The impact of customer-to-customer interaction and customer homogeneity on customer satisfaction in tourism service—The service encounter prospective

• Published in: Tourism management (1982) Vol. 28; no. 6; pp. 1518 - 1528
• Main Author: Wu, Cedric Hsi-Jui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 2007
• Subjects: Customer homogeneity; Customer satisfaction; Customer-to-customer interaction; Customer satisfaction; Customer homogeneity; Customer-to-customer interaction
• ISSN: 0261-5177; 1879-3193
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2007.02.002

Customer satisfaction has been an important topic in tourism service management. Many researchers have argued that customer-to-customer interaction may affect customers’ evaluation of the service experience. Consequently, the objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between customer-to-customer interaction, customer homogeneity and customer satisfaction. This research adopted questionnaires to investigate tourists traveling to foreign areas from Taiwan. In conclusion, the perception of customer-to-customer interaction incidents could be extracted into six factors, including protocol and sociable incidents, violent incidents, grungy incidents, malcontent incidents, crude incidents, and inconsiderate incidents. The results of the analysis indicate that “protocol and sociable incidents” have a significantly positive impact on the “evaluation of fellow customers”. However, “malcontent incidents” have a significantly negative impact on customer satisfaction. “Marital homogeneity” has a positive influence on the “evaluation of fellow customers”. Finally, “evaluation of fellow customers” has a positive influence on customer satisfaction. Some suggestions for practitioners to manage customer compatibility and enhance customer satisfaction are proposed.