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Keywords Loyalty, Customer satisfaction, Customer loyalty, Higher education
Abstract Many customer satisfaction studies have concluded that there is a significant relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty, but this finding has been questioned in that most of the studies focus on measuring the cognitive component of customer satisfaction. This study includes the cognitive component, but focuses on the affective component. It explores the role of emotions in satisfaction, and then compares the predictive ability of the cognitive and affective elements. Key findings are that both positive and negative emotions, and the cognitive component of satisfaction correlate with loyalty. Regression analysis indicates that the affective component serves as a better predictor of customer loyalty than the cognitive component. Further, the best predictor of both overall loyalty and the most reliable dimension of loyalty, positive word of mouth, is positive emotions. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Introduction
It may appear unnecessary to study the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty as many studies have confirmed that there is a significant positive relationship between these two variables (see Colgate and Stewart, 1998; Hocutt, 1998; Patterson and Spreng, 1997). However, many of the satisfaction-loyalty relationship studies were done when the development of the satisfaction construct was at an early stage, and customer satisfaction was still seen as an "elusive construct" (Rosen and Surprenant, 1998). More recently, scholars comment that it is inappropriate to ignore the emotional component of satisfaction, and hence the reliability findings of the previous studies are questioned (Liljander and Strandvik, 1997; Peterson and Wilson, 1992; Stauss and Neuhaus, 1997; Wirtz and Bateson, 1999). Consequently, this paper reports on a study which aims to:
* explore the role of emotions in customer satisfaction; and
* re-test the satisfaction-loyalty relationship when the emotional component is included.
First, we review the recent literature on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and develop research propositions consistent with the research aims. The research design is then described, and the results discussed. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations for future research.
In the early stages of services research, researchers attempted to diminish the confusion between customer satisfaction and service quality by determining whether there is any distinction between them, and by exploring antecedents (Cronin and...