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This paper deals with services provided within an organization, outlining a model to measure internal customer satisfaction and perceptions of internal quality. Adapting the concept of the service profit chain which is used still frequently to illustrate the relationship between external customer satisfaction and economic success, this article proposes that the external service quality can be attained only after internal performance prerequisites have been investigated and optimized. Additionally, it introduces the concept of an internal service barometer, and presents the results of an empirical study to evaluate the relationships between internal service quality, internal customer satisfaction and internal customer retention.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the strategies of formal customer evaluations and the use of satisfied customer index in the Swedish commercial real estate industry.

This research is based on an inventory of 24 commercial real estate companies use of formal customer evaluations and an analysis of 15 interviews with top-level managers in the Swedish commercial real estate sector.

Only half of the companies included in the study conduct formal evaluations, although they are considered to work customer oriented. Two different strategies for using formal evaluations is, for improvement work and for signalling quality. One proposed explanation to why only half of the companies conduct formal evaluations is the possibility that the official Swedish Real Estate Barometer is not sufficient if the company would like to use the result for organisational development. There are instead indications that this barometer mainly is used in publicity and marketing purpose, to signal quality.

The research in this paper is limited to Swedish commercial real estate sector. But, the overall strategies for conducting formal evaluations should be applicable in general.

The insight the paper provides regarding how the industry perceive the Swedish Real Estate Barometer gives direct implications of improvements of the barometer.

It provides an insight regarding the use of formal customer evaluations and a proposition of how the Swedish Real Estate Barometer could be changed to better support and fulfil the aim of being a barometer for benchmarking.

With the development of the American Customer satisfaction index (ACSI), research on customer satisfaction measurement or evaluation methods have become significant in the last decade. Most of international customer satisfaction barometers or indices are evolved based on the cause and effect relationship model of ACSI. Of critical importance to validity of customer satisfaction indices is how to construct a measurement attribute or indicator model and provide an effective implementation method effectively. Quality Funcion Deployment (QFD) is a very useful tool for translating the customer voice into product design through quality engineering. In fact, this is a methodology for measuring and analyzing evaluation indicators by their relationship matrix. In this paper, we will make an effort to integrate the framework of QFD into teh measurement problem of customer satisfaction, and also develop a new multi‐phase QFD model for evaluation of Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI). From the houses of quality in this model, the evaluation indicators impacting on customer’s global satisfaction are identified by means of their relationship matrix. Then the evaluation indicator hierarchy and its measurement method for the customer satisfaction index are presented graphically. Furthermore, survey data from the Chinese autombobile maintenance sector and a relevant case study are utilized to show the implementation method of the QFD model used to measure and analyze of customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to implement a multi-criteria preference disaggregation approach to measure logistics service quality (LSQ) of manufacturing companies’ supply chains.

A total 216 Greek manufacturing companies took part in a survey with the use of a dedicated questionnaire. They were asked to assess the LSQ of their primary supplier regarding a predefined set of criteria and sub-criteria. The data were analysed with the multi-criteria satisfaction analysis method, which represents an ordinal regression based approach used for customer satisfaction measurement.

Weak points of the suppliers as well as dimensions that drive satisfaction were identified. Furthermore, the competitive advantages of the suppliers as well as their priorities for improvement were spotted.

The sampling framework, including only the manufacturing companies operating in a specific area of Greece, does not ensure the full generalisation of the results. A larger sample of manufacturing companies from all over Greece would be useful to obtain more reliable results and would enable the comparison of LSQ for different manufacturing sectors.

The method used to assess LSQ of manufacturing companies can be installed as a permanent customer satisfaction barometer to measure, control and improve the LSQ provided to manufacturing companies as well as to other business sectors.

This paper proposes a method to explore the relationships between LSQ and industrial customers’ satisfaction to prioritise strategic plans of companies in the supply chains.

Based on theory from consumer behavior and cognitive psychology, the purpose of this paper is to discuss and test corporate image and customer satisfaction as two routes to customer loyalty. Based on data from 600 individual customers categorized as having high or low service expertise of three companies within the package tour industry, a conceptual model is proposed and tested empirically using structural equation modeling. The data used in the study are included in The Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer. The paper concludes by claiming that for complex services, corporate image and customer satisfaction are not two separate routes to customer loyalty. Corporate image impacts customer loyalty directly whereas customer satisfaction does not. This finding was consistent with high and low service expertise. These results challenge the disconfirmation paradigm which predicts customer satisfaction as the primary route to customer loyalty. From a managerial perspective, information regarding the relative strength of the two routes is vital with regard to resource allocation in order to improve customer loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a new public healthcare patient satisfaction index (PSI) in Indonesia. More clearly, the index measures overall patient satisfaction and its determinants.

Literature review was performed to identify the determinants of patient satisfaction. Data collection was carried out by using survey with questionnaire. The survey involves 161 patients of one public healthcare service institution in Tangerang, Indonesia. The authors conducted some statistical analyses, namely exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach α analysis, and multiple regression analysis.

A new public healthcare PSI was developed and tested. The index consists of overall patient satisfaction and its determinants. The determinants include the quality of healthcare delivery, the quality of healthcare personnel, the adequacy of healthcare resources, the quality of administration process, perceived value, perceived sacrifice, and image. Furthermore, the new index was called as IPHSI-PSB.

This research was carried out only in Tangerang, Indonesia and only involved one public healthcare service. Hence, the index needs to be tested in different cities in Indonesia. Furthermore, it is also needed to involve more public healthcare service institutions in future researches.

Public healthcare service managers can use IPHSI-PSB to monitor, measure, and improve the patient satisfaction of the public healthcare service institution they manage.

This paper has developed and tested a new public healthcare patient satisfaction index.

To build a National Consumer Satisfaction Index for Turkey, drawing on models already in existence in Sweden, the USA, Norway and the European Union. In so doing, to remedy observed practical shortcomings of those indices.

Structural equation modelling was applied to the general model, in the specific context of the mobile telephone market in Turkey, based on data collected by questionnaire from more than 1,500 subscribers.

The purpose‐designed new customer satisfaction index exhibits good fit and strong explanatory power. It is the most comprehensive so far developed, by virtue of adding two new factors to the model.

The new Turkish index was tested for validity and reliability only in the context of mobile telephony; it should ideally now be further tested in different sectors, periodically, to validate comparisons with other national variants. More latent variables and economic data should be incorporated to analyse the links among the index itself, loyalty and economic consequences. It is suggested that the partial least squares method could have been more appropriate than the maximum likelihood iteration procedure actually employed.

Apart from its obvious role in assessing customer satisfaction in a domestic market, a customer satisfaction index can be extended to the level of comparing whole economies. This is of considerable significance for Turkey's ambitions to join the European Union.

This article enhances and extends an established but relatively little known quantitative method for evaluating customer satisfaction, and thereby offers an important diagnostic tool to marketing planners

The purpose of this paper is to ask two questions. How does the customer's loyalty in the banking sector change (at both the structural and quantitative level) in the light of the financial and banking crises? Are any differences observed in those changes between developing and developed countries?

The paper consists of two parts: theoretical and empirical. In the theoretical part the authors discuss the nature of the banking and financial crises, the historical perspective of banking crises occurrence and main causes and consequences of those crises. The second part of the paper demonstrates statistical analysis of the obtained data from the Polish and European banking sector. The authors also present socio‐demographic characteristic of the research samples and the character of the bank‐client relations, comparative analysis of customer satisfaction index changes in the European banking sector and structural equation modes for the Polish banking sector for the years 2007‐2009.

The analyses allowed the authors to confirm the main research hypotheses: first, clients of developing European countries demonstrate generally lower satisfaction and loyalty levels than clients of banks in Western Europe. Second, the recent banking crisis has affected the level of customer satisfaction much more strongly in developing European countries than in developed ones. Third, the recent banking crisis has changed the character of the process of building customer satisfaction and loyalty in Poland by strengthening the influence of the image area.

Hardly anyone has tried to measure the influence of the banking crises at the level of customers’ satisfaction and the structure of the process of building long‐term relations between banks and their clients before.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse customer service effects in creating satisfaction and loyalty. The other antecedents of satisfaction and loyalty such as perceived value and service quality were not analysed in this research.

Exploratory factor analysis was used to classify customer service items. Confirmatory factor analysis was not applied because of there was not any significant theory based on the classification of shopping centre customer service (SCCS). The research model was developed to show the relationships and the effects of customer service which were tested through multiple regression analyses.

As a result of findings, customer service variables were classified into eight factors. Only four of them had effects on satisfaction and loyalty. The findings indicated that customer services had effects on customer satisfaction and loyalty. It was shown that “customer services about atmosphere (CSA)” affected both satisfaction and loyalty whereas “incentive customer services (ICS)”, “customer services in encounter stage (CSE)”, and “customer services about payment (CSP)” affected only loyalty.

The research model was about only shopping centres’ customer services; it could not reflect the customer services offered by the other retail formats since the survey was conducted in the limited area and with small sample. The research did not reflect the complete retailing landscape since the survey was applied to only brick and mortar shopping centre customers. The research model was developed according to the customer services offered by Turkish shopping centres and customers’ perceptions about satisfaction and loyalty were measured. The findings can be applicable each shopping centre that offers such customer services and has nearly the same concept. It is agreed that since this research has been conducted in Izmir it reflects the Turkish consumers’ cultural intentions.

Although the impact degrees are at low level, customer service is an important tool for creating customer satisfaction and loyalty. According to the SCCS model in this research; it is strongly recommended that CSA, ICS, CSE, and CSP should be improved by shopping centres in order to gain customer satisfaction and loyalty. The last result of the research was surprising because it was expected that all customer service factors in the SCCS model would affect satisfaction and loyalty significantly. Although there were not any direct effects of basic customer services, facilitative customer services, customer services about children, informative customer services on satisfaction and loyalty, shopping centre management should not ignore these types of services since they are really important in the literature. Since the retailer type is important when developing customer service, each retailer should define its own customer service level according to its retail mix strategy.

The research is the first paper that surveyed customer service effects in creating satisfaction and loyalty in Turkey through a conceptual model. The study has suggested a new model called SCCS model which classified customer service into eight factors and showed the relationships among customer service, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. The paper has developed the importance of customer service in the Turkish shopping centres.

Internet service providers (ISPs) constitute a highly competitive market, while the unstable market conditions directly affect customer preferences and make ISPs to develop a “mass customization” strategy, individualizing services and approaching every customer in an individual way. However, customization requires an in‐depth analysis of current customer preferences and an evaluation of future behavior. The main objective of the paper is to present a framework for analyzing changes of customer preferences.

The paper presents detailed results of independent customer satisfaction surveys conducted in different time periods in the Greek ISP market. The analyses are based on non‐parametric statistical techniques and the multicriteria satisfaction analysis method, which is a multicriteria preference disaggregation approach.

Results are mainly focused on the evaluation of potential trends of e‐customer preferences. Furthermore, results of a benchmarking analysis are also presented, based on the evolution of satisfaction levels for the quality characteristics of the provided services.

Future research in the context of the presented study may be focused on satisfaction benchmarking analysis, given the rapid changes of the market conditions. An extended satisfaction survey will give the ability to analyze customer preferences in comparison with the main ISP competitors.

The presented study may help organizations in highly competitive markets dominated by rapid technological progresses to track short‐term changes of customer preferences.

The analyses presented are based on the combination of multicriteria analysis and non‐parametric statistics. The main advantage of these methods is that they respect the qualitative (ordinal) form of collected survey data.