Environmental quality as an important dimension of customer satisfaction in apartment industry

Abstract

This study aims to determine the dimensions of customer satisfaction.For this purpose, researchers developed a model by taking anexperiential view. In this article, a standard questionnaire was usedfor collecting the data and, the authors report a comparative study thatwas conducted on two samples of real customers at apartment industry(low income and high income) in Iran. The results from a low incomesample revealed that the customer satisfaction is influenced more bycustomer cost and product quality than other constructs. Moreover, therole of customer satisfaction as a mediating factor in the intention ofword of mouth is supported. In contrary, in high income sample customersatisfaction influenced more by product quality and service quality thanother constructs. In addition, the role of customer satisfaction as amediating factor in the intention of word of mouth is rejected. Anotable advantage of the model developed in this study is that, itcovers essentially all the quality issues an apartment customer mayencounter (that is, physical or product, service, and environment).