Switching costs as a moderator of service satisfaction processes in Thailand

Satisfaction is a well established outcome of a successful service encounter, and increasingly satisfaction is being linked to perhaps the most important construct in marketing-behavioral loyalty. In this paper satisfaction as the dependent variable is regressed on technical quality and functional quality, as independent variables. However, the study moves beyond the modeling the pure antecedents of satisfaction to a contingency model of satisfaction evaluation where psychological switching costs is employed as a moderator. The results show that switching costs have a strong impact on the relationship between technical and functional quality, and satisfaction, across all four service indus- tries studied in Thailand. In other words, the impact of technical and functional quality varies under different contingency conditions.