DISCUSION Y CONCLUSIONES

PROMISE DELIVERY

An underlying presupposition of the research questions was to explore how IM communication experiences influenced the enabling of employees to deliver on promises made. As IM is the method recommended in the literature to enable employees to deliver on those promises, an evaluation of whether the identified IM communication outcomes were associated with the outcome of promise keeping was fundamental to this study.

Key finding 4: The outcome of values commitment demonstrated a significant relationship with employee perceptions of their company’s ability to deliver on customer promises.

As reported in Chapter 5, this study found the multi-item scale reflecting values commitment was moderately but significantly correlated with employee perceptions that customers could trust the company to deliver on its promises (0.409 at the 0.01 level). The remaining outcome of knowledge and understanding was also significantly, although weakly (0.252 at the 0.01 level) correlated with perceptions of promise delivery. Therefore, this study found IM communication was influential to employee perceptions of promise delivery as an outcome.

Furthermore, the results of this research serve to illustrate several possible linkages between the IM communication framework and the elements of promise enablement outlined in the conceptual promise framework suggested by Bitner (1995), and more recently the revised framework from Little et al. (2006). As the elements described by both of these studies are broad ranging, they appear to suggest that promise enablement is the function of business management, rather than simply a marketing function. However, this research focused primarily on the role of communication in promise enablement. In so doing, identified communication components demonstrate possible relationships to elements discussed by Bitner and Little et al. to enable employees to deliver on promises made, as illustrated in Figure 14 below.

Figure 14: Linkage between the IM communication framework and enabling promise delivery

While the relationships posited between the IM communication framework and the existing literature on promise enablement are based on the New Zealand retail electricity sector and therefore further research is required, it is possible that some components are influential to outcomes proposed by Bitner and Little et al. for enabling employees to deliver on promises made. For example, the information sources shown in Stage 1 of the framework may be considered tools, postulated by

some (e.g. Bitner, 1995) as important to enable employees to deliver on promises made. Employees reported that sources of knowledge such as face-to-face communication provided them with the ability to ask questions and clarify information. Furthermore, the company’s systems and intranets were sources of knowledge which enabled staff to access the information required at the time of providing service to a customer. Thus, knowledge bases in particular, may be considered ‘tools’ for enabling employees to carry out their job role. In addition, knowledge bases may be considered core components of broader systems and structures (e.g. Little et al., 2006) designed for enabling employees.

The IM communication outcome of values commitment found in this research also indicate a possible relationship with the promise enabling element of culture as suggested by Little et al. (2006). As outlined in Chapter 2, values are an important element of culture. Therefore, the component of values commitment which was influential to the employee experience of IM communication may indicate a linkage to the enabling element of culture. Furthermore, according to Baruch (1998), studies have found that higher organisational commitment results in greater loyalty and motivation. Therefore, this component also indicates a possible linkage to the element of motivation suggested by Bitner (1995). While this study focused on IM communication, it is possible that, because of the relationship between commitment and motivation, the component of values commitment may also offer some insight into the motivation of employees to deliver on promises made.

Finally, the IM communication outcome of knowledge and understanding appears be associated with the promise enabling element of knowledge also proposed by both Bitner (1995) and Little et al. (2006). Furthermore, it is possible that the

component of knowledge and understanding may be associated with the concept of role clarity that appears influential to the employee perceptions of service quality suggested by Mukherjee and Malhotra (2006).

In total, each of the stages of the IM communication framework provides a more detailed understanding of IM communication practices than previously offered. Furthermore, confirmatory studies of how IM practices and outcomes relate to elements of promise delivery would be beneficial in future research.

6.4 CONCLUSION

The preceding discussion has provided examples that present a number of new perspectives on IM communication. It could be argued that a relationship between employee perceptions of overall communication, values based commitment, and perceptions of promise delivery may not have been surprising. However, the results of Baruch’s (1998) two meta-analyses of organisational commitment, including concepts such as identification with the goals of the company, found that the correlation between commitment and organisational outcomes appeared to be declining. While the outcome measured in this study (employee perceptions that customers can trust their company to deliver on its brand promises) differs from the organisational outcomes that Baruch studied (performance, turnover and absenteeism), the results of this study demonstrate a significant relationship between IM communication and promise delivery.

This research has brought forward recognition of the influence of posited IM outcomes. As discussed earlier, nearly two decades ago, Piercy and Morgan (1991) suggested the “payoffs” for IM might be “people’s attitudes towards the marketing plan and their commitment to putting it into practice, or customers’ perceptions of

our success in delivering our promise to them” (p. 85). In this research, the finding of values commitment and its relationship to perceptions of promise delivery provides empirical evidence supporting these earlier views of the benefit of IM practices. However, significantly, this study further identified that IM communication was not perceived independently of overall company communication, which means an integrated approach to communication is integral to successful outcomes in this context.

Furthermore, knowledge and understanding as an outcome of the employee experience also provides potential direction for the development of a new measure of IM communication. While interpersonal communication remains the preferred channel for receiving information, the communication structures which facilitated information availability and timeliness were also found to be critical. Furthermore, the component of knowledge and understanding was influenced by feedback, both

the employees’ level of comfort in providing feedback and the action being taken on that feedback.

Notably, the feedback components were associated with horizontal employee-to-employee relationships rather than the vertical communication usually measured in IM studies (between employees and management). Furthermore, a new component, comfort in providing feedback, appeared to be more relevant to employee experiences of IM communication than the well-recognised RM variable of trust found in previous studies of marketing relationships. While it is possible that comfort in providing feedback may be influential to an environment of trust, notably this study found that items relating to trust between various employees with differing organisational relationships (such as those of the employee with senior managers or

other departments), were distinct from items relating to comfort in providing feedback.

In drawing together the findings from the research questions to form an IM communication framework for enabling promise delivery, several linkages have been identified which influenced both IM outcomes and elements of enabling promise delivery in this study (as shown earlier in Figure 14, p. 185). In so doing, the framework provides enhanced detail to further explicate the influence of IM communication as an integral element of promise enablement.

Furthermore, the importance of interactive communication, comfort in providing feedback, and values commitment indicates support for a relational communication experience, and in so doing, provides a response to the call of Ahmed and Rafiq (2003) who posited that a relational approach may be appropriate for IM. The IM communication framework resulting from this research also contributes to the RM literature, where it has been argued that communication has “not previously been studied to any great extent” (Finne & Grönroos, 2009, p. 191).

Although the research was conducted within the context of the New Zealand retail electricity sector, the key IM communication components offer empirical measures of employee experiences relevant to the process, and in so doing, offer a contribution to the IM communication and promise management body of knowledge. However, it is recognised that further research is required before any attempt is made to generalise the findings to other industries, marketing and geographical environments.

The following and final chapter concludes with a summary of the key findings from this research, both from a theoretical and applied perspective, and identifies opportunities for future research.