Response to Bb Question #2

Customer Satisfaction & Customer Value

Customer satisfaction and customer value are interdependent. Customer satisfaction cannot be achieved without also achieving customer value. Customer satisfaction is a mental evaluation of whether or not a product or service has met the expectations and satisfied the needs of the customer. Customer value is the relation between the benefits received from a product or service and the sacrifice made to be able to have those benefits. In other words, it is determining whether or not the product or service is the quality that the customer expected and if it was at the price they were willing to or able to pay. 

Both customer satisfaction and customer value involve quality and meeting expectations and needs. Without having customer value, achieving customer satisfaction is not possible. For example, if you were looking to buy a used car and found a 2000 Honda Accord you would expect it to have high mileage and perhaps something needing fixing. These assumptions are based on the year and would be understandable (meet your expectations) and you would have good customer value and satisfaction. However, if you found a used 2011 Honda Accord you would expect it to have low mileage and probably not need any sort of maintenance in order to pass state inspection. It would be understandable that it is probably significantly more expensive than the 2000 Accord but if there were multiple things that needed fixing and had high mileage for a 2 year old car, you would have poor customer value (the 2011 Accord was of poor quality and you paid more than it was worth) and also poor customer satisfaction (the 2011 Accord did not meet your needs or expectations). 

Can you think of a situation where customer value and customer satisfaction would NOT be interdependent?