What Influences Customer Satisfaction When? Product and Service Over Time

Abstract

Though researchers have examined the changes in the effects of product and service performance on customer satisfaction, the short time frames of most studies prevents deeper understanding of this relationship. This study collects information from pre-purchase to 15 years post-purchase from 11,056 potential and existing automobile customers in the Taiwan market. The data is analyzed by a regression model. Results reveal that the importance of both product and service performance change over long time and the long-term trends of product and service performance weights are non-linear. In addition, from pre-purchase to the second year post-purchase, service weight is higher than product weight, but after the third year, product weight exceeds service weight. Product and service weight on customer satisfaction over time exhibit curvilinear relationships. Therefore, which one of product or service a company should stress depends on the stage in the customer relationship.