Research background

In today’s complex and turbulent environments, the need for continuous improvements or “kaizen” in service was widely recognized (Bessant, Caffyn, &

Gallagher, 2001). With a view to standing out from the rest, business circles had focused on quality improvement for approximately ten years (Pearson, McCahon, &

Hightower, 1995). Business circles had implemented service quality management (SQM) for twenty years in order to control service quality and make people feel contented (Agus & Hassan, 2011). SQM stemmed from many manufacturing organizations in Japan, and Western Europe also approved of SQM, and SQM was also implemented in tourism (Witt and Muhlemann, 1994) and psychiatric services (Rodriguez, 1989). SQM model was composed of service processes, organizational cultures and the impact of consumers’ feeling; the companies had to strengthen and maintain service quality delivered by providing tangible or intangible business items (Lin, 2007).

The business environment was a dynamic change, so adapting to the global market in time was imperative (Pamfilie, Petcu, & Draghici, 2012). The best strategy to triumph had not been found; people emphasized the ability to declutter the firms in the 1980s, but people attached importance to cultivating the core competencies during the 1990s (Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). As one part of the core competencies, SQM style was shaped by the changing economic and social context, and these changes drove fundamental shifts of service quality management; enterprises hope to add service value and quality for their customers, and to secure lasting competitive

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advantage (Linda Holbeche, 2006).

More and more countries were reinforcing social responsibility (SR) agenda;

following this trend, the International Organization for Standardization also initiated the criterion of SR (Castka & Balzarova, 2008). The topic study about corporate social responsibility (CSR) had been extensively researched; unfortunately, many enterprises didn’t concern about CSR until their reputations suffered (Loussaïef, Cacho-Elizondo, Pettersen, & Tobiassen, 2014). During the past ten years, CSR had attracted widespread attention, especially in western countries (Sandve and Øgaard, 2014; Jiang, Baker, & Frazier, 2009). The standards of examining CSR had been tougher because of fierce competitive conditions (Burke & Logsdon, 1996).

As for the end of supply chain, that was the part of customers. Customer involvement, which was influenced by the individual needs, the front-line personnel and so on, was recognized as one of the most pivotal access to success (Chen, Shie, &

Yu, 2012). When it came to the arrangement of position, front-line workers could get more information from clients; and these information was a tremendous help to companies for improving SQM (Nguyen, 2006). Since customers’ behavioral intentions were closely related to performed services by front-line staff, the physical cues might elicit customer involvement, influencing people’s evaluations and judgments on the quality of the service (Kim & Moon, 2009).

There were lots of studies about either service quality management or corporate social responsibility. An example of the virtual domain, a paper identified that

e-service quality management was used to improve B2C e-commerce (Zuo, Huang et al., 2013). Conversely, the organization which was responsible for maintaining SQM had an obligation to deliver good services to its customers (Kwon, Chun et al. 2011).

On the other side, CSR had received widespread attention during the past decades (Sandve and Øgaard 2014). However, this kind of paper which was made service

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quality management combine with corporate social responsibility was rare. In fact, complete service quality management didn’t represent corporate social responsibility which was fulfilled. Carrying out corporate social responsibility didn’t equal to perfect service quality management. That was why a brand with public praise also made mistakes. Customer service programs sometimes worked and sometimes did not (Riley, 2007). For instance, Wei Chuan Corporation, an old and famous brand in Taiwan, produced a series of oils with illegal additives (Taiwan news, 2014). Because of the negative news, the consumers had to take much more time to consider service quality management and corporate social responsibility before purchasing. Thus,

“PARA” model which represented primary diagnosis, advanced diagnosis, review and action appeared, and it was adopted in dealing with customer complaints and

identifying the “voice of the customer” (VOC) (Chen et al., 2012). This study suggested that the enterprises should consider both service quality management and corporation social responsibility simultaneously. Adopting contribution to society and concentrating on SQM as twin objectives were vital to the continued success (Baron, 2011).

On the other side, understanding consumers’ involvement levels had been a topic of research for several decades, and the influence factors included the information about region of origin, price level and presence/absence of a price discount

(Hollebeek, Jaeger, Brodie, & Balemi, 2007). In the present competitive environment, corporate reputation and corporate image were acknowledged as having the potential impact on customer involvement toward the firm (Nguyen & Leblanc, 2001). Services were responsive to the needs of the populations and the firms had made increasing endeavors to involve consumers (O’Donnell & Entwistle, 2004). Currently, image advertising had been prevailing because of the interactive trend (Huang, Su, Zhou, &

Liu, 2013). The effect of image advertising had a marked impact on consumers’

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decision making; therefore, enterprises strived to increase advertising image and consumer involvement, and assisted consumers in choosing the brands (Chung, Chang, Lin, & Yau, 2012).

This paper shed light on whether corporate image advertising could enhance customers’ involvement or not. The world was a vast and complex market, and it was also a multi-language market; thus, it was crucial to know how to persuade and involve consumers through image advertising appeal (Liu, Wen, Wei & Zhao, 2013).

Stimuluses of the advertising made the users involve; as per the attention inertia theory, when the readers went through a meaningful path, they performed the seeking task from a sequence of scattered and sketchy information to a complete meaning (Wang & Day, 2007). The higher customer involvement was, the more opportunities for intensifying purchase intention were. With a view to attracting customers, it was a common way to raise involvement through corporate image advertising. All in all, since most prior studies assumed involvements were caused by customers’ exposure to specific stimuli, the concept of involvement had been overlooked in considering the relationship between stimuli and responses, so the research investigated the

importance of service quality management, corporate social responsibility and image advertising on customer involvement (Kim & Moon, 2009).