Emerging perspectives on customer relationships,interactions and loyalty in Irish retail financial services

• This paper presents the key findings in relation to current consumer perspectives on the role of relationships, the nature of loyalty and types of customer interaction from an in‐depth qualitative consumer study of Irish retail banking.
• Although the literature proposes that the RM approach is particularly applicable to the financial services sector, the research findings identify key supply and demand‐related changes within Irish financial services and raise questions as to the appropriateness of general RM theory to the current nature of interaction between consumers and their financial suppliers.
• Key customer factors such as low involvement, apathy and dissatisfaction have resulted in much apparent customer loyalty actually being spurious. More important for customers in this study was how convenient the bank was for their lifestyle.
• In an age in which increased depersonalisation and automation impact upon the nature of consumer‐supplier interaction and service delivery, it would appear that the concepts of relationship and loyalty need to be fundamentally re‐examined and their role and relevance within current retail financial services re‐appraised.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A "Jekyll and Hyde" within: aggressive versus friendly interactions in REM and non-REM dreams

We hypothesized that representations of social interactions in REM and non-REM (NREM) dreams would reflect differing regional brain activation patterns associated with the two sleep states, and that levels of aggressive interactions would be higher in REM than in NREM dreams. One hundred REM, 100 NREM, and 100 wake reports were collected in the home from 8 men and 7 women using the Nightcap sleep-wake mentation-monitoring system and scored for number and variety of social interactions. We found that (a) social interactions were more likely to be depicted in dream than in wake reports, (b) aggressive social interactions were more characteristic of REM than NREM or wake reports, and (c) dreamer-initiated friendliness was more characteristic of NREM than REM reports. We conclude that processing of, or simulations about, selected social interactions is preferentially performed while "off-line" during the dream state, with the REM state specializing in simulation of aggressive interactions and the NREM state specializing in simulation of friendly interactions.     

Moms Hating Moms: The Internalization of Mother War Rhetoric

Work status and mothering are culturally constructed as rigid binaries. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect on mothers of these polarized characterizations of motherhood and to assess the social support mothers perceive they receive for their mother identity. This study, based on interview data collected from 98 married mothers of preschool children, demonstrated that Mother War rhetoric is most extensively internalized by at-home mothers. The majority of mothers perceived a lack of cultural support for their mother role, though the impact of cultural Mother War rhetoric was buffered or exacerbated by mothers' social support systems. The lack of adequate support from other mothers, spouses, parents, and in-laws led mothers to binary constructions of worker–mother identity. This, in turn, led mothers to seek support within shared contexts, which further separated at-home and employed mother from each other and separated mothers from the support of their parents.     

Invisible Mothers: A Content Analysis of Motherhood Ideologies and Myths in Magazines

The purpose of this study is to identify prevalent motherhood ideologies and myths in contemporary women's magazines. The results indicate that contemporary magazines promote a traditional motherhood ideology, yet perpetuate motherhood myths that undermine mothers who stay home. Traditional motherhood, which excludes Women of Color and employed mothers, is promoted. Mothers are almost exclusively presented in the domestic, rather than the public or integrated domestic–public, contexts. Myths that employed mothers are busy, tired, and guilty, and that employed mothers neglect and are unattached to their children, are not upheld. However, negative myths that at-home mothers are confused, overwhelmed, and interested only in superficial topics are upheld in the magazines analyzed. The implications of these results on the perpetuation of patriarchy are discussed.     

Relationship-Based Home Visiting Services for Families Affected by Substance Use Disorders: A Qualitative Study

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Home visiting programs face many challenges when providing evidence-based services to families affected by substance use disorders (SUDs). We conducted...     

Cetacean responses to violation of expectation paradigm in a free-swim context

Animal Cognition - The investigation of individual responses to unexpected stimuli or outcomes provides insights into basic cognitive processes, such as mental representations, emotional states of...     

Investigating employees’ emotional and cognitive reactions to customer mistreatment: an experimental study

ABSTRACT

With increasing market competitiveness, companies strive to deliver high-quality services. Negative reactions from employees to customer mistreatment erodes the quality of the service provided. This study investigated whether negative emotions and cognitive impairment are mechanisms through which customer mistreatment is related to generalized customer-directed incivility. 157 Italian (Study 1) and 259 Irish (Study 2) research participants completed questionnaires which included an experimental task that manipulated customer misbehaviour levels through scenarios to create three conditions (control, incivility, verbal aggression). Emotional reactions, cognitive impairment and generalized customer-directed incivility intentions as a result of the scenarios were investigated. In both studies, participants in the mistreatment conditions reported more negative emotions, greater cognitive impairment and higher generalized customer-directed incivility intentions than those in the control condition. In Italy (Study 1) negative emotions mediated the relationship between exposure to a customer mistreatment event and generalized customer-directed incivility intentions, but not in Ireland (Study 2), demonstrating the importance of considering contextual conditions in understanding such mediating mechanisms. This study extends research by showing how a single encounter with a misbehaving customer can contribute to the development of incivility intentions towards customers as entities. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.