Customer satisfaction measurement: comparing four methods of attribute categorisations

The issue of how to weight and categorise service attributes has attracted great attention from academics as well as practitioners. The application of an inappropriate method could lead to misleading interpretations and useless or costly actions. We first review several streams of literature concerning the theoretical background of attribute categorisations in relation to customer satisfaction. We then identify four methods that have been developed to categorise attributes into four classes. In the next step we apply these methods in an empirical study. Criteria for distinguishing the considered approaches conceptually and methodologically are proposed, and implications for future research are discussed.     

Customer satisfaction and corporate culture: A profile deviation analysis of a relationship marketing outcome

Customer satisfaction has been identified as an important relationship marketing outcome. As such, firms should continually track and assess customer satisfaction. The following study examines how four elements of corporate culture combine to form an optimal mix that encourages attention to and measurement of customer satisfaction. Culture is operationalized as a pattern of values and beliefs that aid individuals in understanding organizational functioning. A profile deviation analysis reveals that an optimal mix of the marketing corporate culture elements of adhocracy, clan, market, and hierarchy does exist and is positively related to customer satisfaction assessment activities. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Customer satisfaction and brand equity

The study here examines the interaction between shareholder value and customer satisfaction, as well as the impact on a firm's brand equity. Customer satisfaction may have a positive effect on brand equity, except when managers show excessive customer orientation, in which case the effect is negative because of reductions in shareholder value. The empirical analysis uses incomplete panel data pertaining to 69 firms from 11 nations during the period 2002-2005 and supports the theoretical contentions. This result warns of the perverse effect on brand equity of implementing policies focused exclusively on satisfying customers at the expense of shareholders' interests.     

Customer satisfaction and price tolerance

This study investigates the association between customer satisfaction and willingness-to-pay or price tolerance. The goal is not only to determine whether the association between customer satisfaction and price tolerance is positive or negative but also to gauge the degree of association. The Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer provides the data. The empirical analysis indicates a negative association between the level of customer satisfaction provided by the firm and the degree of price tolerance exhibited by its customers. However, a positive association is found between year-to-year changes in the levels of customer satisfaction and price tolerance.     

Customer relationship management in retailing: A content analysis of retail trade journals

The purpose of this research was to increase knowledge and understanding of how retailers use business intelligence and data mining tools to implement customer relationship management (CRM) in retailing. Specific objectives were to (1) identify organization and infrastructure requirements for CRM effectiveness, (2) identify CRM objectives and goals of retail companies, (3) identify data mining tools utilized by retailers to perform CRM functions, and (4) identify CRM strategies used by retail companies. A keyword search within business databases using CRM and CRM identified publications with CRM content. Content analysis was used on articles (N=149) drawn from Stores, Chain Store Age, Harvard Business Review, and Retail Forward over a 5 year period (2000–2005). Selected articles were stored as text files in QDA Miner, a computerized qualitative analysis tool. Key organization/infrastructure needs emerged focusing on data structure, organizational systems, technology structure, and data accessibility. Retailers goals/objectives and strategies focused on marketing, customer service, understanding customers through data analysis and increasing acquisition and retention through customer loyalty programs. Data mining tools identified supported marketing and customer analysis efforts. Findings provide insight into the challenges retailers face as they implement a more customer-centric business strategy.     

A processual analysis of knowledge transfer: From foreign MNEs to Chinese suppliers

This paper investigates vertical knowledge transfers from inward-invested multinational enterprises to indigenous Chinese suppliers in the electrical and electronics industry in Wuxi, China. Through 16 dyadic case studies, a three-stage pathway of relationship development is established in which the types of knowledge transferred evolve as the relationship and the cooperative activities within it, deepen. Contingency factors are found to either accelerate or prolong the relationship development at each stage. We conclude with implications of our findings for academic scholars and managers.     

Customer satisfaction underappreciation: The relation of customer satisfaction to CEO compensation

Customer satisfaction contributes to firm financial performance, but does it contribute to top executives' pay? Our empirical evidence shows that it may not. Customer-satisfying executives tend to have lower pay than their productive peers, even if both satisfaction and productivity contribute to firm financial performance. Thus, customer satisfaction is underappreciated, which may result in both less societal welfare and worse company performance. We propose a board myopia mechanism to account for this phenomenon. In facing short-term financial performance pressure from investors, and the asymmetric information availability between accounting-based and market-based assets for compensation decisions, the board of directors may be myopic, underappreciating executives who invest in market-based assets such as customer satisfaction that drive long-term returns. We examine this satisfaction underappreciation phenomenon empirically using 23 years of panel data that detail firm productivity, customer satisfaction, firm financial performance, and executive compensation. The longitudinal data are analyzed using fixed-effect panel models and a simultaneous system of panel vector autoregression equations with interactions to assess the direct effect of firm financial performance and its carryover effect to executive compensation across executives who are productive, customer-satisfying, or both. The results confirm that customer-satisfying executives are underappreciated: being productive is financially rewarding for both firms and executives, while being customer-satisfying is financially rewarding for firms but not as much for executives. We further demonstrate that using total shareholder returns to benchmark firm financial performance and reward executives with a higher proportion of stock compensation can encourage a long-term focus that alleviates this customer underappreciation.     

Customer satisfaction with service recovery

This commentary is about the article, “Satisfaction with Service Recovery: Perceived Justice and Emotional Responses” (Rio-Lanza, Vázquez-Casielles, and Diaz-Martin, this issue). Never before have so many services been bought, sold, and consumed as they are today. Competition today is fierce. More and more services include a technology component that may limit customer/employee contacts and make services more complex. Retaining customers, therefore, becomes a very relevant issue that makes Rio-Lanza et al.'s research important. Researchers in service management have studied service recovery considerably. This article describes some of the general trends in research about customer satisfaction in connection to service recovery as well as Rio-Lanza et al.'s contribution.     

Customer satisfaction and Scuba-diving: Some insights from the deep

This paper explores the concept of customer satisfaction in relation to the scuba-diving consumption experience. It investigates the myriad of tangible and intangible elements of the experience, from which scuba-divers derive a sense of meaning and/or satisfaction. The results indicate that satisfaction is gained from a complex array of consumers' perceptions of the dive itself, but also from a range of associated peripheral experiences surrounding the dive such as the service provided by the operator, the ‘communitas’ from the social interaction with other divers and the functional aspects of the dive. The study takes an ethnographic approach using qualitative methods of inquiry, since the purpose of the study was to develop a deeper understanding of the inter-relationships between the levels of service provided; customer satisfaction of scuba-divers; and the dive consumption experience. The findings illuminate the diversity and complexity of dive consumption experiences themselves and the perceptual cues used by customers for determining customer satisfaction and longer term behavioural intentions.     

Customer satisfaction and retail sales performance: an empirical investigation

We measure the links between store attribute perceptions and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and sales performance. Our data set consists of six waves of customer satisfaction and sales data for about 250 retail outlets over the period 1998-2001 for a publicly held supermarket company. We construct a statistical model to address nonlinearities and asymmetries in the satisfaction-sales performance links, and we illustrate how retailers can affect store revenues by managing customer satisfaction. Contributions of our study include the analysis of behavioral consequences of customer satisfaction in the food retail sector, the accommodation of complexities in the satisfaction-sales performance links based on an empirical model of first differences, and a discussion of how managers can employ the results for customer satisfaction policies.     

Customer satisfaction in European food retailing

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is becoming an increasingly important factor in modern retailing—a market characterized by slow growth and intense competition. Big non-European chains such as Walmart are already present in some countries and consider buying some of the retail chains in other countries, e.g. in the Scandinavian countries. This development will demand even more focus on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in order to stay in business and may also demand that existing actors on the market place form new coalitions. Promising new partners may be identified, partly based upon measures identifying how potential partners are perceived by the customers. Based on results from the European Customer Satisfaction study, a comparative analysis of customer satisfaction in Europe is conducted. Some specific Danish results are shown and the relationship between customer loyalty, supermarket type and ownership structure is studied. The relationship between results after taxes and customer loyalty is documented.     

Customer brand personality perception: A taxonomic analysis

Abstract

The brand personality concept has received considerable attention. However, researchers have paid little attention to how homogeneous consumer brand personality perceptions are. This study attempts to fill this gap by analysing survey data (n?=?603) collected from respondents evaluating seven mass-market consumer brands. Using cluster analysis, it identifies four typical brand personality constellations. The authors find variance among brand personality perceptions across brands, but more interestingly also within perceptions of individual brands. This result points to issues in implementing brand personalities in marketing practice. The article concludes with theoretical and managerial implications.     

Customer satisfaction and qualities in public service: an intermediary customer perspective

From an intermediary customer perspective, this study empirically investigates the causal relationships between service quality, relationship quality, design quality, and customer satisfaction in the public service value chain. Cross-sectional survey data were collected from social work, childcare, and healthcare services and were analyzed using structural equation modeling. It is found that all the quality dimensions are antecedents to customer satisfaction and relations between quality dimensions show distinctive patterns. The results show that relationship quality does not directly affect customer satisfaction, but can indirectly influence satisfaction through the mediation of both service and design qualities. The effect of the relationship and design qualities on customer satisfaction is stronger than that of service quality.     

Customer satisfaction and consumer expenditure in selected European countries

The relationship between customer satisfaction and company performance has been extensively researched at both the consumer and firm levels. However, little is known about the impact of customer satisfaction at the economy-wide level, especially in Europe. This study aims to link customer satisfaction to personal consumption expenditure using panel data collected from 1999 to 2011 and covering nine European countries. Our findings suggest a significant relationship between customer satisfaction and consumer expenditure in these countries. In addition, economic structure, culture, political economy and socio-economic factors have been examined to understand the impact of cross-country differences on this relationship. The results reflect the importance of satisfied consumers on the economy as a whole; thus, efforts at boosting customer satisfaction should become a national agenda.     

Customer satisfaction and the strategic role of university libraries

The paper stresses the importance of listening to customers at university libraries and the need to move from a library‐based view to a customer‐based view. Largely on account of their public nature, academic libraries in Finland – where the study was conducted – have until recently, based their operations and development mainly on conventional procedures and library‐based perspectives. However, in order to better serve their own clientele, as well as their parent organizations, they need to listen to the voices of their customers, the library users. One way of ‘listening’ is through a customer survey, in this case LibQUAL – a survey instrument developed in the US for libraries. It collects data on the quality of the services, thus enabling libraries to identify areas in which service levels should be improved.     

Customer satisfaction study via a latent segment model

The aim of this study is to apply a new conceptual model, and a new technique as an approach to the modelling of customers’ satisfaction, and to develop an overall satisfaction index (OSI). This study evaluates customers’ satisfaction of a certain public organization service, and argues that in order to estimate the global customers’ satisfaction measure we must appeal to methodologies recognizing that satisfaction must be understood as a latent variable, quantified through multiple indicators. Thus, it is natural that we consider the latent segment models (LSM) approach to proceed to the evaluation of customer's service satisfaction. As a result of these models estimation, we selected a three latent segment model, that is to say, the latent variable customer satisfaction has three classes: segment 1, with 50.4 percent of the customers, that represents “The Very Satisfied”, for those to whom everything is very well in the organization service; a segment 2, with 33.4 percent of the customers, representative of the “The Well Satisfied”, not totally satisfied with the quality of the organization, and a segment 3, with 16.2 percent of the customers, “Satisfaction Demanders”, thinking that organizational quality can be improved. Finally, we developed an overall satisfaction index which is important to show how the company as a whole is performing.     

The relationship between satisfaction and loyalty: A mediator analysis

This study proposes a multiple mediation model to analyze the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. The study's contribution to the literature is to examine, empirically, the main antecedents and determinants of this endogenous variable in greater depth. Thus, the research fills a gap in the literature through its analysis of the mediating role of perceived switching costs and the perceived lack of attractiveness of alternative offerings. This study applies variance-based structural equation modeling via partial least squares to a sample of 785 customers from 74 insurance companies in the service sector. The results show that perceived switching costs – to a greater extent – and the perceived lack of attractiveness of alternative offerings – to a lesser extent – are significant mediators in the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.     

Customer satisfaction and customer behavior: The differential role of brand and category expectations

Previous research has suggested that consumers use multiple strands to evaluate their satisfaction with a product and to establish postpurchase behavioral intention. However, prior empirical research has focused on which individual standard best predicts satisfaction. In contrast, this article develops and tests a model of consumer satisfaction and postpurchase behavioral intention in which consumers simultaneously use multiple standards—perceptions of performance, brand expectations, and category expectations. The results of an experiment for a simulated service encounter provide support for the proposition that consumers use multiple standards and that these standards have differential effects on such postpurchase outcomes as satisfaction, repurchase intention, and willingness to recommend. Brand expectations are shown to be better predictors of affective outcomes (such as satisfaction), while category expectations are shown to be better predictors of behavioral outcomes (repurchase and recommendation). Consistent with prior research, perceived performance is shown to have a strong effect on both satisfaction and behavioral intention.     

Customer perceptions of frontline employee service delivery: A study of Russian bank customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions

This study examines the nature of relationships between customer perceptions of frontline employee service delivery (core and relational), satisfaction and selected behavioural intentions by using customers of a commercial retail bank in Russia as its setting. Contrary to findings from North American-Western research, the study findings show that relational service delivery only significantly impacts customer satisfaction for Russian males whereas core service delivery only impacts this affective outcome for Russian female customers. Implications of the results are discussed and future research avenues are offered.