Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
13
Customer satisfaction in tourism
The search for the Holy Grail
Clare Foster
Introduction
In some respects, the concept of customer satisfaction in tourism can be likened to the search for
the Holy Grail. It is highly revered and sought after by the industry, but remains an elusive
concept methodologically. There is in fact little consensus as to 'what' satisfaction actually is
despite exhaustive attention given to the subject over recent decades. To provide a comprehensive
review of the literature on the subject, therefore, is not an easy task as one is immediately faced
with a plethora of research from different approaches, spanning decades. And yet despite all this
research, and despite customer satisfaction being the ultimate goal of tourism marketing, it seems
we are still no closer to understanding what satisfaction actually
means
to people.
The quest to understand customer satisfaction from a marketing perspective has so far been
led by approaches taking a psychological perspective. Satisfaction is perceived as a cognitive
process and as the outcome of a '
post consumption evaluative judgement
'. Although there have been
numerous iterations and variations, Kozak (2001) argues these approaches are in fact a family of
mini-theories and conceptual schemes, which share a number of theoretical and methodological
assumptions. Based on this understanding in the fi rst section of the chapter an overview of these
approaches is provided rather than a review of specifi c models and subsequent variants. The
studies that are featured in this section are representative examples from within this tradition.
Partly as a result of increasing criticism of the cognitive approaches but also partly due to the
evolution of tourism studies generally, a number of alternative approaches to customer satisfac-
tion have emerged. For convenience, rather than any unifying theoretical basis or conceptual
scheme, these approaches have been grouped together and are reviewed in the second section
of the chapter. They include studies, which aim to understand satisfaction within the totality of
tourist experience rather than specifi c attributes. These approaches often recognize the impor-
tance of consumers' emotional responses and the meanings of experience. Tourism is understood
as an embodied experience, whereby tourists are contributors or co-producers of the experience
and therefore have an input into satisfactory outcomes. These approaches often also highlight
the importance of the social aspects of tourist experiences and recognize the infl uence and
contribution of other people to satisfactory experiences.
The fi nal section will turn to more emergent approaches to understanding satisfaction. These
build on approaches which position the tourist as an active agent 'doing tourism' (Crouch
et al
.
