DBAX 9104C Week 10 Two Contribution Statements Example

Two Contributions From One Set of Findings: What a Consulting Study of Warranty Repairs at a Regional Home Builder Adds to Service Recovery Research, and Separately What It Gives the Builder

Student Name

Walden University

DBAX 9104C: Business Consulting Research Project Stage 4

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Two Contributions From One Set of Findings: What a Consulting Study of Warranty Repairs at a Regional Home Builder Adds to Service Recovery Research, and Separately What It Gives the Builder

Two Claims That Blur Easily

Every consulting study makes two contributions, one to knowledge and one to the client, and they are easy to blur into a sentence that serves neither. "This study improves understanding of warranty service and helps the builder reduce complaints" claims too much for the committee and says too little the builder can use. My study examined warranty repair requests at a regional home builder in the Nashville area that closes about 400 new homes a year. It drew on 1,284 warranty requests over three years, a survey of 312 buyers at the one-year mark and interviews with 14 buyers, 4 warranty technicians and the customer care manager. The central finding was that buyers whose first repair visit fixed the problem rated the builder higher and reported referring others more often than buyers who needed a second visit, even when the second visit fixed it. This paper states the two contributions separately and sizes both to that finding.

The Scholarly Contribution

Statement: "This study extends service recovery research, much of it drawn from retail, airline and hotel encounters, to warranty repairs in newly built homes, a setting in which the customer cannot switch providers and waits days or weeks for recovery, and finds that whether the first recovery attempt succeeds is associated with satisfaction and referral even when a later attempt resolves the failure."

Defense: Smith et al. (1999) modeled satisfaction after service failure and recovery using restaurant and hotel scenarios, where recovery happens within the encounter. Maxham and Netemeyer (2002) followed complaining customers of a bank over repeated failures and found that a second failure eroded the gains of a good first recovery. My setting differs in two ways the literature review documented: the buyer of a new home cannot take warranty business elsewhere, and recovery unfolds over weeks, not minutes. The finding that first-visit success matters more than eventual resolution fits Maxham and Netemeyer's pattern while carrying it into a setting with no exit option.

Corley and Gioia (2011) distinguish incremental contributions, which extend existing understanding, from revelatory ones, which change how a phenomenon is seen. This contribution is incremental. It does not propose a new model of recovery; it shows that a known pattern holds in a captive, slow setting. The study is also correlational and set in one builder, so the claim says "is associated with," not "drives."

The Practical Contribution

Statement: "The builder now has evidence from its own records that buyers whose first warranty visit resolved the problem rated it higher and reported more referrals, and a way to track first-visit resolution by repair type each month."

Defense: The builder did not track first-visit resolution before the study. Of 1,284 requests, 71 percent were resolved on the first visit, but the rate varied from 88 percent for cosmetic repairs to 49 percent for plumbing and HVAC. Buyers resolved on the first visit gave a mean rating of 8.1 out of 10 at one year, against 6.4 for buyers who needed more visits; 46 percent of the first group reported a referral, against 27 percent of the second. The practical contribution is the evidence and the measure. It does not promise that raising first-visit resolution will raise referrals, because the study cannot rule out that harder repairs and less satisfied buyers go together for other reasons.

Why the Practical Contribution Mentions No Dollar Figure

The customer care manager asked whether the report could estimate referral revenue. The study did not link referrals to sales, so any figure would be invented. The practical statement names the measure the builder can now track; the builder can add its own sales data later.

Where the Two Statements Appear

The scholarly contribution appears in the abstract and the conclusion chapter. The practical contribution appears in the client report's first paragraph and in the chapter's section on implications for practice. Neither appears in the other's place, and the same findings sit beneath both.

What the Builder Has Done Since

The customer care manager has added a first-visit resolution field to the warranty system, so each request now records whether the first visit closed it. The builder plans to review the rate by repair type each month and to send its most experienced plumbing technician on first visits for plumbing requests for one quarter. That trial is the builder's own; the study supplied the measure, not the decision.

Checking Each Against the Findings

Both statements were read beside the findings table. Each claim in each statement matches a row: the association with ratings, the association with referrals and the resolution rates by repair type. Neither statement mentions buyers' views of home quality, which the survey also measured but which did not differ by first-visit resolution.

References

Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2011). Building theory about theory building: What constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review, 36(1), 12-32. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2009.0486

Maxham, J. G., & Netemeyer, R. G. (2002). A longitudinal study of complaining customers' evaluations of multiple service failures and recovery efforts. Journal of Marketing, 66(4), 57-71. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.66.4.57.18512

Smith, A. K., Bolton, R. N., & Wagner, J. (1999). A model of customer satisfaction with service encounters involving failure and recovery. Journal of Marketing Research, 36(3), 356-372. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224379903600305