Content area
Full text
Introduction
In large and competitive service industries, much emphasis is placed on customer satisfaction, which is viewed as a key driver of customer loyalty and new customer acquisition (Zhang et al. , 2013). Customer satisfaction is in essence an overall post-consumption evaluation from the customer's point-of-view (Mano and Oliver, 1993). It is viewed as a key driver of positive business outcomes and has been associated with brand repurchase, share-of-wallet, cross-buying, improved return on investments and improved stock returns (Anderson et al. , 1994; Mittal and Frennea, 2010). Customer satisfaction or lack thereof acts as a feedback mechanism for companies to identify attributes that could potentially enhance or undermine consumer experience (Woodruff and Gardial, 1996).
Scholars, however, have conceptualized customer satisfaction in several different ways (Anderson et al. , 1994; Dick and Basu, 1994; Fornell et al. , 1996; Mittal and Frennea, 2010; Myers, 1999; Olsen, 2002). As Jones and Suh (2000) noted, there is much debate on the best way one can measure satisfaction. This raises a question: Does it matter how one measures customer satisfaction? Specifically, can the drivers of customer satisfaction have distinct effects depending on how satisfaction is conceptualized and measured? Furthermore, does the link between customer satisfaction and customer outcomes such as word of mouth (WOM) depend on which measure one uses?
To explore these questions, this study considers two alternative measures of customer satisfaction - overall satisfaction and relative satisfaction. Dick and Basu (1994) suggest that a relative approach could provide a stronger predictor of repeat purchase. However, there have only been a handful of studies that have considered relative satisfaction (Aksoy et al. , 2015; Olsen, 2002; Sivadas and Baker-Prewitt, 2000). This is rather surprising, given that many important decisions are made based on comparative judgments (Radzevick and Moore, 2013). Using three studies from two different contexts - restaurants and apparel retailing - we extend the sparse literature on relative satisfaction and show that, although related, it is distinct from overall satisfaction. Attributes considered critical to customer satisfaction - product quality, service and ambience - differ in the level of their influence on these alternative conceptualizations of satisfaction. Further, the study looks at the distinctive effects of these measures of satisfaction on customer's WOM, which reflects attitudinal customer...