Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2011-3
Service Quality and Export Performance of Business-to-Business Service Providers: The Role of Service Employee– and Customer-Oriented Quality Control Initiatives
Using the facilities–transformation–usage framework of service provision and drawing from control theory, the authors develop a theoretical model that examines the influence of different quality control initiatives on relative service quality in a business-to-business setting and, consequently, on export performance. They explicitly consider quality control initiatives that address service employees’ performance and the customers’ coproduction as well as selected firm characteristics as antecedents of such initiatives. They test the proposed model on data drawn from an export survey of service providers. The results show that export customer–oriented training, customer coproduction instructions, and work process standardization have a positive influence on relative service quality, which in turn positively affects export performance. However, adaptation to export customers’ coproduction competence and motivation has a positive influence on relative service quality only when the customer integration in the service delivery is high. The authors conclude by considering implications for the management of the service delivery process in an export setting and identifying future research directions.
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