Gerrard Macintosh, chair of the management and marketing department, has published two articles in academic journals.

"Examining the Antecedents of Trust and Rapport in Services: Discovering New Interrelationships," appeared in the July Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. The study was designed to examine the relationship between rapport and trust in a service context and to gain a better understanding of the factors that contribute to these relational constructs. Consistent with the literature, Macintosh found both expertise and dependability were directly related to trust of the service provider. Familiarity, which he previously found to be directly related to trust, was related through rapport, which was related to trust. All four hypotheses examining the antecedents of rapport were supported. Macintosh's research suggests that building rapport may be an important intermediate step in building customer trust.

“The Role of Rapport in Professional Services: Antecedents and Outcomes,” appeared in the May Journal of Services Marketing. This research tests a model examining the antecedents and outcomes of interpersonal rapport in a professional service context. The four antecedents Macintosh examined are familiarity, mutual self-disclosure, extras and common grounding, and the outcomes examined are trust, satisfaction and word-of-mouth communication.

The research findings indicated that all four antecedents were positively related to rapport. Rapport was related to customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth communication, but rapport was not related to trust. The study verified the four antecedents of interpersonal rapport in services and supports the role of rapport as an important mediating variable in relationship development. The research also supported prior findings on the unique contribution of rapport to positive word-of-mouth communication.