HBS Professor Susan Fournier and colleague David Glen Mick's article "Rediscovering Satisfaction" in the October 1999 issue of the Journal of Marketing has been awarded the journal's Harold H. Maynard Award for the year's most significant contribution to marketing theory and/or marketing thought. The annual award is presented by vote of the editorial review board of the Journal of Marketing. All papers published in the journal in the previous year are eligible.
The authors' summary of their award-winning work follows:
An extensive and respected research tradition promotes a comparison standards (CS) paradigm for the study of consumer satisfaction. This overarching paradigm, within which there exist several related models, posits that consumers have preconsumption product standards, observe product performance, compare performance with their standards, form confirmation or disconfirmation perceptions, combine these perceptions with standards levels, and then form summary satisfaction judgments. Rarely do researchers consider consumer satisfaction from a perspective other than that of the CS paradigm, maintaining a conception of satisfaction that is cognitively toned and transaction-specific in nature.
In this study, the authors step back from the dominant paradigm to explore satisfaction using a comparatively nontraditional approach involving lengthy and unstructured in-home interviews, some of which tracked new owners of technological products over time. Findings suggest that satisfaction as experienced and expressed through consumers' own voices often bears little resemblance to the dominant theory. Five extensions to current theory are offered: (1) an inverted form of the expectations-disconfirmation model in which the disconfirmation of expectations promotes satisfaction; (2) an extended version of the desires model that includes the life themes, life projects, and current concerns that propel product desires; (3) the induction of a new experience-based norms standard (CLalt) that underpins a unique dependency model of satisfaction; (4) an expanded conceptualization of relief and novelty satisfaction modes; and (5) identification of new satisfaction modes, including awe, trust, helplessness, resignation, and love.
Perhaps most noteworthy, by investigating satisfaction through consumers' firsthand narratives, the authors determined formidable anomalies of the CS paradigm. A more realistic account of satisfaction recognizes that
1. Satisfaction is an active, dynamic process that unfolds as a continuing interactive negotiation between consumer and product over time. Studies that measure satisfaction immediately after the purchase occasion or at some other isolated point in time may provide misleading, if not unreliable, indications of consumers' satisfaction.
2. Satisfaction is not solely a conscious, rational, and meaning-deficient phenomenon, as it typically is measured in one-shot, postpurchase surveys designed under the CS umbrella. Managers must recognize that satisfaction may have important nonconscious, affective, and meaningful aspects as well.
3. Satisfaction often has a strong social dimension, which suggests the need for researchers to consider not only the satisfaction of other household members who interact with the product, but also the ways in which their collective product-centered interactions cohere or contradict to influence personal product satisfaction.
4. There is more than one model of satisfaction. That is, satisfaction can ensue from various comparison standards, including predictive expectations, desires, or experience-based norms. However, alternate models of satisfaction include those that do not rely on the preeminence or even preexistence of standards or the associated mathematics of standards versus performance in their predictive analysis. The paradox-balancing paradigm that the authors induct from the data serves as a strong example of this thinking. Satisfaction is construed not in terms of a mental matching of features and benefits against a priori comparison standards, but as a result of consumers' ongoing attempts to manage the opposing qualities of technological products in postmodern life. Managers must be conscious that multiple satisfaction models and paradigms may coexist and that these may evolve over time.
5. There is a hierarchy of satisfaction responses that extends upward from concrete product satisfaction to the more abstract dimensions of life satisfaction. Satisfaction studies must consider the quality of consumers' lives and the roles that product interactions can play in achieving, maintaining, or diminishing it.
6. Rating scales typically used in satisfaction research may provide only meager insight into consumers' true satisfactions. To attain a deeper understanding of satisfaction in consumers' lives, marketers should take a multimethod approach to research, including humanistic inquiries in naturalistic settings over time.
These observations challenge long-running assumptions in the study of satisfaction within marketing and provide insights that clarify not only the character of consumer product satisfaction, but also its motivations and causes.
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For more information, see the article
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