Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction has been a key concept in marketing thought for
several decades. Since Cardozo’s pioneering study of customer effort, expectations and satisfaction, the body of work in this field has  expanded greatly (Cardozo, 1965).

More than 900 articles focusing on consumer satisfaction, dissatisfaction and complaining behavior have been published during the years 1982-1990 alone (Perkins, 1991).

Todaywe get a large number of articles (nearly 90,000) that focus on
customer/consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction/complaints, which shows
that today’s well-informed customer is not as easily satisfiable. Studies of customer behavior emphasize customer satisfaction as the core of the post-purchase period (Westbrook & Oliver, 1991; Oliver,1997).

Since customer satisfaction presumably leads to repeat purchases and favorable word of mouth publicity, the concept is essential to organizations. In saturated markets, customer satisfaction is thought to be one of the most valuable assets of a firm (Heide et al., 1999).

United States is one of the classic examples of saturated markets and
the organizations to strive hard for customers’ extra dollar. Building
on Hirschman’s exit-voice theory (Hirschman, 1970), Fornell and
Wernerfelt (1988) argue that some of the weakly dissatisfied customers
are of prime importance to the firm.

While strongly dissatisfied customers choose the exit option, i.e., they leave the firm, the weak dissatisfied customers tend to stay loyal to the firm and rather employ the voice option, which implies overt complaints as an attempt to change the firm’s practices or offerings.

Halstead and Page (1992) and Fomell (1992) opine that sensible handling of customer complaints may ensure that weakly dissatisfied customers remain loyal, and thereby serve as an exit barrier.

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