THE ROLE OF POWER IN SERVICE QUALITY, PURCHASE INTENTIONS AND PURCHASE ACTIONS

摘要

Service quality is related to customer satisfaction and purchase intentions though the causal relationships among these constructs are still inconclusive. In this paper, we claim that the relationship that purchase intentions lead to purchase actions is potentially moderated by power dependence. When the customers are less powerful than the service provider, low service quality would be expected to lower the purchase intentions. However, the purchase actions would likely still occur since the customers depend on the service provided by the firm. In addition, firms with more power tend to provide low service quality while firms with less power tend to be more incline to provide better service. Therefore, power imbalance leads to different levels of service quality.