Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the informational role played by an intermediary in the service industry. Design/methodology/approach – The paper used survey and choice data collected from agents and customers, respectively, in the hotel industry. Findings – The paper shows...

Research conducted over the last decade, on the influence of brand inertia or variety seeking on promotional response, has yielded mixed results. Variety seekers have been found to be more price‐sensitive by one set of researchers, while another stream of work finds them to be less sensitive....

Provides a new way to look at competitive brand strategy through analysis of switching, where the only data required are market‐level brand‐switching matrices. The parameters indicate, for each brand, the degree to which it insulates itself from competition. Shows empirically that this...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the motivations of an agent in a service industry to honestly represent the quality of a service provider. Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a theoretical modeling and derives implications from it, which are then tested using...