Antecedents of Satisfaction with Financial Services: Role of Perceived Benefits

Abstract

This study seeks to confirm whether favourable affective evaluation of financial ser- vices can be a significant antecedent of perception of functional, hedonic, and symbolic benefits, and to show whether these benefits can influence customer satisfaction. The relationships were confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), applied to a survey of 786 people, using nonprobabilistic quota sampling. The environment characterized by rational decision-making, the customer’s affective evaluation, is an explanatory factor of satisfaction. The functional, hedonic, and symbolic benefits play an important amplifying role connecting affective evaluation and customer satisfaction. Given the little attention paid by the specialized literature to the link between affective evaluation-benefits and satisfaction, it may be premature to offer final conclusions. The academic sector is provided with some bases to analyse the effect that the perception of the benefits may have on the relationship between the affective evaluation and the satisfaction of the client. For managers in the financial service sector, it provided some analytical instruments oriented to caring for the tangible and intangible characteristics that intervene in providing financial services to their customers. The originality of this study is that the perceived benefits act as antecedents to satisfaction and as a conse- quence of the affective evaluation.