8.1.3 Service quality and corporate reputation
Prior studies examining the links between service quality and reputation have used a single dimension of corporate reputation (e.g., Andreassen and Lindestand 1998; Wang et al. 2003). This study investigated the relationship between service quality and both attributes of corporate reputation and shows that service quality influences both, although the links from service quality to RQ were stronger than those to the CCS. More importantly the causal ordering of reputation and service quality has been examined using competing models in Chapter 6. The finding, that service quality is better seen as creating reputation goes against some of the existing studies which suggest that corporate reputation leads to service quality (e.g. Andreassen and Lindestand 1998) but is consistent with many others (Hu et al. 2004; Semejin et al. 2004; Wang et al 2003; da Silva and Alwi 2006) that find the opposite. If reputation is the result of all the influences on the stakeholder (Fombrun 1998) then the results here are arguably more to be expected. As the competing models demonstrate, mathematically there is a case for the reverse, but not as convincing as that which argues that service quality creates reputation, a significant finding for practitioners.