Date of birth / 110748
Affiliation / SOL, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration
Position / Professor (since 1988)
Email /
Telephone / +4755959466 (office)
+4755924606 (home)
+4795709436 (mobile)
Fax / +4755959430
Education / Sivil.økon 1974 NorwegianSchool of Economics and Bus.Adm
Ph.d 1983 University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
Dissertation / Evoked Set Formation from the Perspective of Decision Making as an Instance of Categorization
Ph.d committees / I have served as chairman (main advisor) on 15 ph.d dissertations since 1989
Current research interests /
  1. satisfaction – quality - complaints
  2. service management
  3. prosumption – the role of the consumer in the value chain
  4. theory of science and its intersection with methodology and statistics
  5. tourism marketing
  6. generic marketing – how should generic marketing organizations be governed and stimulated

Interests / Design, cooking, art, cars and architecture

Some recent publications(excluding Norwegian articles, research reports and conference papers(1997-2005)

  1. Marketing: Forventninger, Tilfredshet, Kvalitet, (Marketing: Expectations, Satisfaction, Quality; textbook in Marketing) Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 1998
  1. The Many Effects of Service: An Empirical Study of Service and Product Quality in the Hospitality Industry, (with Torvald Øgaard) in The Nordic School of Quality Management, Edvardsson, Bo and Anders Gustafsson (eds), Lund: Studentliteratur, 1999
  1. Theoretic Fit and Empirical Fit: The Performance of Maximum Likelihood versus Generalized Least Squares in Structural Equation Models, (with Ulf H.Olsson and Roy D. Howell), in Multivariate Behavioral Research, 34, 1,31-59, 1999
  1. The Performance of Maximum Likelihood, Generalized Least Squares and Weighted Least Squares Estimation in Structural Equation Modeling under Conditions of Misspecification and Nonnonnormality, (with Ulf H. Olsson, Tron Foss and Roy D. Howell) in Structural Equation Modelling, 2000
  1. “Does the ADF fit function decrease when the kurtosis increases?”, with Ulf H. Olsson and Tron Foss (2003). British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, November 2003, pp. 1-15
  1. Toward a New Understanding of Marketing: Gaps and Opportunities, with Roy Howel inRethinking Marketing: Developing a New Understanding of Markets, Håkan Håkansson, Debbie Harrison, Alexandra Waluszewski (editors), John Wiley & Sons,Ltd, 2004

Papers under review/progress

  1. Organizational Culture and Performance: A Multi-level Analysis of Effects of Culture on Customers’ and Employees Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction,with Torvald Øgaard,2004a to be resubmitted to Journal of Marketing
  1. Service Satisfaction and Service Quality: A Two-Level Approach,with Torvald Øgaard, 2004b
  1. Organizational Culture and Customer Satisfaction: Moderating effects of Employee related variables, with Torvald Øgaard, 2005
  1. Tourism as a Context for Scientific Endeavour: Challenges and Opportunities, with Anne Karin R.Fougner and Torvald Øgaard, resubmitted to Annals of Tourism Research, 2005
  1. Estimation Triangulation in Structural Equation Modelling: Test of Alternative Models of Satisfaction in a Service Setting , with Ulf H. Olsson and Torvald Øgaard. Paper to be submitted, 2005
  1. Determinants of Capacity Utilization in the Hotel Industry,with Kjetil Fladmark Larsen og Kåre Sandvik. Paper to be submitted, 2005

Projects and papersthat I plan to be working on during my sabbatical

This is a somewhat optimistic list of areas I want to work on during my sabbatical.

  1. Estimation triangulation as a method to identify misspecified submodels

It is well known that various estimation procedures in structural equation modelling (e.g Maximum likelihood, GLS, WLS, and OLS) only give convergent parameter estimates in the rare situation that the theoretical model is correctly specified and the variables are normally distributed. When models are not correctly specified parameter estimates should vary across estimation methods. Building on the work by Ulf. H. Olsson and associates (Olsson, Troye and Howell 1999; Olsson, Troye, Foss and Howell 2000; Olsson, Foss and Troye 2003) where it was established that indexes of empirical fit (e.g Chi-square, RMSEA) may be poor indicants of “theoretic fit”, that is the degree to which parameter estimates are close to the “true” values in the generative mechanism that the researcher tries to model, we suggest that parameter variance across estimation methods can be used as a criterion to identify for what parts of a model parameter estimates can be trusted and where they cannot. Findings thus far seem to suggest that variance in parameter estimates across estimation methods in fact can be used to identify local misspecification in a model.

  1. Two-level analyses of marketing phenomena

Market researchers are typically interested in the behavior of products and organizations, yet use individual-level theories and methods to understand and model such phenomena. In two papers that are out for review (Ogaard and Troye 2004a,b) we use two-level structural equation modelling to demonstrate the usefulness of treating marketing phenomena like satisfaction, service quality, job satisfaction and organizational culture at different levels. Not knowing the fate of the two papers in the review process, I suspect that at least some part of my sabbatical will have to be spent on the papers and issues addressed.

  1. The impact of complaining and compensation on service evaluations

It is normally assumed that complaining behaviour reflects and is caused by customers’ product and service evaluations. Yet, it is also conceivable that the act of complaining can affect and strengthen existing evaluations by accentuating negative aspects of the offering. Compensation on its side can lead to satisfaction with own behaviour (complaining) and the way it has been handled by the company, but may have negative effect on the evaluation of the offering. In a series of experiments we have estimated such effects, but I plan to spend some time during my sabbatical calibrating the experiments.

  1. How to write a thesis

I have so far written four out of eight or nine chapters. The book takes a critical-realist perspective on the relationships between the theoretical and empirical domainson one side and reality on the other. It is a follow-up of two books (in Norwegian) that I have written previously. Professor Magne Supphellen at my institute will be my co-author.

  1. ”Lean concepts versus rich theories”

This topic has been on my mind for eight to nine years and is based on the observation that many concepts in marketing and other social sciences have the character of being ”miniature causal models” in the sense that they implicitly assume antecedents as well as consequences that are made part of the measurement procedure for the concept. Thus the distinction between estimation and measurement becomes rather fuzzy which renders falsification and comparison to other theoretical constructs problematic. I therefore suggest that concepts sometimes should be made “leaner” , i.e contain fewer dimensions, and that theories should be made “richer” in the sense that they should explicitly model dimensions that previously were dimensions within single constructs.

  1. The consumer as prosumer

Two of my Ph.d students, Chunyan Xie and Ann-Karin Refsland Fougner are working on this topic which has been on my mind since the first marketing book I wrote in 1989. I hope to be able to work on previous conference papers and eventually turn them into journal articles during my sabbatical.

  1. The Effects of Governance Principles and Budgeting Rules on Long Term Planning and Market Orientation in National Tourist Organizations

Most generic marketing organizations in tourism work in a sense with their back turned against the markets they are commissioned to influence. The reason for this is that they rarely depend on the market for their revenues, and therefore turn their attention to local and national authoritiesfor funding. Political rhetoric may consequently be more important than marketing know-how and effectiveness for their survival. In the paper I am working on with Eivind Farstad (which is based on his ph.d dissertation) we report the results of a study where different expert groups are exposed to alternative scenarios where budgeting and governance principles vary systematically. We then get respondents’ evaluation of each scenario with respect to how it would affect market orientation, long term planning, etc. The empirical results are then compared to implications derived from a number of different theoretical models.