Abstract
Perceived quality, expectations, customer satisfaction, and effect of customer satisfaction on repurchase likelihood are found to be higher for products than for services, but repurchase likelihood for products is lower. Retailers have the highest repurchase likelihood and score lowest on the other variables. A set of relevant category characteristics is used to further understand variation in both the levels of these variables and their relationships. Quality, expectations, satisfaction, and satisfaction's effect on repurchase are higher — and repurchase likelihood is lower — when competition, differentiation, involvement, or experience is high and when switching costs, difficulty of standardization, or ease of evaluating quality is low.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, Eugene W. (1993). “Firm, Industry, and National Indices of Customer Satisfaction.” In T. Swartz, S. Brown, and D.E. Bowen (eds.),Advances In Services Marketing Management. JAI Press, Greenwich, CT.
Anderson, Eugene W., and Claes Fornell. (1993). “A Customer Satisfaction Research Prospectus.” In Richard Oliver and Roland Rust (eds.),Frontiers In Services Marketing. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Anderson, Eugene W., Claes Fornell, and Donald R. Lehmann. (1993). “Customer Satisfaction, Market Share, and Profitability.” Working paper, National Quality Research Center, University of Michigan.
Anderson, Eugene W., and Mary W. Sullivan. (1993). “The Antecedents and Consequences of Customer Satisfaction,”Marketing Science 12 (Spring), 125–143.
Boulding, William, Richard Staelin, Ajay Kalra, and Valerie Zeithaml. (1992). “Conceputalizing and Testing a Dynamic Process Model of Service Quality,” Technical working paper 92-121, Marketing Science Institute (August).
Churchill, Gilbert A., and Carol Suprenant. (1982). “An Investigation into the Determinants of Customer Satisfaction,”Journal of Marketing Research 19 (November), 491–504.
Fornell, Claes. (1992). “A National Customer Satisfaction Barometer: The Swedish Experience,”Journal of Marketing 56 (January), 1–18.
Fornell, Claes, and William Robinson. (1983). “Industrial Organization and Customer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction.”Journal of Consumer Research 9 (March), 403–412.
Johnson, Michael D., and Claes Fornell. (1991). “A Framework for Comparing Customer Satisfaction Across Individuals and Product Categories,”Journal of Economic Psychology 12(2) (Fall), 267–286.
Oliver, Richard L. (1980). “A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions,”Journal of Marketing Research 17 (November), 460–469.
Oliver, Richard L., and Wayne DeSarbo. (1988). “Response Determinants in Satisfaction Judgments,”Journal of Consumer Research 14 (March), 495–507.
Reichheld, Frederick F., and W. Earl Sasser. (1990). “Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services,”Harvard Business Review 68 (September–October), 105–111.
Yi, Youjae. (1991). “A Critical Review of Consumer Satisfaction.” In Valarie A. Zeithmal (ed.),Review of Marketing 1989. Chicago: American Marketing Association.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
The author gratefully acknowledges the data provided through the funding of the Swedish Post Office and the support of the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan Business School. This research has benefitted from the comments of Claes Fornell, Michael D. Johnson, Donald R. Lehmann, Mary Sullivan, and participants in the Customer Satisfaction Workshop at the University of Michigan Business School.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Anderson, E.W. Cross-category variation in customer satisfaction and retention. Marketing Letters 5, 19–30 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00993955
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00993955