Journal of Business logistics, Vol. 28, no. 2, 2007 ... - Global Initiatives

Journal of Business Logistics, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2007 1071999; Boyer and Olson 2002). While service and product quality are established concepts, eBusinessquality is a relatively new phenomenon that can be attributed to the Internet era. As such, companiessuch as Amazon.com, Dell, and Tesco thrive partly because of their ability to offer customers an onlineinterface to ordering their products that is user friendly. In fact, user friendly technology is oftenseen as a core competency by customers and firms alike. This new dimension of quality – labeledeBusiness quality in our research – has assumed a place alongside service and product quality in affectingcustomer repurchase intentions.One approach to understanding how the concepts of service-, product-, and eBusiness-quality,operational logistics strategy, and repurchase intentions relate to each other is to search for linearrelationships that apply across all members of a sample. A linear understanding of relationships iscommonly used in social science studies, and has been applied regularly in quality oriented studies.However, a key disadvantage to this approach is that important relationships may be masked bydata aggregation (Miller 1987). For example, if emphasizing service quality greatly enhances somecustomers’ intentions while having a small effect on others, these effects may “average out” to amodest level in an aggregate analysis. The result is that no firm’s situation is depicted as accuratelyas it could be.To offset this potential limitation and to advance the literature both managerially and methodologically,we adopt a focus on configurations – the simultaneous consideration of multiple interwovenfactors (Miller 1997). In our study, a configuration refers to a constellation of the threequality elements and operational logistics strategy (Meyer, Tsui, and Hinings 1993). Configurationaltheory contends that the closer a firm matches an “ideal constellation,” the better its outcomes. Morebroadly, a focus on such configurations avoids the aggregation problem identified by Miller (1987).As such, configuration theory allows for a more managerially relevant assessment of the preferredmakeup of service-, product-, and eBusiness- quality elements for specific operational logistics strategiesthan can be analyzed via linear modeling (cf. Vorhies and Morgan 2003).When fit among multiple elements is considered simultaneously and the effects on outcomesare examined, as in our study, configuration should be conceptualized and measured via profile deviationanalysis (Doty, Glick, and Huber 1993; Venkatraman 1990; Vorhies and Morgan 2003). Thisanalysis assesses the fit between the three quality elements and strategy as the degree to which thequality elements of a supply chain differ from those of an “ideal” profile for implementing a specificoperational logistics strategy (Vorhies and Morgan 2003; Zajac, Kraatz, and Bresser 2000). Below,we describe the conceptual background for the components of the profiles (quality and operationallogistics strategy). We then develop hypotheses relating the profiles and our outcome of interest (i.e.,a customer’s repurchase intention).Configurations of Quality and Operational Logistics StrategyIn light of configuration theory (Doty, Glick, and Huber 1993), coupled with guidance fromstrategic choice theory (Child 1972) and the quality literatures, two major constructs are relevant tounderstanding and assessing quality-based fit with strategy: operational logistics strategy types andquality-based supply chain characteristics including service-, product-, and eBusiness-quality. “Strategictype pertains to the planned patterns of organizational adaptation to the market through which abusiness seeks to achieve its strategic goals” (Vorhies and Morgan 2003, p. 102; cf. Conant, Mokwa,and Varadarajan 1990; Matsuno and Mentzer 2000).