Theories Of Customer Satisfaction

This chapter has presented an extensive review of the past literature and research related to the factors that influence an international students’ satisfaction towards public higher learning institutions in Malaysia. In this research study the author created literature review with information achieved from academic Journal articles, Academic thesis, Book summaries, World Wide Web resources, Conference papers. Initially, this chapter has provided an overview of the topics associated with foreign students and background history of providing foreign students education service in Malaysia. Next to this the chapter has discussed some theories and empirical studies, the concepts, historical evidences and various literatures related to the problem

It is an affective or emotional state of feeling reaction in which the consumer’s needs desires and expectations during the course of the service experiences have been met or exceeded (Hunt, 1977; Mizik and Jacobson, 2007; Srinivasan and Hanssens, 2009). The concept of student satisfaction originated from the theory of customer satisfaction which plays an important role to influence consumers to retain and spread good word of mouth.

According to Kotler and Clarke (1987) satisfaction is a state felt by a person who has experienced an outcome that fulfil his or her expectation. In other words Satisfaction is a function of relative level of expectations and it perceives performance. Satisfaction is also defined as theone’s purposeful performance which results in self-contentment (Malik &Usman, 2010). The judgment is based on the difference between expectations and real experiences of customer. Therefore, satisfaction refers to the consumer's sense that consumption delivers outcomes against a standard of pleasure against displeasure.” (Oliver, 1999).Satisfaction is a summary, affective and variable intensity response cantered on specific aspects of acquisition and/or consumption and which takes place at the 15 precisemoments when the individual evaluates the objectives (Gorsuch, 1983; Declerck and Bogaert,

If the experience is better or greater than the expectations then the customer will keep in mind the service for a long time, but Feelings of dissonance may occur if the experience is worse or less than the expectation. On the other hand if the customer gets more than his or her expectation then he or she will be delighted. It will directly affect the purchase decision of the consumers and delighted consumers will love to buy from those companies where they are delighted and share their better experience with others. Thus consumer retention is dependent on this