PROCEDIMIENTO PARA LA ATENCIÓN DE CUERPOS COLEGIADOS

Approached from a relationship perception, marketing is concerned —mainly— with

creating and delivering customers the desired value advantageously. In line with the V-dRM perspective in order to achieve the targeted marketing goals, the firm should

43 be a “value carrier” (Ravald & Gronroos, 1996) that offers customers a better value than its rivals (Ponsonby & Boyle, 2004). A recent formal definition of marketing (American Marketing Association, 2004) strongly highlighted both; value and relationship.

“Marketing is an organisational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders.”

According to Gallarza et al. (2011, p.181), several aspects contributed in positioning value at the heart of marketing research. Value is ‘synchronically’ (i.e. viewed at a moment in time) important for marketing. While marketing comprises the activities for exchanging offerings that have value for customers, consumer value represents one of the main “axiomatic roots” for marketing theory explaining the exchange relationship itself. Moreover, value is ‘diachronically’ (i.e. pertaining to changes over time) important for marketing concerning the continuous evolution of marketing thought.

Intense competition and the rapid changes in today’s dynamic markets, where customers are also becoming more demanding, have stimulated marketers to shift toward value-driven marketing. Such an approach requires the focus to be on satisfying customers, and ensuring that the firm’s promise [value] is delivered efficiently (Walters

& Lancaster, 1999) through the continuous evaluation of all firm-customer touch points (Mithas et al., 2005).

The value-based strategy reflects the firm’s ability to establish a value creation relationship with customers and to manage it profitability. Chatain (2011, p.79) argued that a firm’s value creation capability is measured by its ‘added value’ and highlighted three components of interest in the value creation relationship; product line capability, client-specific knowledge and client-specific economies of scope.

According to Aaker (1996) a common challenge for many companies is the exaggerated reliance on product-related brand characteristics. Instead, he advocated for adopting more relational and boarder view of brand strategy as firm’s real value lies outside the business itself: in the minds of potential buyers (Tuominen, 1999).

Moreover, literature has highlighted other additional aspects of value. For example, Swaminathan and Moorman (2009) pointed out the role of marketing alliances and strategic networks in establishing a firm’s value and concluded the positive impact of the firm’s ability to manage a network of previous marketing alliances [marketing alliance capability] on value creation.

44 Customer Satisfaction and Perceived Value

Perceived value is rooted to the equity theory (Adams, 1965) that attempts to explain satisfaction in terms of perceptions of fair/unfair based on both customers’ and supplier’s rational evaluation and comparison to the related inputs and outcomes (Oliver

& DeSarbo, 1988).

The concept of ‘value’ is fundamental to marketing theory (Holbrook, 1994). Value represents a central topic that is positioned at the core of marketing research particularly when evaluating customer responses in services (Gallarzaet al., 2011, p. 187). Customer satisfaction and value have a strong and interrelated relationship; hence customer satisfaction is recognised as being highly associated with ‘value’ (Athanassopoulos, 2000, p. 192).

Furthermore, the concept of value has an economic (i.e. transaction value) dimension and a psychological dimension; thus value has “meaningful epistemological implications for marketing as a discipline” (Gallarza et al., 2011). Accordingly, value

―whether the economic or the psychological aspect― has been employed extensively by many marketing studies alongside other major constructs such as customer satisfaction, customer retention and service quality.

From the consumer’s viewpoint, value as essential requirement for satisfaction can be perceived within several forms; value can be viewed as more reliability (Sharma &

Singh 2012) and more convenient by a particular consumer. Value can be viewed as less expensive (Gale et al., 2006), as faster services (Campbell et al., 2011), or as a non-additional cost service (Collins, 1986). Furthermore, value may take the form of information, as in the case of a ‘call centre’ at a telecommunications service provider (TSP). Also, it may take the form of a more personalised service when a particular TSP sends their customers a congratulatory letter on personal occasions, or when a particular consumer’s complaint is treated as a priority according to the TSP’s customer service recommendation as an important customer.

Prior studies have conceptualised perceived value as a component of service quality (Santouridis & Trivellas 2010), a main determinant of customer loyalty (Brodie et al., 2009; Oh, 1999), a determinant of satisfaction (Hutchinson et al., 2009; Gallarza et al., 2009), and also as a major contributor to purchase intention (Chang & Wildt, 1994).

According to Zeithaml (1988), value which is viewed as the perceived benefits relative to costs constitutes a main component of customer satisfaction.

45 It was obvious that the above studies viewed perceived value [as an antecedent rather than outcome] for the achievement of superior marketing performance represented in customer satisfaction meanwhile, perceived quality (Yuan & Wu, 2008) and perceived value (Kashyap & Bojanic, 2000) constitute its two main ingredients. On the contrary, other scholars have considered value as an outcome to satisfaction [rather than antecedent] (Chiou, 2004; Petrick & Backman, 2002), or as an outcome of loyalty [rather than antecedent] (Petrick et al., 2001).

Gallarza et al. (2011) highlighted the “confusion of terminology” regarding value, satisfaction and quality which reflects the variation in identifying the causal relationships between them. Meanwhile, the vagueness of the conceptual obstacles (i.e.

value is ‘polysemic’ in marketing literature) and methodological constraints (no consensus on value dimensions) reflects a considerable challenge that hinders researchers in assessing the relationship between value and other variables.

In order to deal with such overlap “hybrid constructs” were suggested by Gallarza et al.

(2011) highlighting the interrelated relationships within a conceptual delimitation linking value, quality, and satisfaction (figure 2.2) in which each pair of concepts was focused on independently.

Figure 2.2: Conceptual Delimitation: Value, Quality, and Satisfaction Source: Gallarza et al. (2011, p.185)

46 In conclusion, despite the debate over the satisfaction-value relationship, a distinct body of marketing literature has considered value as an essential requirement [input] to satisfaction (e.g. Srivoravilai et al., 2011; Yang & Peterson, 2004; McDougall &

Levesque, 2000; Fornell et al., 1996). According to Gallarza et al. (2011, p.185), “it appears more common to understand value as an antecedent of satisfaction, rather than satisfaction as an antecedent of value.” In a somewhat different tone, Allred et al.

(2011) argued that a firm’s capability to create value could be investigated by measuring its achieved performance with regard to customer satisfaction in addition to other indicators such as productivity, for instance.