The Influence of Service Guarantee and Comparative Advertisement on Consumer’s Perception Risk

• Main Authors: Yi-Wan Lu, 盧儀菀
• Other Authors: Shao—Cheng Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/42878825240792115244

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 國際企業管理研究所 === 92 === The nature of perceived risk is even more prevalent in services buying behavior than buying a physical product (Mitchell and Prince, 1992). Marketers can reduce risk in a variety of ways including providing general or specific information, guarantees/warrantees, money-back offers, endorsements, branding and via a store image (Hoffman and Bateson, 1997;Mitchell and Boustani, 1992; Shiffman and Kanuk 1997; Solomon, 1992). The enterprises often adopt service guarantee to be marketing (Hart, 1993). A guarantee is simply a statement explaining the service customers can expect and what the company will do it fails to deliver (Hart, Schlesinger, and Maher, 1992). For the consumer, the principal benefits of the service guarantee are the reduction of risk and conveying functional quality messages (Kelly, 1988; Wiener, 1985). Many experts have advocated Service guarantees as a powerful tool for improving service quality, and for building marketing muscle (Berry, 1995; Besteson, 1995, Hart, 1993; Hart, 1988; Scneider and Bowen, 1996; Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996). Now using advertising is very common in the industry, and existing a variety of advertisements. Most researchers proposed that comparative advertising should be more effective than noncomparative advertising in generating increased attention and recall, increased comprehension of claims, and greater yielding to claims (Dhruv, Sukumar, Edward, Carolyn, and James, 1997; Wilkie and Farris, 1975). Besides, comparative advertising would add information content to advertising and give the consumer a basis for evaluating the relative merits of rival brands (Schnabel, 1975). Although the enterprises broadly provide service guarantee and use comparative advertisement, could the combination reduce consumer’s risk perception largely or not? The issue in the past has a little attention. Hence, this research probes how much the combination can reduce consumer’s risk perception. Service guarantee and advertisement are independent variable; corporate credibility is moderating variable; consumer’s risk perception is dependent variable. The study tested using a 2Ⅹ4Ⅹ2 factorial design. We designed 2 different service guarantees (specific, full-satisfaction), 4 different advertisement (noncomparative, comparative, endorser, comparative with endorser), and 2 different corporate credibility. Total 16 experimental grids tested combinations reduce the consumer’s risk perception outstandingly. The study chose hotel industry to investigate because service industry contains variety of business, and we concern about convenience of data collection and consistence of analysis. The objectives participated in the study has enjoyed the service of hotel. It is according to research needs, there are 40 effective samples in every experimental grid. We received 480 objectives to fill out the questionnaire. The results help us to understand service guarantee using which one advertisement will gather better effect and apply for industry to be a suggestion.