Dwayne D. Gremler | |
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Occupation(s) | Social scientist, academic, and author |
Academic background | |
Education | B.A., M.B.A., and Ph.D. |
Alma mater | Arizona State University |
Thesis | The Effect of Satisfaction, Switching Costs, and Interpersonal Bonds on Service Loyalty |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Bowling Green State University |
Website | www.gremler.net |
Dwayne D. Gremler is a social scientist,academic,and author. He is a Professor of Marketing,Distinguished Teaching Professor,and Distinguished Research Professor in the Schmidthorst College of Business at Bowling Green State University. He is a co-author of the textbook Services Marketing:Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm,now in its 8th edition. [1]
Gremler’s research interests span the fields of marketing with emphasis on service marketing and management,and focuses on the topics of emotion management in services,customer-employee rapport in service interactions,word-of-mouth communication,customer loyalty,and service guarantees. [2]
Gremler has been appointed as Research Faculty at Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership,as an Associate Member of Center for Service Management Loughborough University, [3] and as Visiting International Professor at the University of Münster. [4]
Gremler graduated in Mathematics from Arizona State University in 1980. Later on,he enrolled for an M.B.A. in Marketing,and graduated in 1990. In 1995,he completed his education at Arizona State University with a Ph.D. in Marketing under the supervision of Stephen W. Brown. His dissertation was titled,"The Effect of Satisfaction,Switching Costs,and Interpersonal Bonds on Service Loyalty". [2] [5]
Gremler started his academic career at Arizona College of the Bible as an Instructor (and Basketball Coach) in 1987. After completing his Ph.D.,he served as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Idaho from 1995 till 2000. Subsequently,he was appointed as an Associate Professor of Marketing at Bowling Green State University in 2000,and was promoted to Professor of Marketing in 2007. He is a former Fulbright Scholar [6] who taught service marketing at the University of Maastricht. He is a Visiting International Professor at the University of Münster, [7] and on the Research Faculty of the Center for Services Leadership in the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. [8]
In 2015,he was appointed by the Bowling Green State University Board of Trustees as Distinguished Teaching Professor [9] and,in 2022,as Distinguished Research Professor. He is the only professor at Bowling Green State University to receive both appointments. [10] He served for three years on the Academic Council for the American Marketing Association. [11] In addition to that,he was the Chair of American Marketing Association’s Services Marketing Special Interest Group from 2002 to 2003,served for two years as the Mentoring Coordinator of this group. He has also served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Service Research since 2014. [12]
Gremler has authored over 100 publications,including peer-reviewed journals,book chapters,and conference papers. His research focuses on service management and particularly addresses emotion management in services,customer-employee rapport in service interactions,word-of-mouth communication,customer loyalty in service organizations,and service guarantees. [13]
With a focus on relationship marketing,Gremler's works have explored how to manage customer relational benefits in services. His research has identified benefits customers receive from having developed relationships with service firms,and classified them into three primary categories:confidence,social,and special treatment benefits. [14] His later research also evaluated relational benefits and relationship quality and showed that the concepts of customer satisfaction,social,and confidence benefits tend to impact relationship marketing outcomes. [15] [16] The role of customer engagement both psychological and behavioral engagement has been identified with his more recent research,which has reported that behavioral customer engagement is influenced by psychological customer engagement. [17]
Gremler’s more recent research focuses on the role of emotions in service interactions. One of his articles examines emotional contagion—the idea that customers can catch the emotions displayed by customer contact employees. That research study examined the impact of emotion contagion and emotional labor of employees on customers’emotions in service industry. The study found that the extent of smiling does not have any effect on customers’emotions,however the authenticity of employee’s emotional labor tends to influence the customers emotions. [18] His research explains how emotions exhibited during service encounters get shared,revealing the need for service firms to establish positive encounters for the benefits of all the parties involved. [19] In addition,his research explains how companies should train their service employees to ensure the protection and well-being of customers. In studying both positive and negative emotional contagion effects and the use of emotional labor in a personalized service setting,this research highlights the importance of understanding the potential influence of customer preservice emotions and the presence of an emotion cycle during service delivery. [20]
Gremler and his co-authors reveal how service firms can help their employees anticipate and respond to customers in a bad mood,which in turn can provide emotional reassurance for those customers. Other research proposes training employees to exhibit not just technical competence but also emotional competence. [21] Such efforts have strong influences on the well-being and emotional health of service employees,who also gain a sense of support from their employers. In turn,customers enjoy enhanced outcomes of service interactions that ensure their critical needs are being met in a pleasant,safe,and friendly setting. [22]
In a 2000 article,Gremler and Kevin Gwinner examined one specific aspect of customer-employee relationships,rapport,that they contend is particularly salient in service businesses characterized by a high number of interpersonal interactions. [23] In that study,they find support for two empirically distinct dimensions of rapport (i.e.,enjoyable interaction and personal connection). They also find a positive relationship between these dimensions and satisfaction,loyalty intentions,and word-of-mouth communication—findings. His later research on this topic identifies employee behaviors that help to cultivate rapport with customers. [24]
Gremler’s research has also focused on word-of-mouth (WoM) communication. A highly cited research project identifies the motivation factors which drive digital WoM communication. On opinion sharing platforms,the desire for social interaction,economic incentives,and a basic concern for others were found to drive the (electronic) WoM communication of goods and services to other customers. He and his colleagues also noted that firms may need to incorporate strategies to strengthen and increase the eWoM behavior. [25] Together with Kevin Gwinner and Stephen Brown,his research also indicates a significant relationship between WoM behavior and interpersonal relationships between customers and employees. This research suggests customer WoM behavior can be encouraged by the strengthening of interpersonal relationships between employees and customers. [26] While investigating customer-employee relationships,his research focused on rapport in service relationships,particularly the aspects of enjoyable interaction and personal connection. The research findings highlight rapport’s benefits;that is,service firms can benefit from strong customer-employee rapport,as a significant relationship was found between rapport and customer loyalty,as well as between rapport and WoM communication. [23]
Gremler’s early research focused on customer loyalty and retention in service settings. Given the lack of research on service loyalty in the early 1990s,he and Stephen Brown proposed a conceptual model of service loyalty and provided insights into how loyalty impacts customers and service organizations. Moreover,his work on service loyalty analyzed the factors which are associated with it,and highlighted the importance of building relationships with customers. [27] During the examination of the "loyalty ripple effect" and the potential impact loyal customers can have on a company,his research emphasized that loyal customers can benefit the firm beyond the revenue they generate. The findings suggest that by engaging in word-of-mouth communication,loyal customers can create value and reduce costs. [18] While studying customer loyalty,his research suggested that commercial friendships (between customer and employees) can serve as a switching barrier and thus can serve as a key driver of customer loyalty to service firms. [28]
Gremler’s research has also examined service guarantees. He and his colleague,Michael McCollough,proposed offering service guarantees in their business classes at the University of Idaho,enabling them to examine the impact of such guarantees in an educational setting. In particular,they empirically investigated the presence of a "money-back guarantee" in classes they offered to assess student and faculty attitudes toward such an offering;this research revealed that both groups were alike in terms of believing a service guarantee can be helpful in increasing accountability of both faculty and students. [29] His later research presented a synthesis of service guarantee research, [30] which was followed by an event study that examined the effect of a service guarantee on a firm’s market value when new service guarantee announcements are made to the public. [31]
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or another organization administers its interactions with customers,typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.
Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing which emerged as a separate field of study in the early 1980s,following the recognition that the unique characteristics of services required different strategies compared with the marketing of physical goods.
Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically,workers are expected to regulate their personas during interactions with customers,co-workers,clients,and managers. This includes analysis and decision-making in terms of the expression of emotion,whether actually felt or not,as well as its opposite:the suppression of emotions that are felt but not expressed. This is done so as to produce a certain feeling in the customer or client that will allow the company or organization to succeed.
Consumer behaviour is the study of individuals,groups,or organisations and all activities associated with the purchase,use and disposal of goods and services. It encompasses how the consumer's emotions,attitudes,and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing,but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology,sociology,social anthropology,anthropology,ethnography,ethnology,marketing,and economics.
Relationship marketing is a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns that emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction rather than sales transactions. It differentiates from other forms of marketing in that it recognises the long-term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages. With the growth of the Internet and mobile platforms,relationship marketing has continued to evolve as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels such as tools for managing relationships with customers that go beyond demographics and customer service data collection. Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing,a combination of search optimization and strategic content,public relations,social media and application development.
The loyalty business model is a business model used in strategic management in which a company's resources are employed so as to increase the loyalty of customers and other stakeholders in the expectation that corporate objectives will be met or surpassed. A typical example of this type of model is where quality of product or service leads to customer satisfaction,which leads to customer loyalty,which leads to profitability.
Servicescape is a model developed by Booms and Bitner to emphasize the impact of the physical environment in which a service process takes place. The aim of the servicescapes model is to explain behavior of people within the service environment with a view to designing environments that does not accomplish organisational goals in terms of achieving desired behavioural responses. For consumers visiting a service or retail store,the service environment is the first aspect of the service that is perceived by the customer and it is at this stage that consumers are likely to form impressions of the level of service they will receive.
In marketing and consumer behaviour,brand loyalty describes a consumer's persistent positive feelings towards a familiar brand and their dedication to purchasing the brand's products and/or services repeatedly regardless of deficiencies,a competitor's actions,or changes in the market environment. It can also be demonstrated with other behaviors such as positive word-of-mouth advocacy. Corporate brand loyalty is where an individual buys products from the same manufacturer repeatedly and without wavering,rather than from other suppliers. In a business-to-business context,the term "source loyalty" may also be used. Loyalty implies dedication and should not be confused with habit,its less-than-emotional engagement and commitment. Businesses whose financial and ethical values rest in large part on their brand loyalty are said to use the loyalty business model.
Neuromarketing is a commercial marketing communication field that applies neuropsychology to market research,studying consumers' sensorimotor,cognitive,and affective responses to marketing stimuli. The potential benefits to marketers include more efficient and effective marketing campaigns and strategies,fewer product and campaign failures,and ultimately the manipulation of the real needs and wants of people to suit the needs and wants of marketing interests.
Emotional contagion is a form of social contagion that involves the spontaneous spread of emotions and related behaviors. Such emotional convergence can happen from one person to another,or in a larger group. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many ways,both implicitly or explicitly. For instance,conscious reasoning,analysis,and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon. The behaviour has been found in humans,other primates,dogs,and chickens.
Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing to evaluate customer experience. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers,or percentage of total customers,whose reported experience with a firm,its products,or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Enhancing customer satisfaction and fostering customer loyalty are pivotal for businesses,given the significant importance of improving the balance between customer attitudes before and after the consumption process.
Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer and an organization through various online or offline channels. According to Hollebeek,Srivastava and Chen,customer engagement is "a customer’s motivationally driven,volitional investment of operant resources,and operand resources into brand interactions," which applies to online and offline engagement.
In marketing,a company’s value proposition is the full mix of benefits or economic value which it promises to deliver to the current and future customers who will buy their products and/or services. It is part of a company's overall marketing strategy which differentiates its brand and fully positions it in the market. A value proposition can apply to an entire organization,parts thereof,customer accounts,or products and services.
Customer experience,sometimes abbreviated to CX,is the totality of cognitive,affective,sensory,and behavioral customer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase,consumption,and post-purchase stages.
The service blueprint is an applied process chart which shows the service delivery process from the customer's perspective. The service blueprint is one of the most widely used tools to manage service operations,service design and service.
A service guarantee is a marketing tool service firms have increasingly been using to reduce consumer risk perceptions,signal quality,differentiate a service offering,and to institutionalize and professionalize their internal management of customer complaint and service recovery. By delivering service guarantees,companies entitle customers with one or more forms of compensation,namely easy-to-claim replacement,refund or credit,under the circumstances of service delivery failure. Conditions are often put on these compensations;however,some companies provide them unconditionally.
The Journal of Service Research is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the field of business studies. The current editor-in-chief is Ming-Hui Huang. The journal was established by Roland Rust in 1998 and is published by SAGE Publications. The Journal of Service Research is sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Fan loyalty is the loyalty felt and expressed by a fan towards the object of their fanaticism. Fan Loyalty is often used in the context of sports and the support of a specific team or institution. Fan loyalties can range from a passive support to radical allegiance and expressions of loyalty can take shape in many forms and be displayed across varying platforms. Fan loyalty can be threatened by team actions. The loyalties of sports fans in particular have been studied by psychologists,who have determined several factors that help to create such loyalties.
Employee experience design is the application of experience design in order to intentionally design HR products,services,events,and organizational environments with a focus on the quality of the employee experience whilst providing relevant solutions for an organization.