Abstract

The customer-brand relationship is critical to a company's bottom line, particularly in the service industry that adopts online services. Virtual interfaces are becoming a major point of consumer contact for many companies. Some traditional service quality variables that impact customer satisfaction, such as the physical appearance of buildings, staff, and equipment and the responsiveness and empathy of employees, are not apparent in this setting. However, brand prominence may play a key role in improving consumer satisfaction. To satisfy customers and survive in the marketplace, service providers employ both online and physical purchasing channels wisely. Our research attempts to fill a gap in understanding what motivates customers' contentment and, hence, their expectations by comparing performance quality when consumers buy online vs. offline store. We analyze how brand prominence affects consumer satisfaction through the moderating effect of online and offline environments. The hypotheses were empirically validated using structural equation modeling after collecting 8533 valid responses. The findings show that both direct and indirect channel-induced expectations positively affect satisfaction, with the latter having a stronger influence. The results contribute to the literature by providing empirical evidence of the effect of expectations and performance quality on consumer satisfaction and extend the expectation-confirmation theory by including brand prominence as a component. This study contributes to a better understanding of how consumer satisfaction develops in an online or offline environment.

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