Reconciling the Customer Satisfaction - Word of Mouth Relationship
“Satisfied customers talk to five others, while dissatisfied customers talk to 15 others.” This is a much propagated piece of marketing folklore. But is it true? WOM is informal communication between consumers about a product or a service (Anderson 1998;
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his study uses two independent variables: type of service (EAI versus BRD) and level of satisfaction (high, moderate, low), resulting in a 2 x 3 fully factorial design. Data was collected from undergraduate students at a large university. A pilot study (N = 35) and a pre-test (N= 123) had confirmed the relevancy of dry cleaning (BRD) and tattooing (EAI) to students. Furthermore, research has shown that the relationship between satisfaction and WOM is the same regardless of whether student or non-student samples are used (de Matos and Rossi 2008). In the main study, respondents read one of six scenarios and then completed a questionnaire, resulting in N = 415. Measurement The type of service (EAI versus BRD) consisted of three dimensions (Price, Arnould, and Tierney 1995): emotional arousal (high versus low), spatial proximity (intimate versus distant) and the duration of the encounter (enduring versus brief). Emotional arousal was measured using an accepted five-item, bipolar scale (Mehrabian 1974), while both physical distance and the duration of the encounter were measured using dichotomous measures using the thresholds determined by Price et al (1995). Lastly, customer satisfaction was measured using a single item 11-point scale which has outperformed a number of other satisfaction scales in comparative tests (Wirtz and Lee 2003). The scale ranged from “Not at all satisfied” (0) to “Completely satisfied” (10) and is based on earlier work in customer satisfaction (Westbrook and Oliver 1981). The dependent variable in this study is WOM. The WOM measure used in this study was a modified version of an established WOM measure (Harrison-Walker 2001) and consisted of three items that captured WOM activity. Responses were captured on an 11 point scale (0 to 10) similar anchored with two commonly used labels – “Not at all likely” and “Extremely likely” (Reichheld 2003). Previous research has shown that the measure of WOM activity has high levels of reliability and validity (Lang 2009). RESULTS Manipulation checks To check whether the satisfaction manipulation was successful, a one-way ANOVA was conducted. Perceived satisfaction with the encounter varied significantly (F (2, 415) = 1562.46, p < .001) across the low (M = 1.06, SD = 1.48), moderate (M = 6.82, SD = 1.54), and high satisfaction conditions (M = 9.48, SD = .68) and each of the three manipulations differed significantly from the other two (ps < .001). These results indicate that the satisfaction manipulation in this study was successful. Cross-tabulations and chi-square tests were run to test for differences in duration and distance, while an independent samples t-test was conducted to check how emotional arousal varied across dry cleaning (BRD) and tattooing (EAI). Results revealed that tattooing was perceived as enduring (93%, Ȥ2 (1, 415) = 314.03, p < .001), intimate (92%, Ȥ2 (1, 415) = 162.68, p < .001) and affectively charged (M = 5.16, SD = .88, t (415) = -20.61, p < .001), whereas dry cleaning was perceived as brief (94%), distant (69%), and rational (M = 3
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