Drivers of Service Satisfaction: Linking Customer Satisfaction to the Service Concept and Customer Characteristics

The “service-dominant logic” focuses on the firm and the customer cocreating value, as defined by the customer. Achieving this orientation requires firms to understand which components of the service concept are most important to different subsets of customers. However, research on the relative importance to customers of core and peripheral service components has produced mixed results. Using data from the U.S. airline industry, the fact that the relative influence on customer satisfaction of core (e.g., operational performance) and peripheral (e.g., service interactions and physical setting) service components is moderated by customer characteristics is demonstrated. Consistent with Vargo and Lusch's premises that “the customer is always a co-creator of value” and that value is “uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary,” the conclusion that a parsimonious model of customer satisfaction demands consideration of both the service concept and customer characteristics is reached.