Customer satisfaction has been a popular topic in marketing practice and academic research since
Cardozo's (1965) initial study of customer effort, expectations and satisfaction. Despite many attempts
to measure and explain customer satisfaction, there still does not appear to be a consensus regarding its
definition (Giese and Cote, 2000). Customer satisfaction is typically defined as a post consumption
evaluative judgement concerning a specific product or service (Gundersen, Heide and Olsson, 1996). It
is the result of an evaluative process that contrasts prepurchase expectations with perceptions of
performance during and after the consumption experience (Oliver, 1980).