Using Means-end Chain To Analyze Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a kind of feeling that requirements of customer are met. On one hand, customer satisfaction reflects perception and psychological sense of customers. On the other hand, it also reflects that products and services of a company could meet the effect of customer demands. Customer satisfaction has a close relationship to company's profit.Traditional analysis methods on customer satisfaction are restricted to product attributes, including product price,quality,appearance. In real-life marketing, products are similar and competition becomes more and more fierce. The main reason of the situation is that customer satisfaction is limited to product attributes. Surveying product attributes from the level of benefit/value satisfaction,enterprises will penetrate and meet customer's needs to win customer satisfaction from a more extensive visual angle.Means-end chain, a qualitative analysis method that understands customer satisfaction, depicts the ways that personal value influents personal behavior. Through laddering, we interview customers beginning with product attributes and dig deeper gradually, so we can know these factors that influent customer satisfaction. Based on interviews, it will shows three levels of customer satisfaction――attribute satisfaction,consequence/benefit satisfaction and value satisfaction. In the study, we take hand soap as a example and research these factors that influent customer satisfaction in three levels through laddering. These three levels are related with each other. Consequence/benefit satisfaction and value satisfaction are based on attribute satisfaction and extent of it. The method has a guiding significance of corporate marketing strategy.The contributions of this study are combining customer satisfaction with customer value and analyzing the factors that influent customer satisfaction by making use of means-end chain theory .It break through traditional analysis methods which make customer satisfaction limited to product attributes,so we can understand these factors that have impacts on customer satisfaction from deeper levels.