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.     

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 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.     

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 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 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 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 Lifetime Value as the Basis of Customer Segmentation

SUMMARY

In this article, we examine current trends in customer life-time value and customer segmentation models and identify key issues for future research. CLV-based segmentation is a segmentation approach that groups customers into meaningful segments based upon customer lifetime value and (potentially) other factors. In the article, we discuss the extent to which CLV-based segmentation meets the criteria for effective segmentation. We also identify six areas for future research: (1) models and management of “micro-segments,” (2) using CLV-based segmentation to improve the efficiency of marketing programs, (3) the need for more dynamic CLV-based segmentation models, (4) applying CLV-based customer segmentation to new products and new customers, (5) challenges associated with implementing CLV-based segmentation, and (6) the need for new models that enable firms to segment customers by response to marketing activities and CLV at different points in the customer decision process.     

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.     

Customer satisfaction,corporate image,and service quality in professional services

This study explores the impact of corporate image and service quality on customer satisfaction in the professional service industries. Data were collected on audit firms, sending a questionnaire to financial executives of leading Italian companies. The results show that the most important variable explaining customer satisfaction was the apparent effectiveness of the audit firm. In relation to service quality, managers' satisfaction was primarily driven by their perception of audit firm's work as a useful value-adding service. The length of audit firm–auditee relation, the location of the auditor's office, and the financial executive's personal characteristics were also significant drivers of customer satisfaction.