A Comprehensive Model Of Customer Satisfaction In Hospitality And Tourism: Strategic Implications For Management

Providing and maintaining customer satisfaction is one of the most important challenges facing business today. Although this is a relatively new concept, research into this area has grown since the early 1980s. One ongoing debate in consumer satisfaction circles is the extent to which it is a cognitive process or an emotional state. The two theories that best explain customer satisfaction are disconfirmation paradigm and expectancy-value concept. Disconfirmation theory postulates that customers compare a new service experience with a standard they have developed. Their belief about the service is determined by how well it measures up to this standard. According to expectancy-value theory customers often make some judgment about a product, its benefits, and the likely outcomes of using the product. People will learn to perform behavior that they expect will lead to positive outcomes. There remains a need to provide a direct link between satisfaction and purchase. Some models indicate a link between satisfaction and repeat purchase intention but not yet to actual purchase. The most widely used model to translate theories of customer satisfaction into management practice is that of SERVQUAL. In this model service quality is defined as the difference between customer expectations and customer perception of service received. It is proposed that, at this time, the SERVQUAL model presents the best mechanism to explain customer satisfaction in hospitality and tourism. A detailed examination of the model is provided together with suggested areas for further research to improve its applicability to hospitality and tourism. Importance of Customer Satisfaction roviding and maintaining customer satisfaction is one of the most important challenges facing business today (Band 1978, Bitner 1990, Oliver & DeSarbo 1988, Parasuraman et al, 1988, Kandampully, J., Mok, C., and Sparks, B., 2001). However, this is a relatively new concept. During the 1970s firms did not recognize customer satisfaction as a problem (Barsky 1992). The United States was “succeeding reasonably well in providing acceptable levels of satisfaction to the buying public” and “consumers find enjoyment and satisfaction in their buying experiences...considerably more often than they find difficulty and discontent” (Westbrook et al, 1978). As a result demand was met by technical product innovations rather than service improvement (Barsky 1990). In recent years the idea that the level of customer satisfaction is not at an acceptable level was seen as a growing concern. Foundation studies include those by Anderson (1973) and Olshavsky and Miller (1972). __________ Readers with comments or questions are encouraged to contact the author via email. P International Business E 2. Ideal product or service performance – the consumer’s ideal level or service performance (Liechy & Churchill 1979, Miller 1979); International Business E this concept is generally associated with tangible products and may, therefore, be different when dealing with services. 4. Relationship quality – quality of the relationship between salesperson and customer leads to satisfaction and significantly affects sales (Crosby et al, 1990). This idea extends the impact of media and word of mouth on the relationship. Price is often regarded as an indicator of quality. Many customers perceive higher priced items are of higher quality. Price tends to play a larger part when customer is less familiar with service. According to Oliver (1980), the following operational assumptions are part of the theory: 1. When expectations are high and performance is low, moderately low disconfirmation will result – i.e. expectations are not met. High performance will result in moderately high level of expectations being met (EM) due to confirmation. 2. When expectations are low, low performance will result in very low EM ratings, while high performance will result in very high EM ratings due to a surprise effect. 3. If expectations match performance at any level, conformation will result and EM will represent the value of the expectations/ performance level. Expectancy-value theory According to expectancy-value theory customers often make some judgment about a product, its benefits, and the likely outcomes of using the product. People will learn to perform behavior that they expect will lead to positive outcomes (Tokman, 1932). Their overall attitude is a function of beliefs about an object’s attributes and the strength of these beliefs. The impact of attribute importance on consumer decision making is also widely recognized (Heeler et al, 1979). The relationship has been summarized as follows: Q = Ii (Pi – Ei) (Carmen 1990), where Q is the overall quality; I is the importance of service attribute I; the sum is over the number of service attributes; P is the perception; E is expectation. There remains a need to provide a direct link between satisfaction and purchase (Barsky, 1990). Some models indicate a link between satisfaction and repeat purchase intention but not yet to actual purchase.