A Longitudinal Assessment of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction: The Dynamic Aspect of the Cognitive Process

Abstract

A simplified cognitive model is proposed to assess the dynamic aspect of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction in consecutive purchase behavior. Satisfaction is found to have a significant role in mediating intentions and actual behavior for five product classes that were analyzed in the context of a three-stage longitudinal field study. The asymmetric effect found demonstrates that repurchase of a given brand is affected by lagged intention whereas switching behavior is more sensitive to dissatisfaction with brand consumption. An attempt to predict repurchase behavior on the basis of the investigated cognitive variables yielded weak results. However, repurchase predictions were improved when the model was extended to a multipurchase setting in which prior experience with the brand was taken into account.