Customer Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Evidence

The growing number of academic studies on customer satisfaction and the mixed findings they report complicate efforts among managers and academics to identify the antecedents to, and outcomes of, businesses having more-versus less-satisfied customers. These mixed findings and the growing emphasis by...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 16 - 35
Main Authors Szymanski, David M., Henard, David H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer Nature B.V 01.12.2001
Subjects
Consumers
Customer satisfaction
Customers
Equity
Marketing
Meta-analysis
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Summary:The growing number of academic studies on customer satisfaction and the mixed findings they report complicate efforts among managers and academics to identify the antecedents to, and outcomes of, businesses having more-versus less-satisfied customers. These mixed findings and the growing emphasis by managers on having satisfied customers point to the value of empirically synthesizing the evidence on customer satisfaction to assess current knowledge. To this end, the authors conduct a meta-analysis of the reported findings on customer satisfaction. They document that equity and disconfirmation are most strongly related to customer satisfaction on average. They also find that measurement and method factors that characterize the research often moderate relationship strength between satisfaction and its antecedents and outcomes. The authors discuss the implications surrounding these effects and offer several directions for future research.
ISSN:0092-0703
1552-7824
DOI:10.1177/0092070301291002