Jean-Charles Chebat Wins the Managing Service Quality Highly Commended Award from the EIRASS
August 5, 2008
Jean-Charles Chebat, holder of the Chair of Commercial Space and Customer Service Management, has received the Managing Service Quality Highly Commended Paper Award for an article entitled Beyond Delighting Shoppers: Introducing the Concept of Shopping Well-Being, co-written with Kamel El-Hedhli, a doctoral student at the School, and Joe Sirgy, a professor at Virginia Tech. The award was presented at the 15th annual conference of the European Institute of Retailing and Services Studies (EIRASS), held in Zagreb, Croatia, from July 14 to 17. This team of researchers also won this award from the EIRASS last year.
In their paper the co-authors introduced a new concept, i.e. “shopping well-being,” which they define as the shopper’s perception of the impact of a shopping mall on his or her quality of life. “This new concept reflects a dynamic and enduring effect of shopping on the consumer’s well-being, as compared with the traditional emotional variables (enjoyment, delight, excitement at the shopping experience, etc.) that could measure only one temporary and static effect of shopping on the consumer’s well-being,” explain the co-authors. They looked at research findings based on data collected by the Chair of Commercial Space and Customer Service Management on behalf of Ivanhoe Cambridge. With these data the co-authors were able to validate a model showing how the “retail mix environment” of a shopping mall can influence shoppers’ well-being and behaviour, meaning their loyalty.
Their findings show that three aspects of the retail mix environment of a shopping mall – retail-related factors, non-retail-related factors and environment-related factors – indirectly affect shopping well-being through the mediation effect of shopper self-congruity with the shopping mall. In contrast, convenience-related factors of a mall’s retail mix are likely to influence shopping well-being directly. Lastly, shoppers’ behaviour (loyalty to the shopping mall and their readiness to recommend it) is directly related to the measurement of shopping well-being as a result of the shopping experience.
Note that Professor Chebat is acting as thesis director for Mr. El-Hedhli, who is working as a research assistant with the Chair of Commercial Space and Customer Service Management.
A prolific researcher, Professor Chebat is renowned for the pertinence and originality of his research in marketing and retailing. He has studied environmental psychology (shopping spaces) and time psychology (waiting time, time orientation), changes in attitude and personality moderating factors, intrafamily communication and advertising semiotics.
Jean-Charles Chebat has received many distinctions. He was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science in 2006. In 2005, he was awarded the Sir John William Dawson medal by the Royal Society of Canada, in recognition of his body of work. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec and a Fellow of several scientific societies - including the Royal Society of Canada, the American Psychological Association, the Japan Society for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Marketing Advances. Professor Chebat received an honorary doctorate from the Université de Rennes I in November 2005 for his contribution to the advancement of the discipline of marketing.
* Congruity refers to the perfect correspondence between a shopper’s experience and the shopping environment, the balance felt by the shopper as a result of his or her experience at the shopping mall.