Evaluating customer satisfaction: A contingency model approach

Increased competition between leisure service businesses has forced managers to place greater emphasis on understanding and satisfying their customers' needs. Traditionally a modified version of the Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry service quality model has been used to assess how well businesses are meeting their customers' needs. This approach is flawed, however, because it cannot explain the variability of outcomes. This study demonstrates the considerable flexibility and power of using a contingency approach to leisure service performance/satisfaction modeling. The results indicate that it is an effective research methodology for understanding the determinants of customer satisfaction for targeted clientele and a basis for positioning or repositioning the service mix to meet customers' needs.