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Retailer Controllable Sources of Customer Dissatisfaction: The Importance of After-Sales Service1

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Proceedings of the 1984 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference

Abstract

Most consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction research is focussed either on identifying product classes and personal/usage characteristics associated with dissatisfaction, or is focussed on modelling the psychological processes underlying the phenomenon. Most retailers, on the other hand, focus only on handling customer complaints. This paper focusses on retailer controllable sources of customer dissatisfaction. Findings of a large scale study of recent automobile buyers are reported, which show that after‐sales service is an important correlate of customer dissatisfaction. Specific aspects of after‐sales service are highlighted for retailer attention and possible retail responses are discussed.

1The authors contributed equally to this paper. Names are listed alphabetically and do not denot e senior and junior authorship. The authors thank Pe t er Thirkell of Victoria Univers ity of We llington, New Zeal and a nd the management of General Motors (Canada) Limited f or suppl ying t he da ta for the study. This paper a nd the r esearch reported in it were completed while t he a uthors were doctora l students at t he Uni versity of West ern Ontario, London, Canada.

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Vredenburg, H., Wee, CH. (2015). Retailer Controllable Sources of Customer Dissatisfaction: The Importance of After-Sales Service1 . In: Lindquist, J.D. (eds) Proceedings of the 1984 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16973-6_63

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