2.2. Customer Satisfaction

”Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

Bill Gates (*1955), founder of Microsoft

Customer satisfaction is a measure of the degree to which a product or service meets or exceeds the customer’s expectations.¹³ Satisfaction is the comparative judgment from a customer resulting from a product’s perceived performance in relation to his or her expectations. If there is a deficit in performance and expectations remain unmet, the customer is dissatisfied and disappointed. The consumer is satisfied, if the performance matches the expectations. If expectation is exceeded by performance, the customer is highly satisfied or delighted.¹⁴

Customer satisfaction is not only an after-sales phenomenon, in which the customer judges purchased goods. In customer behavior research customer satisfaction is used as a hypothetical construct, which expresses the consensus between subjective expectations and the actually experienced satisfaction with products or services. Unmet expectations will lead to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfied customers will either just move on to competition without further notification (unvoiced complainers) and/or communicate their dissatisfaction to the company (complaint) or other people (negative word-of-mouth). In marketing, customer satisfaction is seen as major factor influencing customer loyalty and customer retention.¹⁵

With the advent of the Internet and rapidly proliferating channels of information, consumers now are very well informed. At the click of a finger, they are able to compare the product offerings and services from different competitors. In addition, the Internet also provides an easy communication and information exchange platform between customers. This facilitates information sharing on costs, features, services, rankings, likes and dislikes. Therefore products face rigorous comparisons and general consensuses. Products and services become comparable and replaceable.¹⁶

This means that within customer orientation individualization and customization are representing a great possibility to differentiate from competition.

Today hard facts like profit, turnover and costs are no longer sufficient and no longer in the center of entrepreneurial planning. Nowadays, so called “soft skills” like customer loyalty and customer satisfaction are elements of major importance. Customer satisfaction needs to be effectively implemented in the company’s strategy, to ensure long-term success and competitive advantage.¹⁷

¹³ http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/customer-satisfaction-CSAT [10 June 2013]
¹⁴ Kotler, P; Keller, K. L. (2007), p. 14
¹⁵ http://wirtschaftslexikon.gabler.de/Archiv/3922/kundenzufriedenheit-v6.html [10 June 2013]
¹⁶ Kotler, P; Keller, K. L. (2007), p. 133
¹⁷ Kaiser, M.-O. (2004), Chapter 2