A STUDY ON SERVICE CUSTOMIZATION IMPACT TOWARDS CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, LOYALTY AND TRUST

Effectively managing customer service satisfaction is a topic of vast interest for marketing practitioners and academics alike because of their positive impact on customer behavior and firm performance. Customer satisfaction is one of the primary factors leading to customer loyalty and continuation of relationships. Various studies have found that higher level of customer satisfaction leads to greater customer loyalty and word of mouth recommendations (Guo. 2009, Lai. 2009,). Service customization, evaluation and satisfaction are intricately related to perceived service quality (Parasuraman 1988; Zeithaml 1996). Marketing researchers have treated service quality and satisfaction both as perceptual constructs from a disconfirmation perspective. Service quality has been defined as “the outcome of an evaluation process where the consumer compares his expectations with the service he has received” or the difference between expected service and perceived service (Parasuraman 1985, Zeithaml 1990). Customer satisfaction has also been conceptualized as the perceived discrepancy between prior expectations and actual performance (Oliver 1980, Tse & Wilton 1988), although it has been suggested that quality appraisal is more cognitive-oriented, while satisfaction is a more emotional evaluation (Bagozzi 1992, Lai. 2009).