Customer satisfaction
refers to an affective state that is the emotional reaction
to an experience or a sequence of
experiences with a seller. It is produced by the customer's as
sessment of the degree to which a seller‘s
performance is perceived to have met or exceeded some comparison standard. This conceptualization of customer
satisfaction is consistent with previous research (e.g., Cadotte, Woodruff, and Jenkins 1987; Spreng, M
acKenzie,
and Olshavsky 1996). Although it has frequently been argued that the job satisfaction of a company's employees
is an important driver of customer satisfaction, systematic research exploring this link is scarce. Results indicate
the presence of a
positive relationship between salespeople's job satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and this
relationship is found to be particularly strong in the case of high frequency of customer interaction, high intensity
of customer integration into the value
-
cr
eating process, and high product/service innovativeness (Brown &
Peterson 1993, 1994).