Gender differences in the impact of core and relational aspects of services on the evaluation of service encounters

“Thus, instrumental, task-and goal-oriented approaches are often associated with men, but a communal approach oriented more toward social relationships is associated with women (Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993)).”

“Customer satisfaction was captured via three items (Cronbach’s α = .83; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993).”

“In the service industry, customers not only purchase core products/services but also expect to receive additional relational benefits from the service provider ( Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993 ; Macintosh, 2007 ).”

“Iacobucci and Ostrom’s result ( Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993 ) is consistent with research that finds, in a variety of contexts, that women are more likely than men to focus on process issues (Deaux and Major, 1982) and to define success in terms of process—how the game was played rather than the outcomes of the game (H…”

“The cause of this could be that consumers already had preconceptions toward the gender of certain product service providers (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Mohr & Henson, 1996).”

“Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) found that from a relationship marketing perspective women perceive their relationship with the service provider as increasing in importance over time; seek relational aspects over core service aspects, and establish higher baseline expectations of relational performance…”

“In the marketplace, customers not only purchase products but also receive and expect to receive relational benefits from a service provider (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Macintosh, 2007).”

“Moreover, prior research shows that women tend to pay greater attention to the service delivery process as opposed to men who are more outcome-focused (Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993; Mattila et al., 2003).”

“(Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993) ● Core: The core of a service is that part of the service we think of when we name the service.”

“The use of a realistic script ensured control of the verbal content to the customer in all scenarios, so that the objective service level – that is, the content of the consultation (Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993) – was held constant (see Appendix 1).”

“In another study, women were found to be more demanding than men regarding female service providers in that they expected them to not only provide the basic core service but to also show social skills as well ( Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993”

“Existing literature suggests that men value distributive justice more (McColl-Kennedy et al., 2003; Oakley, 2000; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Helgesen, 1990; Rosener, 1990) and women value interactional (McColl-Kennedy et al., 2003; Carlson, 1971) and procedural (Sweeney & McFarlin, 1997;…”

“The results from three experiments provided support for the hypothesis that women may be generally more sensitive to relational aspects of a service encounter and men to core aspects, though there appear to be several factors moderating these findings that are not easily explained in a simple, unified theory (Iacobucc…”

“The above hypothesis is also supported by Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993)”

“This finding is in agreement with other research (Fischer et al., 1997; Smith & Midlarsky, 1985); a possible explanation is argued by Iacobucci & Ostrom (1993) that women are more sensitive about the interaction in service encounters; while men are more concerned about the core service.”

“Few studies have highlighted process-level differences in information processing and decision-making (Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993; Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran, 1991), listening (McKechnie et al., 2007), service quality perceptions (Spathis et al., 2004), and complaining behaviors (Keng et al., 1995;…”

“Whilst the core service provided by higher education institutions is the education itself, Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) suggest that the more intangible, social aspects of the exchange relationship are also essential to the creation of a positive educational experience.”

“Manipulation checks used to assess and verify the effect of the manipulated variable ( Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993 ) were implemented in the form of additional survey questions.”

“…evidence that men and women are different in socio-psychological traits (e.g. shopping orientation such as enthusiasm, deal-consciousness, socializing, personalizing, and expressiveness) and perceptions of services which impact consequent shopping behaviors differently (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993).”

“According to gender role theory, women report more emotional intensity, intense expression (Grossman & Wood, 1993), and interpersonal relationships (Carlson, 1971; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993) than men do.”

“These attributes are defined in the service literature as “core quality attributes” referring to what is essential to deliver to customers (Anderson, Pearo, and Widener 2008; Iacobucci and Ostrom 1993).”

“More specifically, research by Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) demonstrated in an experimental vignette that female customers are more influenced by relational information, such as employees being polite and helpful.”

“Due to their focus on social processes and communal orientation (Bakan, 1966; Gilligan, 1993; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Meyers-Levy & Loken, 2015; Spence & Helmreich, 1978; Wood & Eagly, 2012), women are more tuned to the interactional nature service delivery, and they may use their complaints as a…”

“In addition, Kozak (2000) noted that tourists may have difficulty in distinguishing between their expectations and perceived performance of destination attributes during or after a holiday. The Importance-Performance model was introduced by Martilla and James (1977) and involves the analysis of consumer attitudes towa…”

“Several researchers provided empirical evidence that gender differences exist while evaluating the service attributes and customer satisfaction (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993).”

“Through three experiments, Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) provided support that women may be more sensitive to relational aspects of a service encounter than men who seemed to be more receptive to the core aspects.”

“Extrinsic cues can serve as a form of non-verbal communication, imparting meaning through ‘ object language ’ ( Ruesch and Weldon, 1956 ) and acting as cues from which quality can be inferred ( Zeithaml, 1988 ; Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993 ).”

“Previous studies have shown that the posting behaviors of users vary across groups, such as anonymity and gender (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Li et al., 2021; Liu, Law, & Xu, 2019).”

“For instance, masculinity is associated with strength, technology, and an interest in things, while femininity is associated with sensitivity, emotions, and an interest in people (Chang et al., 2015; Deaux, 1984; Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993; Meyers-Levy, 1988; Otterbring et al., 2021a).”

“When customers require mainly relational aspects, female SPs with their 2 Several terms for the core aspects exist: expertise, (technical) competence, task-oriented, agentic (Meyers-Levy, 1988), or task- and goal-oriented (Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993).”

“For example, prior gender studies posit that cognition and responses differ by gender, such that men tend to be assertive, active, and goal oriented, whereas women are expressive, sensitive to visual stimuli, and socially oriented (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993).”

“, how well one gets along with the hairstylist) [47].”

“In contrast, Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) had earlier asserted that functional quality had a stronger impact on whether technical quality was good or poor.”

“…marketing literature, many researchers conceptualize service encounters as interchanges in which the client experiences both a core and a relational outcome (Berry, 1983; Bitner et al., 1990; Crosby & Stephens, 1987; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Solomon et al., 1985; Surprenant & Solomon, 1987).”

“…a result, attention tends to be focused on the actors – the front-line staff – and their individual JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATION Volume 13, Issue 2, June 2007 traits (Forseth 2005; Iacobucci & Ostrom 1993; Karatepe & Sokmen 2006; Karatepe et al. 2006; Moshavi 2004; Ryoo 2005; Vieira 2005).”

“For this reason, Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) showed that for the males, they assessed the aspects of the services provided itself by comparing the service itself and whether or not it was able to satisfy what their intended goal was as well.”

“Men thus compromise less on lower prices (Gelfand et al. 2006; Stuhlmacher and Walters, 1999) and higher product quality (Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993; Chiu, 2002).”

“The services and relationship marketing literature suggests that service experiences can be conceptualized in terms of core and relational aspects of the service (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993).”

“Also, men are more agentic (task- or goal-oriented) whereas women are more communal (relationship-oriented) (Hupfer, 2002; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993).”

“, 2003), “the relational dimension” (Levesque and McDougall, 1996), and “the relational component” (Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993; Roberts and Campbell, 2007).”

“…treatment of the CCS and VAS service dimensions is consistent with prior research, in which customer care or customer interactions are treated separately than the core, peripheral, and other elements of service dimensions (Anderson et al. 2008, Butcher et al. 2003, Iacobucci and Ostrom 1993).”

“This also corresponds to research in customer service noting that women are processoriented while men are outcome-oriented (Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1993; Matilla et al. 2003; Mathies and Burford, 2011).”

“In the service firm context, the goal of the interaction is to receive service and hence, the interaction is more formal, work related and economic in nature (Grandey et al. 2005; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Parasuraman et al., 1985).”

“Authors such as Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) have pointed out that relational information exerts greater influence on female customers than aspects related to service quality and accuracy (Mattila et al., 2003).”

“More recent research has shown that gender effects on decision-making outcomes can be attributed due to differences in agentic orientation (Bakan, 1966; Iacobucci and Ostrum, 1993; Meyers-Levy, 1988; Moskowitz et al. 1994).”

“…that analyzes the impact of gender in managerial perceptive and marketing states that men are more aligned toward completing more goal and tasks, whereas women on the other hand are more focused toward maintaining relationship within a community (Babin & Boles, 1998; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993).”

“( 2004 ) confirmed females are more likely to offer positive word-of-mouth recommendations (Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993 ).”

“By drawing upon the literature on information processing and leadership which suggests that men may be more task-oriented whereas women may be more relationship-oriented, Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993) proposed that the two genders will attend to different components in the service encounter.”

“Our results are also close to those obtained by Dittmar et al. (2004, p. 440; cf. relational and item-specific processing; see also Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993) that propose that males are more functional in their buying attitudes.”