An investigation of the confirmation of predictive brand expectations as a determinant of consumer satisfaction

The subject area of this dissertation revolves around an examination of the issues surrounding the conceptualization and measurement of consumer satisfaction. These issues were studied in the context of satisfaction process, i.e., expectations, postpurchase evaluation, confirmation of expectations, satisfaction, and the probability of repurchase. The major objective of the research was to examine the reliability and validity of the confirmation of predictive brand expectations as a determinant of satisfaction. Another objective of the study was to examine the usefulness of the value-importance component in the prediction of satisfaction.

This was a two-part study as the data were collected in two stages three weeks apart. In the first stage data on expectations were collected, and in the second stage data on postpurchase evaluation, overall satisfaction, and the probability of repurchase were collected. Although the focus of the study was the confirmation of predictive brand expectations, data were also collected for the confirmation of normative expectations and the confirmation of comparative expectations. The sample consisted of 402 undergraduate students in the College of Business Administration at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The findings of the study show that the confirmation of predictive brand expectations is not a good determinant of satisfaction because it has low reliability and low predictive validity. A limited test of construct validity shows that this determinant also has low construct validity. The confirmation of normative expectations and the confirmation of comparative expectations perform much better and yield higher correlations, but these two determinants also have low construct validity. Postpurchase evaluation seems to have good reliability and good concurrent and construct validity. It was also found that the value-importance in multiplicative combination with the confirmation of expectations does not make any significant addition to the prediction of satisfaction. The major explanations for the results are low reliability of gain scores of the confirmation measures, and the model misspecification for the value-importance combination.

There are three major recommendations for future research. First, adequate and reliable scales for the confirmation of expectations measures should be developed. Second, the focus of the future research should be on the confirmation of normative expectations and on the confirmation of comparative expectations in the determination of consumer satisfaction. Third, other comparison levels consisting of the combination of expectations and the confirmation of expectations and the inclusion of brand performance norms and product performance norms in the determination of consumer satisfaction should also be explored in future research.