Designed for advanced MBA and doctoral courses in Consumer Behavior and Customer Satisfaction, this is the definitive text on the meaning, causes, and consequences of customer satisfaction. It covers every psychological aspect of satisfaction formation, and the contents are applicable to all consumables - product or service.Author Richard L. Oliver traces the history of consumer satisfaction from its earliest roots, and brings together the very latest thinking on the consequences of satisfying (or not satisfying) a firm's customers. He describes today's best practices in business, and broadens the determinants of satisfaction to include needs, quality, fairness, and regret ('what might have been').The book culminates in Oliver's detailed model of consumption processing and his satisfaction measurement scale. The text concludes with a section on the long-term effects of satisfaction, and why an understanding of satisfaction psychology is vitally important to top management.

With major retailers closing brick-and-mortar stores every month and the continued shift to online shopping, there is a major push to strengthen customer loyalty by improving the customer experience. The two most important qualities that consumers look for are convenience and efficiency. Finally a source is available that will give retailers and companies in general the insight needed to enhance customer satisfaction while improving the overall shopping experience. This book uses the world-leading findings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and its accompanying Global Customer Satisfaction Index (GCSI) – invaluable, incomparable sources of consumer insights and information, to inform best practices for improving the consumer experience, better satisfying customers, and achieving profitable customer loyalty today and into the rapidly changing future. This book will help us understand where we were, where we are today, and where we are heading tomorrow in providing exceptional customer experiences. It is a must-read for marketing professionals and customer-focused senior executives alike.

Many business-to-business (B2B) managers think that customers act rationally and base decisions mostly on price, customer loyalty isn’t considered. Companies outsource various activities, which enable them to improve efficiency, reduce costs, focus more on core competencies and improve their innovation capabilities. Supply Chain Management synchronizes the efforts of all parties—particularly suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, dealers, customers—involved in achieving customer’s needs. Despite much research, the relationship between customer loyalty and the supply chain strategy remains insufficiently explored and understood by practitioners and academics, while the theme has been extensively developed within marketing literature. Customer Loyalty and Supply Chain Management is the result of years of work by the authors on different projects concerning the overlapping areas of supply chains, logistics and marketing, drawing a connection between the literature to provide a holistic picture of the customer loyalty framework. Emphasis is given to the B2B context, where recent research has provided some clues to support the fact that investment in operations, new technologies and organizational strategy have had a significant role in understanding B2B loyalty, particularly in the context of global supply chains. Moreover, the book provides a modernized and predictive model of B2B loyalty, showing a different methodological approach that aims at capturing the complexity of the phenomenon. This book will be a useful resource for professionals and scholars from across the supply chain who are interested in exploring the dimension of customer loyalty in the challenging supplier and customer context.

This state-of-the-art handbook approaches the topics of hospitality strategy with an emphasis on immediate application of ideas to current practice. Top hospitality scholars make original contributions with the inclusion of senior level executives input, insights and current best practices. By incorporating the latest research and thinking on various strategic topics with the commentary and insights of successful executives this handbook blends cutting edge ideas and comprehensive reviews of the subject with innovative illustrations and examples from practice. The strength of the handbook is its combination of academic rigour and hospitality application. The handbook will have a clear reference orientation and focus on key topical issues and problem of interest to practitioners and advanced students of hospitality strategy.

The world over, clusters are home to leading firms and institutions that compete on the edge of technology. They can be found in developed and developing countries alike and comprise such famous ones as Silicon Valley, London ‟s financial center, ceramic tile and fashion in north Italy, wine in Bordeaux, automotive in Stuttgart and Munich, software in Bangalore, and manufacturing in China ‟s Pearl-river delta. Today they are studied by a variety of scholars from different fields including economists, social scientists, and strategists, but also by a growing number of business practitioners and policy makers.3 As a result, knowledge on the capacity of clusters to promote regional economic development and national prosperity and the role of local industrial policy in creating new clusters has increased rapidly in recent years The present research is best described as being exploratory in nature. It elaborates and extends existing theory. By doing so, it takes up a distinct position within scientific theory that is defined by three levels of analysis: (1) the meta-methodological level, (2) the methodological level, and (3) the theoretical level.

This edited book is a compilation of research studies conducted in the areas of business, management and economics. These cutting-edge articles will be of interest to researchers, academics, and business managers.