Customer Satisfaction and the Services Marketing Mix

Abstract

As the U.S. economy continues to shift from a manufacturing to a service orientation, it is important for marketers to understand the importance of reactively adapting to customers through the marketing concept. This manuscript deals with one aspect of that adaptive process: customer service satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to develop a model (see Figure 1) that suggests the possible effect of each individual element of the services marketing mix on the customer's perception of the service. The customer experiences the service through the marketing mix; the critical elements in the services marketing mix that influence customer expectations being place, physical evidence, participants, and process. The customer's experience of the service, the feelings and perceptions, have a pervasive influence on attracting new customers and retaining existing customers. The proposed model is formulated on the basis of propositions that relate marketing mix variables to the customer's perception of service. The model incorporates customer expectations derived from his or her own experience or others' experiences with the service, the service price relative to the price of other identical services, and the organization's promotional methods for communicating the features of the service offered.

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