Jakość a satysfakcja - różnice i wzajemne relacje

Many authors identifies service quality with satisfaction perceived by customers. However, that issues are not identical. Therefore, this paper presents differences and mutual relations among these two categories. In case of analysis of mutual nature of relationship between the service quality and customer satisfaction constructs the author has concentrated on three main concepts showing that interrelations (because there is a lack of consensus concerning the specification of the service quality-satisfaction relationship). First, according to some authors (e.g. Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988; Cronin, Taylor, 1992; Rust, Oliver, 1994; Anderson, Fornell, 1994), service quality has been identified as an antecedent to satisfaction. However, some researches contradict that and claim that customer satisfaction is an antecedent of service quality (e.g. Carman, 1990; Bitner, 1990; Bolton, Drew, 1991; Bitner, Hubert, 1994). Then the third alternative conceptualization of the service quality - satisfaction relationship suggest that neither satisfaction nor service quality may be antecedent to the other (e.g. Teas, 1993; McAlexander et al., 1994; lacobucci et al., 1995; Dabholkar 1995) - it means that perceived service quality is both an antecedent and a consequence of satisafaction. In sum, the dominant conceptualization suggests service quality is an antecedent of the satisafction construct.