A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Service Changes on Customer Attitudes

Abstract

The authors develop a longitudinal model of the effect of a service change on customer attitudes about service quality. The model is estimated with data from a field experiment with three survey waves. Service changes are found to have a strong influence on customer evaluations of service quality through their effect on customer perceptions of current performance and disconfirmation. The effect of disconfirmation is larger and the effect of prior attitudes is smaller directly after the service change than in a subsequent time period.