An analysis of the pro-social behaviors of customers in response to the firms’ service quality

Abstract

Nowadays, the awareness of service firms' managers about the crucial role of customers in the success or failure of their business has increased. This has led them to this fact that the best strategy for surviving in the marketplace is encouraging customers' prosocial behaviors in service delivery process. Reasonably, one of the best strategies to encourage customers toward these behaviors is service delivering quality. Despite the importance of this issue, marketing researchers have not investigated the effect of customers' perceived service quality on their prosocial behaviors yet. The current study aims to bridge this research gap. Hence, a sample consisting of 381 customers of passenger transportation agencies (ground transportation), in the city of Shiraz, by convenient method were selected and surveyed. In addition, based on the theoretical framework of the research variables, the conceptual model was proposed. Finally, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses and it was found that the customers' perception of service quality, through affecting their satisfaction, can be reflected in their prosocial responses toward the agency. Furthermore, the customers' perception of setting and staff's dimension of service quality respectively have more positive effect on their satisfaction.