with the innovativeness of electronic service center on their behavior intention and product repurchase. The more concrete, important results of the study are as follows. Through the mediating effect, the findings of the study suggest that customers' behavior intentions of service centers partially mediate the effect of customers'perceived service innovativeness of service centers for electronic goods on customers' repurchase intentions. This research also provides an insight that the importance of service innovativeness and innovative approaches in managing customers should be recognized in the process of repurchase and service roles of manufacturing business as a way for customer management. As a result, the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality of service centers for the electronic products is very sensitive. Although previous studies focus on certain aspects of the case for enhancing service innovation (Kim, 2012), this research recommends that the service centers need to understand the customers'desire first and try to adapt to achieve customer satisfaction by being innovative. This innovativeness of service centers would make customers visit them consistently, which in the long run, will also influence their repurchase decisions.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.53-77
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• 2013

As advertising and promotions are categorized as operating expenses, managers tend to reduce marketing budget to improve their short term profitability. Gauging the value and accountability of marketing spending is therefore considered as a major research priority in marketing. To respond this call, recent studies have documented that financial market reacts positively to a firm's marketing activity or marketing related outcomes such as brand equity and customer satisfaction. However, prior studies focus on the relation of marketing variable and financial market variables. This study suggests a channel about how marketing activity increases firm valuation. Specifically, we propose that a firm's marketing activity increases the level of the firm's product market information and thereby the dispersion in financial analysts' earnings forecasts decreases. With less uncertainty about the firm's future prospect, the firm's managers and shareholders have less information asymmetry, which reduces the firm's cost of capital and thereby increases the valuation of the firm. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine how informational benefits can mediate the effect of marketing activity on firm value. To test whether marketing activity contributes to increase in firm value by mitigating information asymmetry, this study employs a longitudinal data which contains 12,824 firm-year observations with 2,337 distinct firms from 1981 to 2006. Firm value is measured by Tobin's Q and one-year-ahead buy-and-hold abnormal return (BHAR). Following prior literature, dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts is used as a proxy for the information gap between management and shareholders. For model specification, to identify mediating effect, the three-step regression approach is adopted. All models are estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to test the statistical significance of the mediating effect. The analysis shows that marketing intensity has a significant negative relationship with dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts. After including the mediator variable about analyst dispersion, the effect of marketing intensity on firm value drops from 1.199 (p < .01) to 1.130 (p < .01) in Tobin's Q model and the same effect drops from .192 (p < .01) to .188 (p < .01) in BHAR model. The results suggest that analysts' forecast dispersion partially accounts for the positive effect of marketing on firm valuation. Additionally, the same analysis was conducted with an alternative dependent variable (forecast accuracy) and a marketing metric (advertising intensity). The analysis supports the robustness of the main results. In sum, the results provide empirical evidence that marketing activity can increase shareholder value by mitigating problem of information asymmetry in the capital market. The findings have important implications for managers. First, managers should be cognizant of the role of marketing activity in providing information to the financial market as well as to the consumer market. Thus, managers should take into account investors' reaction when they design marketing communication messages for reducing the cost of capital. Second, this study shows a channel on how marketing creates shareholder value and highlights the accountability of marketing. In addition to the direct impact of marketing on firm value, an indirect channel by reducing information asymmetry should be considered. Potentially, marketing managers can justify their spending from the perspective of increasing long-term shareholder value.