Thesis
A model of perceived value in public sector service delivery
Southern Cross University, School of Commerce and Management
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
2005
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Abstract
A model of perceived value for customers of a public sector organisation delivering social services is developed which synthesizes and builds on prior models of customer value developed, for the most part, in the private sector. The model includes the traditional representation of service value as a trade off between customer sacrifice ('gives') and service quality ('gets'), and builds on efforts to conceptualise the effects of satisfaction, expectations and image on perceived value. Together, these antecedents were augmented with a latent variable representing the customer's relationship with the service provider, an influence which has conceptually been linked to perceptions of value, but has received limited empirical attention. Specifically, it reports an empirical assessment of a model of service encounters that simultaneously considers the direct effects of all these variables on perceptions of value.
The study builds on recent advances in services marketing theory and assesses the relationships between the identified constructs in the public sector delivery of social services. A number of notable findings are reported including the empirical verification that service satisfaction is directly related to perceptions of value in the public sector. Also, in the public sector domain, expectations were identified as crucial to customer perceptions of value. The research indicates that expectations play a different, and more important role in perceptions of customer value than has been previously advocated in private sector research. Expectations had strong reciprocal relationships with sacrifice, image and relationships, and directly affected service quality and satisfaction. Consequently, all the measures of sacrifice, image and relationships impacted on perceptions of value through their association with expectations, which in tum influenced satisfaction and thus value. These results indicate that unlike private sector customers who weigh up the sacrifice (gives) involved in procuring and using a service against the quality of the service when assessing value; public sector customers appear to be driven by expectations and satisfaction in evaluating perceptions of value. The implications of this discovery are explored, and recommendations are made for public sector managers and researchers to enable them to benefit from and build on these findings.
Details
- Title
- A model of perceived value in public sector service delivery
- Creators
- Karen McFadyen
- Contributors
- Don Robert Scott (Supervisor) - Southern Cross University
- Awarding Institution
- Southern Cross University; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Theses
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
- Publisher
- Southern Cross University, School of Commerce and Management
- Number of pages
- xiv, 431
- Identifiers
- 991012957300102368
- Copyright
- © Karen McFadyen 2005
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Resource Type
- Thesis