Abstract:

Customer Satisfaction:* The buyers cognitive state of being adequately or inadequately rewarded for the sacrifice he has undergone ( Howard and Sheth, 1969, p 145 / SERVQUAL papers.

* Satisfaction is a summary psychological state resulting when the emotion surrounding disconfirmed expectations is coupled with the consumers prior feelings about the consumption experience ( Oliver, 1981/ SERVQUAL papers.

* Customers satisfaction with a purchase depends on the products (or services) performance relative to buyers expectations. For example how is a patient to know if their open heart surgery was performed correctly if they have not undertaken medical training?

Type of service can also affect a persons evaluation, ? Customer satisfaction studies have shown that women who are in hospital for childbirth, on average, rate their hospital experience more favorable than those hospitalized for the cure of some disease ( Carman, J ?patient perceptions of service quality? Journal of services marketing). Overall satisfaction is an aggregation of all previous transaction specific evaluations which is updated after each specific

transaction, this provides a persons general perception of a firm including global impressions and experiences of the firms attributes, such as honesty, reliability and so on. Where as a with transaction specific satisfaction evaluations are generally based more on particular events within the transaction, e.g. specific employee friendliness or time spent waiting. Consumer Expectations: The predominant element which shapes consumers evaluation of a service is the consumers expectations, pre? Purchase beliefs about service provision that act as a standard or reference point for judging post purchase performance? (lovelock p 94).