Customer satisfaction

According to Sun and Kim (2013), customer satisfaction can be defined as a term which measures the expectations rate of a customer in accordance with the product or service provided by a company or organisation. In the view of Suleiman (2012), customer satisfaction plays an essential role in the modem-day business. It is a measure of how services and products delivered by a firm surpass or meet the expectations of customers. Customer satisfaction is a term regularly used in marketing since it accentuates the significance of customers in business, observes Nandan (2010). The future of any business can be recognised regarding the ability of the company in meeting the customer satisfaction. The aspect of customer satisfaction includes the factors such as the quality of the product and service provided by the firm, the location or the atmosphere where the customer bought the product or received the service and the price which the product or service is available (Santouridis and Trivellas, 2010).

According to Hu, Kandampully and Juwaheer (2009), customer satisfaction has a broad concept of quantifying the satisfaction degree of a customer related to a service, product or experience. Business firms and companies pay considerable attention to customer satisfaction as they use it as a tool for improving the products or services provided. The importance of customer satisfaction can be identified as it creates a long-term relationship between the company and the customer (Santouridis and Trivellas, 2010).

Customer satisfaction enables the company to attain customer loyalty. It is significant since

it offers a metric for corporate owners and marketers so that they can utilise it to enhance organisations business (Nandan, 2010). The chances of a satisfied customer in revisiting the firm or doing business with the company in future are very high. Customer satisfaction can be further identified as a business strategy by Angel ova and Zekiri (2010). In the modem era of

competitive marketplace, customer satisfaction significantly differentiates the company from

the crowd. For instance, in a research performed by Sun and Kim (2013), it is found that customer satisfaction is not only serves as a leading index to calculate customer loyalty, increase profit, decrease customer chum and to determine unhappy customers; but it also serves as a core indicator of differentiation which enables a company to persuade fresh customers in today's highly competitive business atmosphere.

In addition, customer satisfaction other than creating the bond between existing satisfied customers further paves the way for attaining new customers through recommendation (Angelova andZekiri, 2010). The problems of customer chum can be reduced with tactics of improving the customer satisfaction. The concept of customer lifetime value in business has much to do with customer satisfaction (Malthouse and Blattberg, 2010). Further identifications had been made on the word of mouth marketing derives from a satisfied customer. In fact, dissatisfied customer shares his experience with more people than a satisfied customer. Such negative word of mouth inversely affects the reputation of the company or firm (Angelova and Zekiri, 2010).

Considering the measurement of customer satisfaction, several ways are visible in measuring the satisfaction of the customer such as interviews, questioners, rating scales etc (Jaberi and Iranzadeh, 2014). Surveys can be identified as one of the best ways of measuring the customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction surveys are carried out through online and offline modes. Besides some companies depend on questionnaires in measuring the satisfaction (Aydin, Celik, and Gumus, 2015). Questionnaires are mostly seen in the offline mode which the company create direct contact with the customer. In the case of the rating scale, it has been found that the company provide a rating scale containing one to ten markings regarding several aspects such as quality of the product, service, shop atmosphere, salesman behaviour and so on in which the customer is asked to mark the appropriate ratings in accordance to their satisfaction (Chou, Lu and Chang, 2014). Moreover, according to Acharya et al. (2013), the companies even conduct interviews with few customers based on

customer behaviour and the relationship of the customer with the company or firm.

According to Jaberi and Iranzadeh (2014), customer satisfaction with respect to quality of service can be considered as a motivator for turning government into privatisation. In today's dynamic and monopoly market, governments do privatisation to receive not only high economic growth and efficacy but also to receive high-end customer satisfaction. Lee and

Heo (2009) mention customer satisfaction as the most significant indicator of privatisation success in customers and public-sector perspective. Private sector firms might be able to offer higher level of service for satisfying customers for a recent and lower cost whereas governments cannot provide similar type of services by themselves at lower cost. This is a reason for privatising since private firms might be able to satisfy customers with the better services expected without increasing the cost (Jaberi and Iranzadeh, 2014). For example, it can be found from the report of National Rail Passenger Survey (2014) that the passenger satisfaction after privatisation of British Rail has increased from 76% in 1999 to 83% in 2013 and passenger dissatisfaction has diminished from 10% in 1999 to 6% in 2013.

According to Eurobarometer (2013), the customer satisfaction with British Rail respondents is the second highest in Europe (78%). Because of increased passenger satisfaction level, the British Rail train organizations has been able to attain an average return of 147% on each pound they spend on their business FY 2012 (Chakrabortty, 2013). However, in contrast to the findings of Chakrabortty (2013), The Guardian (2013) report that the amount of return gained after paying cash back to the government and subsidy was only 3.4% FY 2012. After examining all the above reports, it can be contended that there is some meaningful relationship between privatisation and customer satisfaction.

According to Lee and Heo (2009), the concept of customer satisfaction has achieved lot of attention during recent years and companies which attempt to evaluate this concept must start with an understanding of various models regarding customer satisfaction. In the view of Suleiman (2012), customer satisfaction models help to elucidate different theories related to customer satisfaction, creating analysis and research on customer satisfaction topic less wasteful of study resources and more accentuated. Hence, this research will focus on customer satisfaction models to perform a detailed analysis of research objectives.