By Kivuli Afanda
Businesses always seek to satisfy customers. Many invest insurveys to establish the level of customer satisfaction with their products and services.
Satisfied customers are more likely to make repeat purchases.
Customer satisfaction is positively related to profitability. It is an overall feeling or attitude a person has about a product or service after it has been consumed.
The feeling of satisfaction comes after interaction with the product or service. Companies need to determine the levels of customer satisfaction.
However, it is strategically more useful if these companies identify factors that drive customer satisfaction and specific aspects of their products or services customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with.
This knowledge would enable companies to formulate effective strategies to improve performance in areas of specific importance to customers and ultimately increase levels of satisfaction and sales. However, many satisfied customers defect. High customer satisfaction levels cannot guarantee loyalty and future purchases.
Trust In Relationships
Customer loyalty in a brand develops from trust. Trust is a feeling of security held by the consumer that the brand will meet expectations. This is similar to trust in relationships between human beings.
Satisfaction with a brand leads to functional connections between customers and the brand and contributes to trust. Trust builds into personal connections. The combination of functional and personal connections result in committed relationships between customers and the brand.
Customers who have only functional connections with the brand are easily lured away by competing offers of higher value despite their otherwise high satisfaction with the brand.
Similarly, customers who have personal connections with the brand are easily lured away when offered higher functionality. Thus, customers who have personal connections are merely satisfied and pay attention to competing offers and advertisements.
The key to loyalty is customer brand trust, which leads to commitment. Researchers have developed brand scales for measuring trust and further refinement of these scales is on going.
Commitment acts as a barrier to defection. Whereas merely satisfied customers defect, committed ones do not . They are unlikely to have ‘one night stands’ with competing brands even when tempted!
The writer is a Masters Student at the United States International University, Nairobi.
afandakiv@gmail.com
