Behavioral Motivations and Organisational Behavior - Assignment Example

rgаnisаtiоnаl Rеsеаrсh Меthоds.Suммаry аnd Сritiquе Insert Name Institution Choice of Article This particular struck me as being comprehensive and standard for a conventional researh whose target issue is exceedingly relevant in the businees and management fields wherein in-depth knowledge is crucial for succesful undertaking of marketing dynamics. First, the article approaches the issue regarding the perception of service value from a consumer’s point view. The authors have done and adept job in analyzing shopping motivation constructs as moderating factors in service evaluation hence behavioral intentions. In addition, the authors have approach the issue is a coherent, explicit maner by breaking down all retail categories and constructs likely to influence a customer service evaluation as well behavioral motivations hence insighful presentation of the reality of shooper motivationand service valuation perceptions. Summary a. Paradigm assumptions In the contemporary world, the need to have profound insight into consumer behaviour and shopping motivation has become an essential part of successful business conduct. In fact, understanding the driving factors in customer’s satisfaction and future intentions and motivations cannot be overlooked. The article Shopping motivation as a moderator in the retail service evaluation by Sherriff T.K. Luk, Piyush Sharma and Ivy S.N. Chen suggest that sacrifice, value, service quality and satisfaction play a chief role in influencing customers’ behavioural intentions as adopted in the comprehensive service evaluation. The first assumption is that prior research failed to contextualize data corrected from various retail categories. In addition, customer distinctiveness such as gender, age and demographic background are exceptionally significant mainly because they moderate the various aspects of linkage in the service evaluation model. The scond assumption afirms that the lack of contextualization of data and their typical demographic characteristics ned to be addressed to evaluate the impact of the constructs utilized in the comprehensive service evaluation model. It is apparent that research focused on investigating the motivation as a moderator in the retail service evaluation with a major interest in test the moderating impact of an essential contextual variable that is, shopping motivation which influences the service evaluation program. Tis infers that each constructs has a uniqe moderating factor in disitnct retail categories. Thus, depending on the level of satisfaction derived from the various aspects that influence customers’ satisfaction, positive behavioural intentions and motivations can be inferred hence the need to enhance all aspects to foster consumers motivations to shop and prospective behavioural motivations. However, the impact of the value, service quality, sacrifice and satisfaction aspects is quite dissimilar in the distinct retail service categories that is, hedonic and utilitarian services. In fact, these aspects are perceived in extensively divergent degrees with regards to what attribute is being tested in the comprehensive service evaluation model. The service context is actually a predominant factor in the process of predicting what the market response would be for a service experience and its success in the retailing service industry. For instance, the intangible and tangible attributes of retail services ought to be evaluated separately depending on which category the service belongs either hedonic or utilitarian. Thus, to address this issue an examination of the moderating factors on the influence of shopping motivations on all aspects of the comprehensive service evaluation model certain hypothesis were drawn. In essence, the study hypothesized the main differences between retail categories that have higher hedonic attributes with utilitarian attributes and subjected them to a two set cross test of retail categories that is, high utilitarian service attributes, such as department stores, electronics, telecom services and others high on hedonic service attributes such as jewellery, fashion and cosmetics. Fundamentally, this study expands on previous research on this field especially service evaluation models and gives substantial insights to retails managers on how to identify and utilize key elements in service evaluation process in both hedonic and utilitarian categories which are of significant consideration in the effective management of marketing mix (Sherrif et al. 2013). b. Research approaches taken No particular thoroughly established theory is being tested but rather customers’ behavioural intentions emanating from shopping motivations are studied dependent on the comprehensive service evaluation model. The behavioural intentions are measured with regard to the relationship among satisfaction, value, sacrifice and shopping motivation in the retail category of utilitarian versus hedonic behavioural intentions. In actual fact, the relationship established in these attributes proves being stronger in the utilitarian shopping motivation as opposed to hedonic shopping motivations. In essence, the relationship of the service quality, satisfaction, value and behavioural intentions are stronger in the hedonic versus utilitarian retail categories. The hypothesis generated whereby suggest that the relationship of the attributes as applied in the comprehensive service evaluation model differ on the distinct categories that is, utilitarian and hedonic which foster customer shopping motivations hence prospective behavioural intentions. Precisely: The negative relationship between sacrifice and value is stronger for utilitarian compared to hedonic retail categories. The positive relationship between value and satisfaction is stronger for utilitarian compared to Hedonic retail categories. The positive relationship between value and behavioural intentions is stronger for utilitarian compared to hedonic retail categories. The positive relationship between satisfaction and behavioural intentions is stronger for utilitarian Compared to hedonic retail categories. The positive relationship between service quality and satisfaction is stronger for hedonic compared to utilitarian retail categories. The positive relationship between service quality and value is stronger for hedonic compared to utilitarian retail categories. The positive relationship service quality and behavioural intentions is stronger for hedonic compared to utilitarian retail categories. The interview was conducted from a wide range of samples in a cross-cultural setting and interestingly, dissimilar backgrounds contributed to the conclusion of which attribute in the comprehensive service evaluation model was more substantial in a particular demographic region and what moderation to shopping motivations age and gender had to contribute in these links. The perceptions of value and equity valuations such as effective inference of behaviours resulting into repeat purchase and are linked to cognitive processes wherein the acknowledgement by word of mouth implying the interpretation of service value and consequent events as the consumers get on with the shopping process (Sherrif et al. 2013). There are gross weakness in the study that render the study less convincing since the influenced the conclusion of the study as well. The sampling strategy is the most significant problem in the study given the low percentage of correspondence form which casual conclusions were drawn. In fact, the sampling schemes create a catastrophic problem for the entire study in that it is an unrestricted structure, which the hypothesis drawn are broad and biased on either hedonic retail categories or utilitarian retail categories hence not a proper method of inferring the overall cause and effect. Moreover, the implications of the study and are not direct but a mere guide on what constructs retail managers could improve to foster perceived service quality to enhance customer behavioural intentions. However, the authors took substantial measures for this study in that they tailored a well structured questionnaire to evaluate the various constructs in the comprehensive service allocation model wherein multi-item scales used from preceding research work were modified to fit this particular study in covering all relevant retail categories. In fact, the main study used structured questionnaires that were developed in English and translated to Chinese then back to English to eliminate any possible deviation of meaning due to translation hence possible discrepancies were circumvented. Conclusively, the study establishes that relationships among the various attributes used in the comprehensive service evaluation model are much stronger in the retail categories associated with hedonic shopping motivation as opposed to utilitarian shopping motivation (Sherrif et al. 2013). Scenario Critique Overall convincingness of thes study There are gross weakness in the study that render the study less convincing since the influenced the conclusion of the study as well. The sampling strategy is the most significant problem in the study given the low percentage of correspondence from which casual conclusions were drawn. In fact, the sampling schemes create a catastrophic problem for the entire study in that it is an unrestricted structure, which the hypothesis drawn are broad and biased on either hedonic retail categories or utilitarian retail categories hence not a proper method of inferring the overall cause and effect. Moreover, the implications of the study and are not direct but a mere guide on what constructs retail managers could improve to foster perceived service quality to enhance customer behavioural intentions. In fact, the findings reflect on the cross-cultural survey to test all th ehypotheses formulated, thus it is inadequate to study actual shopping behavior prospects. additionally, the study only features shopping otivation at a retail catgory echelon and not individual shopper level. Thus, it is not quite convincing since results would vary extensively depending on customer perceptions as well as their expectations (Sherrif et al. 2013). A. What you think the authors did well in their research and why. In refernce to the methodology and interviewers utilized I concur that the authors did a meticulous job as explicated below. The method adopted in the this study entailed a laudable pilot study to classify the six characteristic retail categories employed in the main study as being either hedonic or utilitarian. For this particular undertaking, the authors embarked on a qualitative approach with sequential target four groups and a about twenty through interviews which were carried out in a central l9ocation that involved recruited shoppers from all retail shopping categories. In essence, each group was made of approximately six to eight participants with analogous demographic background and lasted between one and one and half hours. The in-depth interviews lasted about half an hour each. The interview participants provided information on whether utilitarian or hedonic value dictated their shopping motivation for the various that is, six retail categories. The findings indicated that shoppers were overwhelmingly driven by emotional and aesthetic benefits such as “enjoyment”, “better look”, “enhancement of self confidence” and “matching with the lifestyle” in the hedonic retail categories. In addition to this study, the authors conducted a second pilot study to affirm their findings in the first pilot study wherein an approach utilized by Okada was imitated. The second pilot study involved a sequence of interviews wherein the authors conductors through interviews with forty eighty participants and prompted them to give a rating for each of the retail categories on a scale captioned with “not al hedonic ” (1) to extremely hedonic” (7) and “not all utilitarian” (1) to “extremely utilitarian” correspondingly (Okada, 2005). The main study was assigned to a team of experienced interviewers who carried out a large-scale field survey using small-intercept approach which was executed in major locations in Hong Kong which were about two hundred and fifty retail outlets. The interviewers made a record of contact information for all the participants and submitted the information together with the answered questionnaires. The survey team did a meticulous task and interviewed shoppers immediately after shopping. From the record of about ten thousand contacts, the interviewers collected two thousand seven hundred and twenty seven useful questionnaires which was a response rate of twenty seventy percent for the small-intercept approach (Sherrif et al. 2013). B. What you think the authors could have done better in their research and why. The authors employed inadequate sampling procedures whose return rate was quite low and used these findings to draw majortr conclusions. In fact, the small intercept approach has some undeniable shortcomings. Arguably, the response rate of the participants who were interviewed was merely 27% hence the majority of the respondents were not included in the final submission of the report. Therefore, the sample is not a true reflection of the situation on the ground regarding the relationship of the various attributes used in the comprehensive service evaluation model pertaining to shopping motivation for customers. In fact, the samples impact the validity of the study by a great margin wherein the distribution of the participants was not specified that is, the authors do not inform what age or gender the participants were. In fact, the participants who declined to be interviewed were not mentioned and the basis of discarding the 73% of the correspondence by the authors was not accounted for hence the approach-small-intercept was probably not the best approach in sampling shoppers for the study. For instance it is conventional that women make up the larger percent of shoppers hence they might be taking the task for an entire family or a couple thus, the gender balance in the sampling strategy of great significance (Sherrif et al. 2013). In addition there is a variety of concerns regarding internal and external validity of methods utilized in the study. The large-scale survey interview methodology is an inadequate approach for deriving landmark conclusions pertaining to the shopping motivation of consumers are six dissimilar retail categories which are further differentiated as hedonic or utilitarian. With regard to the validity of the research, the authors were relying on some preceding findings from earlier research work which they modified to suit this study. In the process of adopting these findings they were ignorant of the fact that prior research only established the influence that value, sacrifice, satisfaction and service quality have on customers’ behavioural intentions in the comprehensive service evaluation model regardless of the dissimilar service contexts. Furthermore, prior researches did not put into consideration the definite characteristics of shoppers which are fundamental moderating factors of the association of the sacrifice, service quality, satisfaction and value attributes in the entirety of the service evaluation model. These constructs are quite complex and an attempt to measure them with a single entity that is, there influence on the overall shopper motivation is not a credible practice, thus unreliable. Furthermore, the use of large-scale survey interviews for shoppers exiting a shopping mall is a poor practice since is an out right distraction hence the participants were not ideally prepared for an interview hence anxiety. Depending on the time constraints, the traffic at the shopping malls and the immediate anticipation to leave for home or designated destination, the interview period was not favourable in totality. Moreover, the lack of a laconic structure on the gender distribution of the interviewees it is questionable how the interviewers made the choice of who to pick for the study who were likely to address the interview in the most relevant way since attitudes vary from gender to gender as well as the demographic background of shoppers (Sherrif et al. 2013). It is critical to adopt a different sampling strategy instead of intercepting shopping who are carrying way with an immediate departure hence low responsiveness. Arguably, an online survey could fetch better results combined with a random sampling tactic. This would have served as an improvement to the research design of the study. In actual fact, a lean survey with structured questionnaires would address this study with greater efficacy. Such structured questionnaires could be customized to identify genders of the interviewees hence cross-cultural differences can be traced systematically (Sherrif et al. 2013). References Okada, E.M. (2005), “Justification effects on consumer choice of hedonic and utilitarian goods”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 43-53. Sherriff T.K. Luk, Piyush S and Ivy S.N. Chen. Shopping motivation as a moderator in the retail service evaluation. Journal of Services Marketing 27/1 (2013) 40–48 Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0887-6045] [DOI 10.1108/08876041311296365] Read More