Abstract
M.Phil. (Engineering Management)
For over a decade, customer satisfaction has received increasing attention in marketing.
Customer satisfaction is related to loyalty, which in tum is linked to increased profitability,
market share, growth, and decreased costs.8
During the 1980s, Japanese firms won major market shares with their product quality and
speed. As most leading western companies caught up with their Japanese competitors on
quality, most Japanese firms were focusing on a new strategy to meet and exceed changing
customer expectations in the 1990s.1 To produce loyalty to an organization became one of
the most popular marketing trends of the last decade.1·32 However, customers remain loyal
only as long as they are completely satisfied with the quality of the service or product
provided? Research results show that it costs five to seven times more to recruit a new
customer than it does to retain one." Numerous research studies have shown that the
average customer who is happy with a product and a service tells at least three people of his
satisfaction, while a dissatisfied customer tells 9 or 10 people about his dissatisfactionf
Knowledge of customers' perceptions and attitudes about an organization's business will
greatly enhance its opportunity to make better business decisions." More than 80 percent of
innovations in high-performing companies come from customers' ideas.'