Customer‐service firm attachment: what it is and what causes it?

Effects of COVID-19 on customer service experience: Can employees wearing facemasks enhance customer-perceived service quality?

Wearing a facemask is an effective part of personal hygiene management (WHO, 2020). Not only can it offer healthy people some protection against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection, but it can also reduce the spread of the virus. Wearing facemasks, as a part of the various regulations and guidelines encouraged by the Chinese government and hospitality firms, has been widely accepted by the public in the post-COVID-19 era in China. But few studies have considered the effects of employees wearing facemasks on the customer service experience. Based on signaling theory, this experimental study explores the effects of hotel employees wearing facemasks on customer perceptions of service quality. The results indicate three main effects. (a) Having employees wear facemasks can improve perceptions of customer service quality. (b) Customers commonly feel that female employees wearing facemasks could provide higher service quality than male mask-wearing employees, but the improvement in customer perception with male employees wearing facemasks is greater than the situation between facemask-less and facemask-wearing females. (c) Customer perceptions of employee expertise, employee trustworthiness, and hotel trustworthiness play serial mediating roles. Recommendations to help hotel managers improve customers’ service evaluations during the COVID-19 pandemic are provided.

Investigating patient loyalty

Purpose

This research aims to investigate the simultaneous effect of trust, subjective norm, image and perceived risk on patient loyalty.

Design/methodology/approach

This research used quantitative research methodology. The authors surveyed the patient of a healthcare service institution in Depok, Indonesia, and 163 of the institution patients participated in the survey. Multiple regressions analysis was performed to analyze the empirical data.

Findings

The findings showed that subjective norm and image have positive influence on patient loyalty. However, this research also found that trust and perceived risk do not have significant impact on patient loyalty.

Research limitations/implications

The author(s) used convenience sampling method, and the sample only involved respondents from a healthcare service institution in Depok, Indonesia. Hence, the findings of this research may not be generalized to the other contexts. Therefore, we recommend further research to replicate this research to examine the stability of this research’s findings.

Practical implications

The research results show that subjective norm and image affect the patient loyalty. Thus, the management of healthcare service institution should consider and manage all of these factors proactively.

Originality/value

This study is believed to be the first to develop and test patient loyalty model that includes trust, subjective norm, image, perceived risk and trust.