Measuring customer pre-purchase satisfaction

Wen-yeh Huang, Purdue University

Abstract

The potential impact of consumer satisfaction on a company's market share, competitive strength, net income, and profitability through consumers' repeated purchases or loyal behaviors makes it one of the most important goals for marketers. In order to maximize customer satisfaction, it is essential to understand factors that result in satisfaction as well as those that influence consumers' degree of satisfaction. Previous studies mainly addressed customer satisfaction as a post-purchase phenomenon. However, examining solely post-purchase satisfaction when investigating consumer satisfaction seems incomplete because multiple stages are involved in the purchase decision-making process. Not only the existence of pre-purchase satisfaction is intriguing to investigate, but it is also important in various aspects. Reasons pertain to the cost to retain or obtain customers, diminished differentiation among products, increasing competition among channels of distribution, and the belief that successful CRM efforts conceivably will have positive impacts on companies, including improved retention rates, higher repeat purchase behavior, lower propensity to switch, and higher profits. Satisfied pre-purchase experience may help develop solutions for these issues. These provide rationales why pre-purchase satisfaction is an especially critical issue for both marketing researchers and practitioners. The final issue pertaining to the import of pre-purchase satisfaction deals with theory development. As stated by Westbrook (1980), a more holistic understanding of what accounts for consumer satisfaction will facilitate establishment of theory as well as assurance of consumer welfare. With this knowledge, companies could develop marketing plans to actively engage in the early stages of consumers' buying process. Accordingly, there is need for an instrument that assesses customer satisfaction in the pre-purchase stage. The procedures for developing an instrument measuring consumers' satisfaction with pre-purchase activities conform to the framework proposed in the scale development literature by Churchill (1979) and DeVellis (2003). The factor structures, reliability, and construct validity were tested along the scale development process to assess the properties of this scale. Findings revealed a 21-item, 6-dimension scale measuring customers' pre-purchase satisfaction. Discussions and implications regarding the findings were provided. Limitations of the study as well as suggestions for future research were also presented.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Dubinsky, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Marketing

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