Selasa, 02 Juli 2013

Application of the European Customer Satisfaction Index to Postal Services. Structural Equation Models versus Partial Least Squares

Christina O’Loughlin & Germà Coenders 
Published in : Journal of Departament d’Economia, Universitat de Girona, 
JEL classification: C13, C39, C51, H42, L89, M11. September 2002

Abstract
Customer satisfaction and retention are key issues for organizations in today’s competitive
market place. As such, much research and revenue has been invested in developing accurate
ways of assessing consumer satisfaction at both the macro (national) and micro
(organizational) level, facilitating comparisons in performance both within and between
industries. Since the instigation of the national customer satisfaction indices (CSI), partial
least squares (PLS) has been used to estimate the CSI models in preference to structural
equation models (SEM) because they do not rely on strict assumptions about the data.
However, this choice was based upon some misconceptions about the use of SEM’s and
does not take into consideration more recent advances in SEM, including estimation
methods that are robust to non-normality and missing data.
In this paper, both SEM and PLS approaches were compared by evaluating perceptions
of the Isle of Man Post Office Products and Customer service using a CSI format. The new
robust SEM procedures were found to be advantageous over PLS. Product quality was
found to be the only driver of customer satisfaction, while image and satisfaction were the
only predictors of loyalty, thus arguing for the specificity of postal services.
Keywords: European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI), Structural Equation Models,
Robust Statistics, Missing Data, Maximum Likelihood.

Introduction
1.1. Origin and Uses of the Customer Satisfaction Index
Customer satisfaction has become a vital concern for companies and organizations in
their efforts to improve product and service quality, and maintain customer loyalty
within a highly competitive market place. In the last decade, a number of national
indicators reflecting consumer satisfaction across a wide range of organizations have
been developed (e.g., Sweden, Fornell, 1992; USA, Fornell et al., 1996; Norway,
Andreassen & Lindestad, 1998a, 1998b; Denmark, Martensen, Grønholdt & Kristensen,
2000; European Union, ECSI Technical Committee, 1998). At the national level, the
customer satisfaction index (CSI) is a nationwide gauge of how adequately companies,
and industries in general satisfy their customers. In addition, CSI’s can be used at the
lower industry or even company level facilitating comparison of companies within an
industry. These indicators complement traditional measures of economic performance
(e.g., return on investment, profits and market shares) providing useful diagnostics
about organizations, and their customers evaluations of the quality of products and
services.
1.2. Factors within the ECSI/ACSI Model
The basic structure of the CSI model has been developed over a number of years and is
based upon well established theories and approaches to consumer behaviour, customer
satisfaction and product and service quality (see Fornell, 1992; Fornell et al., 1996). The
structure of the CSI is continually undergoing review and subject to modifications.
Although the core of the model is in most respects standard, there are some variations
between the SCSB (Swedish), the ACSI (American), the ECSI (European), the NCSB
(Norwegian) and other indices. For example, the image factor is not employed in the
ACSI model although plans are underway to include this factor into this model (Johnson
et al., 2001).
The CSI model consists of a number of latent factors, each of which is
operationalised by multiple indicators. Customer satisfaction (SATI) can be defined as
an overall evaluation of . . . . . . . .. . ... (baca_selengkapnya)  

Artikel lengkap dikompilasi oleh/hubungi :
Kanaidi, SE., M.Si (Penulis, Peneliti, PeBisnis, Trainer dan Dosen Marketing Management).
e-mail ke : kana_ati@yahoo.com atau kanaidi@poltekpos.ac.id
HP. 08122353284
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