thesis

Chapter 2:

Literature review:

This chapter provides the background and the problem discussion of the area of this research, leading down to the specific research question. As discussed in chapter one, CRM established between CRM, customer satisfaction and telecom has been identified as the research area of this thesis. Hence, theoretical, this study is positioned within this area. Particularly, the focus is given to the study of how company’s uses CRM, with emphasis is on the objective. Furthermore, the CRM process is covered as well show the company’s organizational structure is affected by CRM.

Background of study:

“Today “customers” are very important factors in company’s management with the power to change their short-term and long term-term police strategies. Customer relationship management can be defined as a process that takes place in 4 stages (Kaufman, 2001) and is based on developing relationships with customers. STAGE 1Collecting and processing the data customer behavior  and the generated revenues in the past STAGE 2 The continuous update of the profile for the needs and demands of the customer STAGE 3Permanent adaptation and improvement of the services offered to customers STAGE 4 Assuring the connection of the staff’s activity in the 3 stages.”

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not depending on us. We are depending on him. He is not interruption on our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider on our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so. ” (mahatma Ghandi)

“According to (lacroix, 1996) for attracting a new customer, the key factor for the success of any company lies in the company ability to broaden its base of customer, And the failure of the policy by recruiting new customers is the means by which a company may enter into decline of the company. The principle for the attraction of the customer is to give the best offer, the most representative targets, the best time and the best argument.”

“The competitors process of the customer that occurs in any market, a process that must be prevented through the design and the implementation of loyalty program. For building a relationship between the company and its customer must be maintained the relationship and developed of the customer relationship management. Any firm is seeking to get the minimize the loss of customer and knowing what is the strong relationship between this indicator and its profitability.”

“Communication skill is the key of customer relationship management. The ideal of CRM is the solution of the streamline to communicate with the clients and collaborates with each other. The customer is more comfortable they are with the tools and the more they are effective they will be at their jobs. The most they are comfortable is a look and feel that you are already know by the company.” (http://www.microsoft.com)

Customer relationship management:

“Customer relationship management is based the customer because survive was made in the global market and focused on the customer and the customer is becoming a key factor for the small and big companies. The companies know that it cost them five time more money to acquire a new customers than to get an existing customer for a making a purchase. And second aspect of survive of CRM is that knowing the customer and his/her problem will allow the companies to acquires new customers more easily and facilitates targets cross-selling.”  (tariq mohiuddin ahmed – p.9)

“CRM is based on the basic marketing belief that an organization that knows knows its customer like a individuals. The organization components they include the database warehouse that store all the company information of the customer. For the collection of the customer database they use the customer service system, call center, e-commerce, web marketing, operation system than get the complete information of the customer and the sales system. In the mobile sales communication the CRM is appointment making of the service. In the practice, the CRM system is the range from automated customer-contacts system to the company wide pooling for the customer information.” (kotler –pp.409-410)

“According to Malcolm McDonald the CRM system is a system for capital investment that integrates the strategy, marketing and the IT system. The cut across traditional the organization structure is to force the customer in the integration of the company activities. By the implement of the CRM is not a small task to any organization. And the one that rises for doing a harm of done badly. There is no doubt that the CRM can be major factor that give the competitive advantage for the maximum market and the get the CRM wrong and the company don’t give the quality demand by the customer and the customer leave the company and never return to the organization because of the bad experience with the organization.”

“CRM is a strategic to know how to handle the customer relations from a company point of view. The strategy is based how to develop, establish and increase the relation with the customer for profitability perspective. It is based on the knowledge of the individual customer’s need and potential, the company makes a strategic to find out the different of the customer with other customer to gain the customer for a long period of time. CRM is the basis of the marketing and management activities should be applied for the benefit of the customer and other partners in order to become successful and profitable.”(John Johansson and Fredrik Strom – p.2)

“The activities a company to increase the loyal and profitable customer is to performs identify, quality, acquire, develop and retain the customer by delivering the best service and product, to the right customer by the right channel with at the right time and cost. In CRM integrates sales, marketing, service, enterprise resource planning and the supply chain management through the business process by using technology solution, information resource and automation to maximize he customer contact. The CRM is a process to get long term relationship with the customer and among the enterprises, business partners, supplier and employees of the company.” (John Johansson and Fredrik Strom –p.3)

“CRM a business strategy try to focus on the optimizing value of the organization to delivers the best service to the customer and as a result of the business strategy the value an organization receives from customer. The strategy requires redirection business focus organizational structure, business metrics, customer interaction, and technology capabilities to optimize the customer experience.” (Nykamp, 2001, p. 200).

“Acquiring new customers is the company acquires customers by promoting product and service leadership. To enhance the maximum profitability of existing customers the company should enhances the relationship by encouraging excellence in cross selling and up selling of the product and the relationship will be useful for the company because the customer become loyal to the company and will use the same service or product again. Therefore, by the deepening and broadening of the relationship with the customer and to retain the profitable customers for life time, the customer retention is focuses on service adaptability, delivering the service or product on the right time but not what the market wants but do as the customers want.” (Kalakota et al 2000, P175)

“According to Paul Greenberg (2000) in his summary of CRM definitions, “CRM is a disciplined business strategy to create a Long-term relationship with the customer, and make the profitable customer relationships. With the Successful CRM initiatives start with a business strategy and philosophy that aligns company activities around customer needs. The CRM technology is a technology which is a critical to enabler the process required to turn strategy into business results.”

“The Collaborative of the CRM is an extension of traditional CRM application for the customer relation. It involves relationship management of the customers with the external stakeholders in the value chain, including suppliers, distributors, value added resellers, etc. It is a communication center, coordination network aiming to provide the neural paths to the customers and suppliers.” (Greenberg 2000, P41)

“According to (Dyche Jill’s, 2002) The CRM handbook is a guide line for the business for making the Customer Relationship management. Appropriate adaptation has been conducted in order for the theory to be applicable to the cases of SMEs. Due to its key significance to success of project implementation, risk management is an essential part of whole project management. However, the time for risk management to get involved with CRM is at the beginning of the work and it is stated by (Mclaughlin, 2001) in the article that when the company face the customer and try to find out what is the right and what if it is wrong? In the managing CRM risks, the author points out those risks occur when companies make changes to their internal functions in order to be CRM enabled.”

“CRM is a strategic to know how to handle the customer relations from a company point of view. The strategy is based how to develop, establish and increase the relation with the customer for profitability perspective. It is based on the knowledge of the individual customer’s need and potential, the company makes a strategic to find out the different of the customer with other customer to gain the customer for a long period of time. CRM is the basis of the marketing and management activities should be applied for the benefit of the customer and other partners in order to become successful and profitable.”(John Johansson and Fredrik Strom – p.3)

“CRM is based on the basic marketing belief that an organization that knows its customer like an individual. The organization components they include the database warehouse that store all the company information of the customer. For the collection of the customer database they use the customer service system, call center, e-commerce, web marketing, operation system than get the complete information of the customer and the sales system. In the mobile sales communication the CRM is appointment making of the service. In the practice, the CRM system is the range from automated customer-contacts system to the company wide pooling for the customer information.” (kotler –pp.409-410)

“Customer relationship management (CRM) has today become part of the companies; with the CRM they can know what is requirement of the customer. There is a need for the marketing practitioner to understand what it is, its impact on the organization, and its applicability to an organization and its benefits to customer. There is a need to understand that CRM is an overall strategy for the organization and not just a sales tool with a short-term orientation. CRM requires a long-term plan and anything long-term requires a strong organizational commitment and appropriate investment.”

“The term CRM gained widespread recognition in the late 1990s. Researchers and partitions both in the academic area and the business field enthusiastically have shared their viewpoint and experience in applying CRM. In less than a decade, CRM has escalated into a topic of major importance. Although the term only came use to a significant extent in the late part of 1990s, the principles on which it has been based have exits for much longer.” (Tariq Mohiuddin Ahmed –p.1)

“Significance to success of project implementation, risk management is an essential part of whole project management. However, the time for risk management to get involved with CRM is at the beginning of the work and it is stated by (Mclaughlin, 2001)

Customer satisfaction:

“Customer satisfaction, as a construct, has been fundamental to marketing for over three decades. As early as 1960, (Keith, 1960) has defined the marketing as “satisfying is the needs and desires of the consumer satisfaction”. And in 1982, (Hunt, 1982) reported that by the 1970s, the interest in customer satisfaction by the company had increase to such an extent that over 500 studies were published for the customer satisfaction and how gain the customer loyalty. This trend continued and by 1992, (Peterson and Wilson, 1992) estimated the amount of academic and trade articles on customer satisfaction to be over 15,000.”

“After Several studies on the customer satisfaction has shown that it costs about five times more to gain a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer (Naumann, 1995) and these results into more interest in customer relationships and with the help of it the company try to give the maximum customer satisfaction. Thus, several companies are adopting customer satisfaction for make the customer satisfy as their operational goal with a carefully designed framework.”

“According to (Hill and Alexander, 2000) wrote in their book that “the companies now become to make big investment in database marketing for the purpose to gain the customer satisfaction, relationship management and customer planning to move closer to their customers to make him a loyal customer to the companies”.

“( Jones and Sasser, 1995) wrote that “to achieving customer satisfaction is the main goal for most service firms today because when the customer become loyal to the company , the cost of the company will reduce”.

“By increasing the customer satisfaction will shown the direct relationship for the affect companies and market share, which leads to improved profits, positive recommendation, lower marketing expenditures of the companies (Reichheld, 1996; Heskett et al., 1997), and greatly impact the corporate image and survival.” (Pizam and Ellis, 1999).

“(Parker and Mathew, 2001) expressed that there are two basic definitional approaches of the concept of customer satisfaction. The first approach defines satisfaction as a process and the second approach defines satisfaction as an outcome of a consumption experience. These two approaches are complementary, as often one depends on the other.”

“Customer satisfaction is a process is defined the evaluation between what was received and what was expected (Oliver, 1977, 1981; Olson and Dover, 1979; Tse and Wilton, 1988), emphasizing the perceptual, evaluative and psychological processes that contribute to customer satisfaction.” (Vavra, 1997, p. 4)

“(Parker and Mathews, 2001) however noted that the process of satisfaction definitions concentrates on the antecedents to satisfaction rather than satisfaction itself for customers. Satisfaction as a process is the most widely adopted description of customer satisfaction and a lot of research efforts have been directed at understanding the process approach of satisfaction evaluations (Parker and Mathews, 2001). This approach has its origin in the discrepancy theory (Porter, 1961), which argued that satisfaction is determined by the perception of a difference between some standard and actual performance of the company.”

“(Cardozo, 1965) developed the contrast theory, which showed that consumers would exaggerate any contrasts between expectations and product evaluations for customer. The theory show what the consumers what will get from the company for making the customer satisfy.”

“(Olshavsky and Miller, 1972) has developed the assimilation theory, in which its means that perceived quality of the product or service is directly increasing with expectations of the customer satisfaction. Assimilation effects occur when the difference between expectations and quality is too small to be perceived.”

“(Anderson, 1973) further developed this theory into assimilation-contrast theory, which means if the customer satisfaction is too large to be assimilated then the contrast effects occur. The assimilation-contrast effects the occur when the difference between expectations and quality is too large to be perceived and this difference is exaggerated by consumers.”

“According to (Parker and Mathews, 2001), the most popular descendant of the discrepancy theories is the expectation disconfirmation theory (Oliver, 1981), which stated that the result of customers’ perceptions of the difference between their perceptions of performance and their expectations of performance. Positive disconfirmation leads to increased satisfaction, with negative disconfirmation having the opposite effect. “

“According to ( Yi, 1990) expressed that when the customers buy products or services with pre-purchase expectations about anticipated performance, once the customer bought the product or service and the customer  use the product or service, the outcomes will be  compared against expectations. If the outcome matches expectations, the result is confirmation. When there are differences between expectations and outcomes, disconfirmation occurs.  Positive disconfirmation occurs when product or service performance exceeds expectations. Therefore, satisfaction is caused by positive disconfirmation or confirmation of customer expectations, and dissatisfaction is the negative disconfirmation of customer expectations.”

“While several studies support the disconfirmation paradigm, others do not. For instance, (Churchill and Surprenant, 1982) found out that neither disconfirmation nor expectations had any effect on customer satisfaction with durable products because when the customer experiences the product or service, he will come to know about the product or service after the use.”

“(Weiner, 1980, and 1985); and (Folkes, 1984) proposed the attribution theory, which stated that when a customer purchases a product or service, if the consumption is below expectation, the customer is convinced that the supplier causes the dissatisfaction. The complaining customer is focused on restoring justice and the satisfaction outcome is driven by perceived fairness of the outcome of complaining.”

“According to (Westbrook and Reilly, 1983) proposed the value-percept theory, which defines the customer satisfaction as an emotional response caused by a cognitive-evaluative process, which is the comparison of the product or service to one's values rather than an expectation. So, satisfaction is a discrepancy between the observed and the desired for the customer.”

“According to (Fisk and Young, 1985) proposed the equity theory, which stated that individuals compare their input and output ratios with those of others and feel equitable treated. Equity judgment is based on two steps. The first one is the customer compares the outcome to the input and secondly, performs a relative comparison of the outcome to the other party.”

“According to (Pizam and Ellis, 1999) reported that there are two additional distinct theories of customer satisfaction apart from the seven aforementioned ones and these include:

1.  Comparison-level

2.  Generalized negativity; and

The outcome approach of the customer satisfaction is defined as the end-state satisfaction resulting from the experience of consumption. This post- consumption state can be an outcome that occurs without comparing expectations and (Oliver, 1996); or may be a cognitive state of reward, an emotional response that may occur as the result of comparing expected and actual performance or a comparison of rewards and costs to the anticipated consequences (Vavra, 1997, p. 4).

“Furthermore, (Parker and Mathews, 2001) expressed that attention has been focused on the nature of satisfaction of the outcome approach which include:

1. Emotion - Satisfaction is viewed as the surprise element of product or service purchase and or consumption experiences (Oliver, 1981), or is an effective response to a specific consumption experience (Westbrook and Reilly, 1983). This acknowledges the input of comparative cognitive processes but goes further by stating that these may be just one of the determinants of the affective “state” satisfaction (Park and Mathews, 2001).

2. Fulfillment –The theories of motivation state that people are driven by the desire to satisfy their needs (Maslow, 1943) or by their behavior aimed at achieving the relevant goals (Vroom, 1964). However, the customer satisfaction can be either way viewed as the end-point in the motivational process. Thus “the consumer satisfaction can be seen as the consumer's fulfillment response to the product or service from the company” (Rust and Oliver, 1994, p. 4).

3. State – Oliver (1989) expressed that there are four framework of satisfaction, which relates to reinforcement and arousal. “Satisfaction-as-pleasure” results from positive reinforcement, where the product or service is adding to an aroused resting state and “satisfaction-as-relief” results from negative reinforcement .In relation to arousal, low arousal fulfillment is defined as “satisfaction-as contentment”, a result of the product or service performing adequately in an ongoing passive sense. High arousal satisfaction is defined as “satisfaction as either positive (delight) or negative surprise” which could be a shock (Rust and Oliver, 1994).”

“The other customer satisfaction definitions include: Satisfaction is “the cognitive state of the buyer about the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the reward received in exchange for the service experienced” (Howard and Seth, 1969,)

“For this study, customer satisfaction definition used by (Homburg and Bruhn, 1998) which is an experience-based assessment made by the customer of how far his own expectations about the individual characteristics or the overall functionality of the services obtained from the provider have been fulfilled”.

“The relevance of this definition to this study is that it indicates that customers assess the mobile services based on experience of use and the rating is done in accordance with the mobile services attributes. In this study, customer satisfaction with the Pakistan mobile services will be evaluated based on customer’s experience of network quality of service, validity period, call center and customer care support.”

CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF CUSTOMER NEEDS AND EXPECTATIONS

The achievement of a strong customer satisfaction is closely related to the understanding customer needs and expectations (William and Bertsch, 1992). According to the (Kano, 2001), Model customer needs can be divided into:

Ø  Basic needs – obvious needs of customers and if not met, he is dissatisfied, however meeting this needs may not be enough for customer satisfaction. Its satisfaction results in “must be quality”.

Ø  Expected needs – these are important needs that customers are fully aware of and satisfaction is expected in every purchase; their satisfaction creates “expected quality”.

Ø  Excitement needs – these are unconscious and unspoken needs of customers. By identifying and satisfying such needs, companies will have added large value to customers and can win loyal customers. This satisfaction creates “attractive quality”.

“Studies that supported the notion that expectations precede satisfaction include, (Anderson, Fornell and Lehmann, 1994), who conducted investigation on Swedish firms and reported that there is a positive and significant relationship between expectations and customer satisfaction. They describe expectation as an accumulation of information about quality from the outside sources (e.g. advertising, word of mouth and general media) and past experiences.”

“According to (Cadotte, Woodruff, and Jenkins, 1987) conducted investigation on food restaurant and reported that expectation is significantly correlated with satisfaction. Additionally, expectation is a pre-purchase choice process and form a part of evaluation standards of conceptualizing satisfaction process.”

“(Churchill and Suprenant, 1982) conducted investigation on durable goods (video disc player) and non-durable good (hybrid plant). For the hybrid plant study, expectation is reported to have a direct impact on satisfaction. ( Oliver, 1981) conducted investigation on retail stores and reported that expectation has direct influence on satisfaction. However, there is other research works that disagree with this finding, examples include, (Churchill and Suprenant, 1982) in their investigation on video disc player, reported expectation to have no impact on satisfaction. (Spreng and Olvshavsky, 1993) conducted investigation on cameras and reported that there is no significant relationship between these two variables.

With this aforementioned literature, it is noted that customers purchase services based on their needs and have expectations that the purchased services will meet their needs. Customers in turn assess the service performance in accordance to how well it meets their expectations. Although, customer expectation is not a focus of this study, however satisfaction measurement is useful to understand customer expectations (since most times assessment is done by customers based on past experiences and future beliefs of service performance).

SERVICE QUALITY:

“Another factor that contributes to satisfaction is service quality. Service quality is defined as “the difference between customer expectations and perceptions of service” or “as the customers’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction formed by their experience of purchase and use of the service” (Gronroos, 1984).”

“According to (Oliver, 1993) reported that service quality is a casual antecedent of customer satisfaction, due to the fact that service quality is viewed at transactional level and satisfaction is viewed to be an attitude. (Dabholkar and Zeithaml et al., 1996) reported that the service quality divisions are related to overall service quality and or customer satisfaction. (Fornell et al., 1996) expressed that satisfaction is a consequence of service quality. (Hurley and Estelami, 1998) argued that there is causal relationship between service quality and satisfaction, and that the perceptions of service quality affect the feelings of satisfaction.”

“There are various classifications of the components of service quality in marketing science. (Gronroos, 1984) stated that “in service environments, customer satisfaction will be built on a combination of two kinds of quality aspects; technical and functional”. Technical quality or quality of the output corresponds to traditional quality of control in manufacturing. It is a matter of properly producing the core benefit of the service. Functional quality or process quality is the way the service is delivered. It is the process in which a customer is a participant and co-producer, and in which the relationship between service provider and customer plays an important role.”(Wiele et al., 2002).

“According to (Lewis, 1987) suggested that service quality can be classified as essential and subsidiary. Essential refers to the service offered and subsidiary includes factors such as accessibility, convenience of location, availability, timing and flexibility, as well as interactions with the service provider and other customers.”

“The classification can also be the core (contractual) of the service, and the relational (customer- employee relationship) of the service. The core or the outcome quality, which refers to what is delivered and the relational or process quality, which refers to how it is delivered are the basic elements for most services.” (McDougall and Levesque, 1992)  

“According to (McDougall and Levesque, 2000) in their direct approach investigation on four service firms (dentist clinic, automobile shop, restaurant, and haircut salon) demonstrated that both core and relational service quality classes have significant impact on customer satisfaction. (Heskett et al., 1997) conducted studies on several service firms, such as airline, restaurants, etc and reported that service quality, solely defined as relational quality, has consistent effect on satisfaction and is regarded as key factor in delivering customer satisfaction.”

(Parasuraman et al., 1988) identified five dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL) that must be present in any service delivery. SERVQUAL helps to identify clearly the impact of quality dimensions on the development of customer perceptions and the resulting customer satisfaction.  SERVQUAL include:

Ø  Reliability: his ability to perform the promised services dependably and accurately.

Ø  Responsiveness: the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

Ø  Assurance: the knowledge and courtesy of employees as well as their ability to convey trust and confidence.

Ø  Empathy:  the provision of caring, individualized attention to customers, and

Ø  Tangibles: the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication materials.

The model conceptualizes service quality as a gap between customer's expectations (E) and the perception of the service providers' performance (P). According to (Parasuraman et al., 1985), “service quality should be measured by subtracting customer's perception scores from customer expectation scores (Q = P - E)”. The greater the positive score mark means the greater the positive amount of service quality or the greater the negative score mark, the greater the negative amount of the service quality.

(Zeithaml et al., 1990) proposed a comprehensive perception of quality assessment and claimed that they are other factors apart from the dimensions of Parasuraman et al. (1988):

Ø  Access:  how easy it is to come into contact with the supplier. This is where position, opening hours, supplier availability, and other technical facilities belong.

Ø  Communication: the ability to communicate in an understandable way that is natural to customer.

Ø  Credibility: referring to being able to trust the supplier

Ø  Courtesy: refers to the supplier’s behaviour, e.g. politeness and kindness

(Parasuraman et al.,1988), assurance dimension is a combination of the credibility and courtesy dimensions of (Zeithaml et al., 1990).

(Pizam and Ellis, 1999) stated that the gap that may exist between the customers' expected and perceived service quality is a vital determinant of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and not just only a measure of the quality of the service.

“Previous studies on mobile telecommunication services, measured services quality by call quality, pricing structure, mobile devices, value-added services, convenience in procedures, and customer support (Kim, 2000).”

“Customers determine satisfaction level of any purchased service by the perceptions of quality received. Therefore, customer satisfaction assessment captures service quality and in this study, the previous factors used to measure service quality (call quality, billing, customer support, etc) of mobile telecoms will be used to assess customer satisfaction.

INTERNAL SATISFACTION

Research works have shown the importance and the link of internal (employee) satisfaction to the external (customer) satisfaction. (Hill and Alexander, 2000) stated that there is a positive relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction and this is achieved in companies that practice employee motivation and loyalty. They reported that “employees that are more motivated to achieve customer satisfaction tend to be more flexible in their approach to their work, make fewer mistakes and use more initiative”.  (Fečiková , 2004) conducted studies on the index method for customer satisfaction measurement with chairs in Slovakia and reported that the satisfaction of internal customers is one of the basic factors to satisfy the external customer. Thus, she suggested that employee motivation and loyalty can be achieved through:

Ø  Daily leadership: Top management officials motivate others through their performance.

Ø  Top management communicates their expectations to the employees.

Ø  Development of competencies:  feedback on employees performance, work efforts, opportunity for development and improvement of competencies.

Ø  Corporation and employee retention, and

Ø  Good working conditions

CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Ø  (Coyne, 1989) stated that customer satisfaction has measurable impact on customer loyalty in that when satisfaction reaches a certain level; on the high side, loyalty increases dramatically; at the same time, when satisfaction falls to a certain point, loyalty reduces equally dramatically. (Yi, 1990) expressed that the impact of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty by stating that “customer satisfaction influences purchase intentions as well as post-purchase attitude”. In other word, satisfaction is related to behavioral loyalty, which includes continuing purchases from the same company, word of mouth recommendation, and increased scope of relationship.

Ø  (Fornell, 1992) found out that there is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty but this connection is not always a linear relation. This relationship depends on factors such as market regulation, switching costs, and brand equity, existence of loyalty programs, proprietary technology, and product differentiation at the industry level. (Jones and Sasser, 1995) proposed that link between satisfaction and loyalty can be classified into four different groups: loyalist/apostle (high satisfaction, high loyalty), defector/ terrorist (low satisfaction, low loyalty), mercenary (high satisfaction, low loyalty), and hostage (low satisfaction, high loyalty).

Ø  (Roger Hallowell, 1996) confirmed the link between customer loyalty (in the context of behavioural loyalty) and customer satisfaction. (Oliver, 1999) stated that the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is that satisfaction is transformed into loyalty with the assistance of a myriad of other factors. However, this relationship is complex and asymmetric.

Ø  High levels of satisfaction lead to high levels of attitudinal loyalty. Attitudinal loyalty involves different feelings, which create a customer’s overall attachment to a product, service, or company (Lovelock et al., 2001). (Gerpott et al.,2001) in their study of the German mobile telecommunication found that customer satisfaction is positively related to customer loyalty, and both factors are important paraments in the mobile telecommunications industry. (Turel and Serenko, 2006), in their study of Canadian mobile telecommunications also confirmed this finding.