A Meaning-Centered Approach to Customer Satisfaction

Abstract

We propose a meaning-centered approach to understanding customer/patient satisfaction grounded in the hermeneutical tradition and informed by concepts highlighted in Herzberg’s two-factor motivation and hygiene theory. Current research in customer satisfaction conceptualizes satisfaction as a stable, singular construct driven by expectations and relies predominately on quantitative assessments. We argue that conceptualizing customer satisfaction as the relation of meanings experienced by customers and incorporating qualitative forms of assessment contribute additional insights into customers’ lived experiences of customer/patient satisfaction. Specifically, based on observations of and interviews with patients at a medical facility, we argue that customers are simultaneously satisfied and dissatisfied and, moreover, the relation of satisfaction and dissatisfaction forms a system of meaning upon which they draw when making behavioral decisions. Finally, we articulate how taking a meaning-centered approach to customer satisfaction can enhance both theorists’ and managers’ ability to understand what it means to create satisfaction.