A framework for assessing consumer satisfaction with credence-based services: A cognitive script approach

Service marketers have long needed research developed within the services area for services application. The majority of satisfaction research has pertained to products and attributes contained by those products. Yet with the acknowledged differences between services and products, there is still a void in the services satisfaction literature.;The research attempted to develop a service-based model of consumer satisfaction with credence-based services, using cognitive scripts for the formation of expectations. Scripts represent a cognitive movie of what events should happen and in what order. When this expected process of events is deviated by the service provider, correspondent inference was posited as the mechanism consumers may use to evaluate the information provided by the deviate action. This evaluation influences consumers' affect toward the service provider, their satisfaction with the service provider, and their intention to return to the service provider in the future.;It was concluded that consumers do have cognitive scripts for credence-based services and that these scripts are adaptable to accommodate unexpected events. Consumers did use correspondent inference to evaluate the deviate event performed by the service provider and this influenced consumers' judgements of the service provider.