Buyers' and users' perception of satisfaction : - A quantitative case study of the educational services provided by Revenues

Abstract: Due to the increased competition in the service sector, and the increase of customers’ ability to spread their thoughts and experiences about different services, the pressure on the companies operating in the service sector has increased rapidly. We have conducted an investigation of a specific case of Revenues, a service company operating in Umeå, with both private and public customers. The thesis focuses on the dynamics of customer satisfaction; how a possible difference between buyers’ and users’ perceptions and beliefs look like and how Revenues can work in order to reduce an eventual gap. Additionally we have three sub-purposes:- If there are differences in satisfaction between buyers and users, to clarify whypossible differences in satisfaction between buyers and users exist.- To clarify a possible gap between expected and perceived service quality and in caseof a possible gap, suggest how Revenues can work to reduce this gap.- Find out whether the free purchasing affects the perception of service quality.These are the questions that come our minds and led us into an interesting and unexplored field of study; a division of customers into buyers and users in the context of customer satisfaction. We chose to focus on a specific service provided by Revenues which is a service package consisting of a lecture and workshop.The research is a conducted with a quantitative method and a deductive approach. The epistemological and ontological positions are towards positivism and objectivism. The empirical data were collected through a web-based survey distributed to Revenues’ customers of educational services. The construction of the questionnaire and the discussion, conclusion and suggestions are based on the empirical findings and the theories presented in the theoretical framework.We reached a conclusion that there does exist a difference in perception of satisfaction between the buyer and the user of Revenues’ educational services; that the buyers’ satisfaction is higher than the users’ satisfaction. This due to:- Communication gap between service provider and customers- Different level of fulfillment of expectations between buyers and users- Differences in what buyers and users demandWe did not find any difference between expected and perceived service quality which is reflected in the overall level satisfaction among the customers. The users would be more critical and demand more if they had to pay for the lecture themselves, thus the free purchasing does affect the perception of service quality. We provided Revenues with a recommendation; in order to decrease the gap that exist in perception of service satisfaction between buyer and user of the same service, we recommend Revenues to increase the level of interactive marketing, provide the users with higher level of information, the same level as the buyer gets, in order to increase the feeling of providing the service accordingly to agreement. We also suggest Revenues to listen to the respondents’ recommendations for improvements.