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.     

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 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.     

Consumer satisfaction as a process

Consumer satisfaction has been defined as an objective or subjective state variable. This paper presents an emerging view where satisfaction is construed as a subjective process of consumption experience. We examine studies that have explicitly or implicitly explored the conceptual and empirical domain of satisfaction as a multidimensional process of interactions among mental and overt behavior activities unfolding after purchase over time. Using a dynamic, six-dimension process framework we integrate previous, seemingly disjoint research efforts, and derive related research propositions. Issues in researching satisfaction as a process are also discussed.     

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 measurement and management: A processual analysis

Customer satisfaction (CS) measurement has been widely advocated as central to the pursuit of market orientation, total quality management, and competitive advantage by allowing management to monitor and improve performance in the terms most significant to customers. However, relatively little analytical attention has been devoted to the processual issues implicit in the adoption of CS measurement systems by organizations. This paper presents executive workshop data and new survey evidence to support the contention that both research and managerial agenda should be extended to recognize the multi‐dimensionality of organizational process, and the implications of that characteristic for the adoption and use of CS measurement systems.     

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 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.     

中国汽车品牌顾客满意度调查正式启动

近年来，中国汽车品牌一直在混乱的竞争中各自为战。由于没有一个权威机构对各大品牌进行系统评估，中国汽车品牌在话语权上一直授人以柄。     

Customer Service as a Strategic Weapon in International Operations

Customer service is an important competitive weapon in international markets becuase of its ability to acquire and retain overseas customers (especially intermediate firms) and, thus, enhance companies' revenues. Customer service is especially critical when foreign vendors are perceived as offering similar products at comparable prices, and purchasers have doubts about suppliers' willingness to carry out various post-purchase responsibilities. This paper reports the results of a study of the customer service programs of 151 U.S. non-service companies with international operations in five or more foreign countries. Sixty-nine firms responded to their customer service efforts in international markets and 81 addressed domestic customer service programs, allowing for comparisons to be made between international and domestic customer service operations. The study's results indicate that copmanies realize the importance of customer service in marketing to international customers, yet customer service for international markets is not considered to be appreciable more important than it is for domestic ones. Much similarity in perceptions about international and domestic customer service programs being in place. Whether this similarity occur from a careful analysis of domestic and international markets or simple expediency is uncertain.     

Buying a Book as a Christmas Gift: Two Routes to Customer Immersion

Although services and retailing are usually regarded as relevant experiential contexts and investments in creating an experiential environment are growing, little consideration has been given to the investigation of the general consumption experiences and their emotions in retailing. By adopting an ethnographic approach to study the buying processes in two Italian bookstores – a small traditional family-run bookshop and a large international chain store – products that, by definition, are high in perceived complexity and symbolism, we present two distinct business models based on different processes of valorisation of purchasers' emotions. The two-path model towards customer immersion represents different strategies to involve consumers emotionally: one is based on increasing the positive emotional load, the other on decreasing the negative emotional load. Decisions about physical layout, display, services and sales assistance should follow consistently.     

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 equity management as formative second-order construct

Despite intensive discussions about customer equity, little research addresses how to manage customer equity from a firm's perspective. Recent literature proposes various concepts of customer equity management but does not feature an empirical study that identifies and quantifies activities that aim explicitly to maximize customer equity. In the current study, the authors develop a formative measurement instrument for customer equity management as a second-order construct that indicates how intensively firms orient their customer management toward customer value and equity. The study presents a complete process for conceptualizing and operationalizing a formative second-order construct, including a thorough literature review, intensive qualitative research, and a quantitative study with 92 customer equity managers. On the basis of this process, the authors model customer equity management as a function of three formative dimensions - customer equity analysis, customer equity strategy, and customer equity actions - measured by several formative indicators. The resulting formative operationalization satisfies the criteria for evaluating formative indexes.     

Customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in retail banking: Exploring the asymmetric impact of attribute performances

The paper presents the results of an extensive study on the determinants of customer satisfaction for a retail bank. In doing so, it uses a revised version of the traditional analyses based on derived measures of attribute importance. The need for a revised methodology is prompted by the insights of the two- and three-factor theories of customer satisfaction, such as Kano's framework. Indeed, the evidence from 5000 customers of a prominent Italian bank confirms a non-linear and asymmetric relationship between attribute performances and overall customer satisfaction. The results from both a traditional and our revised approach are compared. While this approach can be applied across different industries, it should not be assumed that the numerical results presented in the paper apply to contexts with substantially different underlying characteristics. General trends and implications for banking services are reported in the conclusions.     

Customer Valuation as a Driver of Relationship Dissolution Sabrina Helm Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet,Germany

Abstract

As all customers are not created equal (Hallberg & Ogilvy, 1995), the different contributions of customers to a supplier's goals have to be evaluated to grant efficient relationship marketing. Furthermore, a handling system has to be developed for unprofitable customer relationships. This is a hitherto neglected field, as marketing researchers and practitioners are generally rather interested in attaining and keeping customers, not in the ending of relationships. The article aims at integrating the concepts of customer equity and profitability with approaches of relationship dissolution, which have recently emerged in the literature. Different aspects of calculating the value of customer relationships and value-based criteria that focus on monetary and non-monetary components of a customer's value are discussed. In an exploratory study undertaken in the German mechanical engineering industry, the relevance of customer valuation to dissolution decisions is analyzed.     

Expectations and product performance as determinants of satisfaction for a high-involvement purchase

Customer satisfaction is a central issue for organizations wishing to create a sustainable competitive advantage in the 1990s. Empirical work to date, concentrating on low-involvement, nondurable products, has concluded that both prior expectations and postpurchase experience interact to influence the level of customer satisfaction. Only a few studies have examined the purchase of high-involvement, nondurable products. The current study employs a multiattribute approach using pre- and postpurchase questionnaires to assess determinants of customer satisfaction for a high-involvement product. Causal path analysis shows perceived product performance to be the most powerful determinant. Prior expectations did interact with performance to affect disconfirmation, which translated into only a minor impact on satisfaction. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Ownership dispersion as a second-best counterstrategy against monopoly

A literature on second-best pricing as counterstrategy against monopoly has evolved in economics. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that ownership dispersion through forced divestiture can be more effective in restricting the social damage of monopoly. Economists generally hold an ordinal view of utility. To the extent that the second-best literature suggests the possibility of reducing dead-weight loss through counterpricing, most economics would accept counterpricing as welfare increasing and reject ownership dispersion. The example presented in this paper suggests that this mindset may cause us to overlook promising alternatives.     

Customer participation and citizenship behavioral influences on employee performance, satisfaction, commitment, and turnover intention

Despite increasing awareness of the importance of customer behaviors in service delivery, understanding consequences relating to employees receives little attention. Therefore, using data from a large electronic firm relating to customers, employees, and managers, this study examines the effects of customer participation and citizenship behavior on employee performance, satisfaction and commitment, as well as indirect effects on turnover intention. Furthermore, the study examines how similarity and likeability moderate the effects of customer participation and citizenship behavior on employee satisfaction. The study also includes a laboratory experiment and provides further support for causal direction. The article discusses marketing implications of the results.