ABSTRACT
A great deal of discussion has occurred in the fields of marketing and strategy in recent years about consumer satisfaction and how it can be created and maintained. Most organizations now recognize the central role that their customers' satisfaction plays in their long-term success; hospitality, leisure, and tourism organizations are no exception. Marketers have argued for the centrality of customer satisfaction for at least forty years, giving the approach a variety of names, including the marketing concept, having a customer orientation or, more recently, having a market orientation. However, all of these approaches argue that good marketing is much more than merely being concerned about customers' needs. All agree that managers must understand the marketplace in which they operate, which includes not only customers, but also competitors, governments, and regulatory agencies and the overall market environment (e.g., Narver and Slater, 1990; Kohli and Jaworski, 1990). Further, all recognize that an organization's interest in satisfaction is not for its own sake but because of a recognition that satisfied customers give an organization its best chance of achieving its objectives, whatever they happen to be, as satisfied customers are much more likely to come back, remain loyal, and provide positive word of mouth. However, it is fair to say that customer satisfaction has taken pride of place in many discussions about marketing (e.g., Kotler, 1988). Consequently, a great deal of research has been undertaken to understand what creates and maintains customer satisfaction and to determine how it should be measured, as it is clearly a key marketing variable.
