Is Full Satisfaction the Best you can Guarantee? An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Guarantee Scope on Consumer Perceptions

Abstract

Service guarantees are seen as a effective tool to jump start quality improvements, to move an organisation towards superior quality levels, and to market this superior quality to consumers (Wirtz 1997). The literature unanimously contends that only well-designed guarantees give a firm the desired impacts. Of the alternative designs regarding guarantee scope, unconditional full satisfaction guarantees have been advocated as being the best possible design of service guarantees.