Relationship between the components of product/service quality and the customers' emotions and satisfaction

The purpose of this paper is to study the links between quality and consumers' emotions and eventually with their satisfaction. There is mounting evidence that, while quality evaluation may be strictly cognitive, satisfaction gauges customers' emotions towards the product/service provider's performance. The existing approaches used in measuring quality have certain limitations. This study introduces two components of total quality structure - quality of design and quality of conformance - for analysis of the link between quality and customer emotions. Undergraduate college students were surveyed in regard to four scenarios for food establishments. Respondents were asked to select, from a pre-tested list of emotions, those arising from these scenarios. The equality of means of the valence and the intensity of emotions among the four scenarios were tested using ANOVA and Scheffe paired comparisons. The results show that there is a significant relationship between possible combinations of two quality dimensions and customers' affective responses in terms of both their valence and intensity. Important managerial implications are discussed.