IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/servic/v43y2023i1-2p85-103.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interaction between functional and relational service quality: hierarchy vs. compensation

Author

Listed:
  • Vicente Martínez-Tur
  • Yolanda Estreder
  • Inés Tomás
  • José Ramos
  • Oto Luque

Abstract

The main goal of this research study is to examine the form of interaction between functional and relational service quality in their links to customer satisfaction. Two competing hypotheses were tested: hierarchy and compensation-seeking. According to the hierarchy hypothesis, emotional-relational facets (relational service quality) only become important when core aspects are provided in an efficient manner (functional service quality). By contrast, the compensation-seeking hypothesis proposes that relational service quality helps to compensate for a sub-optimal level of functional service quality. To examine the generalizability of results to different types of service contexts, customers from three independent service settings participated in the research study. Our results confirmed the compensation-seeking hypothesis in the three samples. Accordingly, relational service quality was able to attenuate the reduction in customer satisfaction when functional service quality was sub-optimal. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of findings and ideas for research and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Vicente Martínez-Tur & Yolanda Estreder & Inés Tomás & José Ramos & Oto Luque, 2023. "Interaction between functional and relational service quality: hierarchy vs. compensation," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1-2), pages 85-103, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:servic:v:43:y:2023:i:1-2:p:85-103
    DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2018.1492562
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02642069.2018.1492562
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02642069.2018.1492562?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:servic:v:43:y:2023:i:1-2:p:85-103. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FSIJ20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.