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Behavioural responses to
customer satisfaction: an
empirical study
Antreas Athanassopoulos
Responses to
customer
satisfaction
687
Received April 1999
Revised March 2000
Introduction
The quest for service quality has been an essential strategic component for firms
attempting to succeed and survive in today's fierce competitive environment
(Phillips et al., 1983; Parasuraman et al., 1985; Reichheld and Sasser, 1990). As a
result, in the last 15 years, we have witnessed an increasing number of research
efforts on the subject. Review of the relevant literature reveals that the principal
focus of service quality research has been twofold. First, the identification of
service quality dimensions was of primary interest to researchers (Parasuraman
et al., 1985, 1991a). Second, the development of measurement instruments of
service quality was the focus of subsequent research efforts (Parasuraman et al.,
1988, 1991b; 1993; Cronin and Taylor, 1992, 1994; Asubonteng et al., 1996; Buttle,
1996; Athanassopoulos 1998, 1999). Furthermore, the agenda of service quality
has very quickly been enhanced by creating the domain of customer satisfaction
where most aspects of the marketing mix have been included into its
determination (i.e. service quality, convenience, price). In this research we shall be
primarily concerned with the effects of customer satisfaction on the behavioural
responses of customers, giving, therefore, a more integrated dimension into the
research family that seeks to determine the antecedents of customer loyalty[1].
In recent years though, the customer satisfaction research agenda has
shifted focus and concentrated on other equally important issues. For example,
service quality has been related to its impact on the financial performance of
the organization (Greising, 1994; Rust et al., 1995), consumer satisfaction
(Spreng et al., 1996), switching behaviour (Keaveney, 1995), and behavioral
intentions (Boulding et al., 1993; Cronin and Taylor, 1992).
The authors contributed equally to the article and are listed in alphabetical order.
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Figure 1.
Behavioural responses
to customer satisfaction
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Parasuraman et al.'s (1985, 1988) work. It must be noted, however, that in these
early studies the dimensions of service quality had quite often included
dimensions beyond service quality and closer to customer satisfaction. Yet,
despite its shortcomings, SERVQUAL seems to be a useful scale to use in
measuring service quality by making appropriate adjustments for industry and
country contextual effects.
Later research efforts (Cronin and Taylor, 1992) though cast doubts about
the utility and appropriateness of the disconfirmation paradigm advocated by
Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988). These authors questioned whether or not
customers routinely assess service quality in terms of expectations and
perceptions. Rather, they advanced the notion that service quality is directly
influenced only by perceptions of service performance. In accordance, they
developed an instrument of service performance (SERVPERF) that seems to
produce better results than SERVQUAL (Asubonteng et al., 1996).
Apart from the debate among the above researchers for the merits of
SERVQUAL over SERVPERF and vice versa, however, it seems that, on
balance, the emerging literature supports the performance-based paradigm
over the disconfirmation-based paradigm (Cronin and Taylor, 1994; Peter et al.,
1992; Brown et al., 1992; Babakus and Boller, 1992; Babakus and Mangold,
1992). Our research bears on these conclusions and adopts the performance
based SERVPERF paradigm.
The common thrust though of all research efforts on the subject is the
conclusion that the criteria customers use to evaluate service quality are
complex and difficult to determine precisely. This is due to the fact that:
.
services are intangible;
.
services are heterogeneous, meaning that their performance often varies
from provider to provider, from customer to customer, and from context
to context;
.
services cannot be placed in a time capsule and thus be tested and retested over time; and
.
production of services is likely to be inseparable from their
consumption.
Furthermore, customers do not assess service quality only on its outcome, but
also they consider the process of service delivery as well as the context
(Gronroos, 1990; Kotler, 1994).
Customers of services observe and evaluate the production process as they
experience the service they receive (Zeithaml, 1988). Berry et al. (1985) argued
that the service quality attributes of search, experience, and credence are used
by consumers to evaluate service quality. Search attributes, such as physical
facilities, appearance of personnel, and the supplier's image can be considered
before consuming the service. Experience attributes, like responding quickly to
a request and performing a service at the agreed time are assessed on the basis
of the actual service experience. Finally, credence attributes like financial
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behavioural responses of their students they found that students who were
delighted with the quality of the studies had also the tendency to say positive
things about the school and recommend it to companies and recruiters as a pool
for recruiting purposes.
Other researchers (see Richins, 1983; Scaglione, 1988; Singh, 1988) have
indicated that when consumers perceive to have experienced inferior service
performance they are likely to engage in complaining behavioural responses to
third parties (i.e. exhibiting negative word-of-mouth communications). In
general, these negative communicational responses stem from the
dissatisfaction felt by the consumers due to poor service quality.
Finally, Zeithaml et al. (1996), in their multicompany/multi-industry study of
the relationship between service quality and behavioural intentions, inferred
that service quality is positively associated with communicational behavioural
intentions (e.g. intention to recommend the service producer and/or
complaining behaviour). Even though behavioural intentions may be an
imperfect proxy for behavioural responses (cf. Keaveney, 1995) nevertheless,
we advance the following hypothesis:
H1: Perceptions of high customer satisfaction are positively related to
positive word-of-mouth communications.
Several studies have examined the association between customer satisfaction
and service switching. The reasoning behind customers switching behavioural
responses has been related to perceptions of quality in the banking industry
(Rust and Zahorik, 1993), overall dissatisfaction in the insurance industry
(Crosby and Stephens, 1987), and service encounter failures in the retail
industries (Kelley et al., 1993).
Although customers perceiving service performance to be inferior may
represent one of the reasons that motivate customers to switch services, it is not
the only one. For example, Bitner (1990) advocates the effects of the time,
money constraints, access to information, lack of credible alternatives,
switching costs, and habit which may affect service loyalty.
Similarly, Cronin and Taylor (1992) suggest that convenience, good value for
money and availability might enhance customer satisfaction and subsequently
behavioural intentions. Moreover, Keaveney (1995), in his grounded theory
development model of customer switching behaviour, proposed eight reasons
(price, inconvenience, core service failures, service encounter failures, competitive
issues, ethical problems, and involuntary factors) for switching services. Finally,
Zeithaml et al. (1996) concluded that service quality is associated negatively with
unfavourable behavioural intentions (e.g. propensity to switch).
However, the main thrust of the above studies is that service switching is
conceptualised and operationalised as ``intentions to switch''. Even though
direct application of these results to the ``action to switch'' is limited by the fact
that behavioural intentions do not perfectly map actual behavioural responses,
we propose the following hypothesis:
Demographic variable
Age of respondent
Up to 20 years
20-30 years
30-40 years
40-50 years
50-60 years
60 years and older
Missing
Gender
Male
Female
Missing
Income (in GDR)a
Up to 1 million
1-3 million
3.4.5 million
4.5-6 million
More than 6 million
Missing
Education
Up to high school
College
University
Missing
Note:
Income is annual per person. E1 = GDR324
Responses to
customer
satisfaction
693
Valid percent
6.1
32.0
19.0
20.1
13.3
9.6
0.6
54.6
45.4
2.4
12.6
32.3
22.3
12.3
20.5
2.6
46.4
25.7
27.9
6.7
Table I.
Demographic
characteristics of the
sample (n = 793)
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Research instrument
To operationalise customer satisfaction, we used 31 question-items that sought
to evaluate different aspects of the service encounter. Given that, as it was
indicated earlier, measuring customer satisfaction is industry and country
specific, we:
.
included items that represent the five dimensions of service quality
described by Parasuraman et al. (1991a, 1991b); and
.
added items that sought to capture extra dimensions of customer
satisfaction specific to the banking industry as well as to the Greek
banking context (Athanassopoulos, 1999).
These extra items were derived from ten personal in-depth interviews with
managers of the banking sector. More specifically, we first asked two
marketing managers and one customers service manager from three different
retail banks to describe which factors, according to their expert opinion,
comprise the broader notion of customer satisfaction in retail banking. Next,
their answers were further probed by asking seven branch managers from four
other retail banks to comment on the factors suggested by the marketing
managers and the customers service manager.
The rationale behind this approach is that we expected marketing and/or
customers service managers to have a solid, broad, understanding of what
really satisfies bank customers. However, because branch managers are closer
to the customer and day-to-day encounters, their opinion was used as a ``filter''
in order to unveil the satisfaction factors that their experience has shown really
matter for the consumers. The items for which a congruency in the opinion of
the managers was asked were eventually the ones included in the
questionnaire.
As to the nature of the measurement, this was similar to that of Cronin and
Taylor (1992, 1994). They report convincing evidence that researchers are
better off when measuring perceived customer satisfaction directly instead of
attempting to estimate it as the result of the gap between consumer
expectations and consumer perceptions.
A seven-item battery was developed to gauge the range of customers'
behavioral responses to customer satisfaction examined in this study. The
seven items were grouped into three a priori categories: word-of-month
communications, intentions to switch, and decision to switch. However, the
respondents were not aware of these groupings. All the items included in the
study are presented in the Appendix. As a preamble to the statistical results of
the research, we did not find solid evidence about the independence of the
categories, intention and decision to switch and therefore the two categories
will be collapsed to one.
Measurement purification
Following Gerbing and Anderson (1988), we employed confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA) in order to examine the dimensionality of the customer
584
260
2.2
0.94
0.94
0.04
1,954
276
7.07
0.81
0.70
0.088
Responses to
customer
satisfaction
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Behavioural responses
measurement
2 factors
1 factor
27
8
3.03
0.98
0.99
0.033
523
10
52.3
0.83
0.79
0.255
Notes:
a
CFI and GFI values close to 1 indicate a good fit
b
The lower the RMSEA values, the better the model is considered. Values below 0.1 suggest
adequate fit
Table II.
Summary statistics of
model fit
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Table III.
Construct reliability
and validity of the
proposed factor
structures
Customer satisfaction
Cronbach's
alpha
Construct
reliabilitya
Variance
explainedb
(%)
0.79
0.88
0.76
0.81
0.79
0.79
0.91
0.98
0.97
0.82
0.90
0.95
74
92
90
78
86
86
0.77
0.87
0.97
0.98
97
97
Notes:
P 2 P 2 P
a
Construct reliability:
j j =
j j
j ej , where j is standardised ML
the estimated parameter
parameter estimate and ej is the error term about
P 2 P 2 P
b
Variance explained: j j = j j j ej
yield adequate estimates. The adequacy of the model estimates was also
confirmed by the small (less than 0.1) RMSEA values.
Prior to discussing the interpretation of the items' loading on each factor, it
is worth exploring a series of diagnostic tests concerning the reliability and
validity of the proposed measures, based on the empirical results shown in
Table IV.
The results in Table IV confirm the reliability and validity of the six
customer satisfaction dimensions, since all indices concerned exhibited high
values on their corresponding scales. Similarly, the results support the twodimensional solution concerning consumers' behavioural responses to
customer satisfaction. It must be noted, however, that the rejection of the threedimensional solution could well be attributed to the lack of appropriate scale
items that would encapsulate consumer attitudes in a better way. Moreover, the
problem could well be associated with the single time frame of the study
concerned that does not accommodate the dynamic nature of behavioural
Table IV.
Correlation coefficients
among the customer
satisfaction factors
(discriminant validity)
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CSPa
Errorb
0.65
0.78
0.73
0.71
0.03
0.03
0.04
0.04
0.59
0.06
0.59
0.57
0.09
0.04
0.47
0.71
0.03
0.04
0.60
0.88
0.74
0.49
0.05
0.02
0.04
0.03
(F4) Pricing
The loan interest rates of my bank are higher than other banks
The deposit interest rates of my bank are lower than other banks
I feel I pay a lot on commissions charged
0.68
0.52
0.61
0.04
0.05
0.07
0.78
0.83
0.03
0.01
0.69
0.49
0.02
0.07
0.61
0.82
0.08
0.02
0.55
0.79
0.49
0.08
0.03
0.08
Table V.
Measurement model
concerning the
customer satisfaction
construct
(F6) Convenience
The bank's branch is near your workplace
The bank's branch is near other state buildings and other banks
The bank's branch is near shopping centres I usually visit
Notes:
a
Completely standardised parameter
b
Standardised error
Word-of-mouth communications
I have recommended the bank to friends and acquaintances
I have encouraged friends and acquaintances to do business with the
bank
I have informed other customers of the bank about complaints I have
about the services offered by the bank (R)
Intention to switch
In the near future I intend to intensify my efforts to find a better bank
In the last year I have thought very seriously to switch banks
I have decided to do less business with the bank in the future
I have decided to switch to another bank that offers better service
CSPa
Errorb
0.91
0.01
0.92
0.01
0.89
0.02
0.93
0.92
0.94
0.96
0.02
0.01
0.01
0.01
Notes:
a
Completely standardised parameter
b
Standardised error
(R): denotes reverse coded item
Responses to
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Table VI.
Measurement model
concerning the
behavioural responses
construct
of service quality with the presence of additional factors, such as money for
value, innovativeness, and convenience.
A similar measurement model was also developed and tested concerning the
consumers' behavioural responses construct. These results are portrayed in
Table VII. A clear distinction has been proposed and verified in the results
concerning the presence of two dimensions of consumers' behavioural
responses to customer satisfaction, such as word of mouth communications
and then a mixture between intention and decision to switch. The latter has
strong managerial implications, since it signals differential behavioural
patterns between customers thinking of switching to competition and those
that have already decided to do so. It is understood that the intention of
individual customers to defect to a different supplier of services does not
materialise since there are numerous factors that may enable or disable the
defections. Such factors include, inter alia, the presence of a better alternative,
the cost to defect, and the time to search for alternatives. The detailed study
about the relationship between the consumers' intentions to defect and their
Structural equation model
Chi-square (2 )
Degrees of freedom (d.f)
2 /d.f.
GFIa
CFIa
RMSEAb
770
473
1.76
0.942
0.962
0.031
Notes:
CFI and GFI values close to 1 indicate a good fit
b
The lower the RMSEA values, the better the model is considered
a
Table VII.
Structural model
relationships between
customer satisfaction
and behavioural
responses
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Figure 2.
Structural equation
coefficients concerning
the effect of customer
satisfaction on
behavioural responses
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Appendix. Scale items
(All are five-point scales ranging from 1 (``strongly disagree'') to 5 (``strongly agree'').)
Question items concerning customer satisfaction
Please indicate the degree to which you agree/disagree with each one of the statements below,
referring to the characteristics your main bank possesses (offers to you):
.
You do not have to visit your bank many times to solve a particular problem.
The atmosphere inside the bank gives you a positive impression for the services it offers.
The climate among the bank's employees contributes to receiving better service.
Employees of the bank behave with discretion when you face a problem.
Bank employees do not hesitate to find the time to serve you better.
Bank employees know what your needs are and how the bank's products can satisfy
them.
The bank's employees often refer you to their supervisors in order not to serve you
personally and promptly.
The bank's branch is near other state buildings and other banks.
The loan interest rates of my bank are higher than other banks.
The deposit interest rates of my bank are lower than other banks.
The bank's ATM network collaborates with other banks ATM networks.
I have informed other customers of the bank about complaints I have about the service
offered by the bank.
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