Merging service quality and service satisfaction. An empirical test of an integrative model

Abstract

Recent research linking service quality and service satisfaction has raised issues which require conceptual and empirical elaboration. Among these are the conceptual overlap as well as distinctions between these two customer judgments, the role of expectations and perceptions and the question whether service satisfaction is a superordinate concept to quality or vice versa. In this article an integrative model is presented in which both concepts and their antecedents are delineated on the basis of conceptual advances made in the services marketing literature recently. Moreover, this model is empirically tested in a health care setting to determine the nature of the relationship between service quality and service satisfaction. The results suggest that service quality should be treated as an antecedent of service satisfaction. It was also found that service satisfaction, in addition to service quality, is a direct function of disconfirmation and perception. Furthermore, service quality and disconfirmation seem to be directly related to perception.