Measuring Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction has become an important construct for many firms, and it also appears frequently in academic theories of consumer behavior. It is typically viewed as a global evaluation made by the customer after his or her consumption. This evaluative aspect is something customer satisfaction shares with many other customer-related constructs—such as attitudes, image, emotions, and perceived quality—and it reflects that evaluations along a negative-positive dimension is a fundamental aspect of how customers respond to the environment. Indeed, human beings appear to be almost programmed to make evaluations of objects and events in negative and positive terms. In contrast to some other frequently used evaluation [Page 930]constructs in marketing, however, customer satisfaction is a postconsumption construct thus requiring an existing customer (i.e., an individual who ...