BUSINESS RESEARCH

Business Research

Business Research

Introduction

To sustain competition and long-term profitability, businesses devote themselves not only to attracting new customers but also to retaining existing customers. Several studies have demonstrated that customer satisfaction reduces price sensitivity and increases customer loyalty, cross-buying and positive word of mouth. Hansemark and Albinsson (2004) also noted that customer satisfaction directly influences customer retention and firm market share. Therefore, improving service quality to enhance customer satisfaction is a critical issue for business managers in today's competitive global marketplace. Ensuring excellent service quality and high customer satisfaction is an important issue and a challenge for the service industry. Today, service quality is considered a critical measure of organizational performance and therefore, continues to capture the attention of managers and academics.

Discussion and Analysis

Studies have extensively examined service quality measurement to help superiors effectively manage service quality delivery. Most businesses agree that customer service quality when provided to target customers affects global business performance to some degree and becomes a crucial business management strategy. Therefore, most businesses focus on customer satisfaction when undertaking surveys of satisfaction and dissatisfaction and tend to neglect employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction has become a key issue in the last two decades. A number of studies have found a positive relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and company performance.

Recent research has shown that employee satisfaction can be linked to customer satisfaction and business profit (Pfeffer, 1999). Other scholars have shown a relationship between a company's financial success and its commitment to management practices that treat employees as assets. Linking information from employee opinion surveys with important organizational outcomes is one area of potential value. When a relationship can be established between elements of an organization's work environment and important performance outcomes, the organization can use these elements to gain a competitive advantage. Companies have ...