The effects of historical satisfaction, provided services characteristics and website dimensions on encounter overall satisfaction: a travel industry case study.

This is the accepted manuscript without appendixes of the paper "The effects of  historical satisfaction, provided services characteristics and website dimensions on encounter overall satisfaction: a travel industry case study" published as final paper in The TQM Journal Vol. 30 n. 3,  pp. 197-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-07-2017-0080

Citation:

Laureti, T., Piccarozzi, M. and Aquilani, B. (2018), "The effects of historical satisfaction, provided services characteristics and website dimensions on encounter overall satisfaction: A travel industry case study", The TQM Journal, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 197-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-07-2017-0080

ABSTRACT

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to study the real role of historical satisfaction, i.e. satisfaction only deriving from past experiences, excluding the most recent, in B2C service contexts when services are experienced offline, while the actual services are purchased online through the service providers’ website.  

Design/methodology/approach - The proposed conceptual framework was tested by focusing on a particular travel industry firm which is responsible for providing travel services as well as managing the website where these services are purchased. The study population included customers who had purchased at least two travel tickets during the last 12 months online. In order to reduce possible self-selection bias and to improve the generalizability of the web survey findings post-stratification was applied. The measurement model was evaluated by using confirmatory factor analyses. The direct and indirect effects of historical satisfaction on encounter overall satisfaction were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings - The direct effect of historical satisfaction on encounter overall satisfaction was observed to be higher than its indirect effect through offline service dimensions and website dimensions. It was also observed that offline service dimensions have a direct impact on encounter overall satisfaction, while they do not have an indirect impact since the website dimensions do not have a direct effect on encounter overall satisfaction.

Research implications - Historical satisfaction is really important in building encounter overall satisfaction for services purchased previously online but experienced offline.

Practical implications - The results could provide managers with useful tools for allocating resources and also build an even higher level of encounter overall satisfaction. They also shed light on how historical satisfaction molds offline service perception for services sold online.      

Originality/value - To our knowledge, only one empirical paper focused on ‘historical satisfaction’, while no studies have taken into consideration the fact that service offline dimensions and e-CS could be indirectly linked by website quality dimensions, the issue studied in this paper.