Hence, a loyal customer may not necessarily be a satisfied customer. The findings from
the study conducted by Levesque and McDougall (1993) suggest that even when a problem is not solved,
approximately half of the respondents would remain with the firm. This may be due to switching costs, lack of
perceived differentiation of alternatives, option constraints on location, time or money constraints, habit or
inertia (Bitner, 1990; Ennew and Binks, 1996). Hirschman (1970) also proposes the idea that dissatisfied
customers may choose to remain with a service provider in the belief that the likelihood of an improvement
outweighs the cost of searching for another supplier