1、中文 3832字 标题： Why do customers switch? The dynamics of satisfaction versus loyalty 原文 ： Why do customers switch? The dynamics of satisfaction versus loyalty Introduction Customer loyalty is increasingly being recognized by American businesses as a path to long-term business profitability. Consider tw
2、o firms, say two hospitals, “A” and “B”, with identical facilities and capacity. Both have the same patient load, and consequently the same degree of facility utilization. However, hospital “A” has a loyal following of patients. In contrast, hospital “B” fills its facilities by acquiring new patient
3、s every year because the old patients never return. Which one has greater profitability? Or, in the case of non-profit hospitals, which one is being run more cost-efficiently? The answer is very clear: without question, it is hospital “A” the one with a loyal patient following. This is because findi
4、ng new customers and doing business with them takes time, effort, and money. Hospital “B” for example, has to invest heavily in advertising to consumers and in personal selling to physicians, so as to attract new patients. Then, it has to spend the effort and precious employee time in setting up new
5、 patient records, for explaining the hospital procedures, and for understanding each patients individual needs,and guiding them through the treatment procedures. The same is true for other service businesses. Insurance agents know, for example, how cumbersome it is to obtain new customers and to set
6、 up their policies. Car mechanics who have handled a particular car in the past become more efficient in diagnosing new problems. Stockbrokers understand their established clients financial goals better. And repeat guests in a hotel are familiar with the hotel facilities and will not call uponemploy
7、ee time to seek information. Although companies are realizing the value of keeping customers loyal, no one knows for sure how to do it. Companies measure customer satisfaction, and hope that if the satisfaction scores are good, the customers will stay with the firm. But even satisfied customers leav
8、e for the lure of a competitors offer. Companies such as airlines and hotels offer frequent guest rewards, yet consumers will still shop around and switch companies from transaction to transaction. According to some observers, customer defection runs as high as 50 percent in many industries (Cannie,
9、 1992). We explore the problem of customer defection in service industries. Service industries present a more difficult setting for understanding customer disloyalty as opposed to manufactured goods industries. This is because, for service firms, the basis of consumer choice and continued patronage
10、are less obvious. Services are intangible, and they cannot be completely standardized. At the minimum, they vary according to the mood of the service provider and service customer at the moment of service delivery. Thus, in service businesses, what is given and received is relatively intangible. Con
11、sequently, customer evaluative criteria are less well articulated, and the appraisal of the value received is much more subjective (Berry, 1980； Keaveney, 1995； Lovelock, 1991； Zeithaml et al., 1993). It would be of interest, therefore, to understand customer disloyalty for service businesses. The s
12、econd conception and measure of service quality is SERVQUAL. Proposed by researchers Parasuraman et al. (1988), SERVQUAL measures service quality as five dimensions: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles. These dimensions are defined as follows: (1) Reliability: Ability to p
13、erform the promised service dependably and accurately； (2) Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service； (3) Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence； (4) Empathy: Caring, individualized attention the firm provides i
14、ts customers； (5) Tangibles: Physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of personnel. In most research studies done by SERVQUALs authors, Reliability has been found to be the most influential determinant of overall service quality or of customer satisfaction with the service. But an important qu
15、estion remains unanswered. This question is: Are the dimensions of SERVQUAL that influence satisfaction also the ones that influence loyalty? We examine this question here. We collected consumer responses on their experience with either of these two services. Our respondents answered a questionnaire
16、 either for a health clinic or a car repair service facility. Respondents were recruited from PTA organizations, mailbox drops, and mall intercepts in two US cities. One hundred and ten customers answered the survey for a car repair service, and 123 for a health care facility they utilized within th
17、e past one year. Operationalization of measures The questionnaire contained the measures of overall satisfaction, intention to switch, technical quality, functional quality, and the SERVQUAL scale. Satisfaction was measured by this item: Overall, with this facility, I am: (1) Extremely dissatisfied.
18、 (2) Somewhat dissatisfied. (3) Feel neutral. (4) Somewhat satisfied. (5) Extremely satisfied. In the marketing literature, consumer loyalty has generally been measured as preponderance or bias of past behavioral frequency in favor of a specific brand (e.g. Dick and Basu, 1994). However, such a meas
19、ure is more suited to consumer goods. For services (particularly for high involvement services that are examined in this research), the measure likely to be most useful to managers is the one that questions respondents on their predisposition to switching suppliers or service providers. We used this
20、 measure to assess the loyalty the respondents felt toward their present health care and car repair service providers. A further point of clarification is that we used only three response categories because of the small sample size； a more graduated scale would have yielded a rather small cell size
21、of switchers. Moreover, we would have had to subsequently use an arbitrary dividing line to regroup respondents into loyal and not-loyal customers. The three-point scale, with fewer in-between categories, reduces the need for such arbitrary regrouping by researchers. Nevertheless, our measure of cus
22、tomer loyalty must be viewed as imperfect. In the discussion section, we suggest improvement in the measure for future research. The dynamics of satisfaction versus loyalty。 The foregoing statement about what drives loyalty should be understood with the proviso that loyalty is not entirely divorced
23、from satisfaction. The disloyalty/loyalty groups contrasted are from a subpopulation that is already satisfied. Dissatisfied customers are almost always prone to switch (as our data show). That is hardly news. What is news is that even some satisfied customers would switch. In separating disloyal versus loyal customers, therefore, managers have to ask what drives loyalty beyond
