Estimation of Customer Satisfaction Index of Food Markets, Case Study: Mashhad Municipality's Hypermarkets

In today’s competitive environment delivering high quality service is the key for a sustainable competitive advantage. Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on an organization’s profitability. Satisfied customers form the foundation of any successful business because customer satisfaction leads to repeated purchases، brand loyalty، and positive expression of satisfaction to other people about the business. Here، we introduce a new index formeasuring customer satisfaction for hypermarkets in Iran. The new assumption of thisresearch is that other factors affect customer satisfaction via image. They contribute in making image of hypermarket in customer mind and، through it، have most effect on customer satisfaction.

The current paper defines and estimates customer satisfaction index for Mashhad municipality hypermarkets. For this purpose، after definition of the model with structural equation modeling، it uses partial least square and generalized maximum entropy for estimating the defined model. After estimation، results of two manners will be compared with mean squared error for choosing the best way. The data used in this study are collected as a survey and are based on purposeful sampling method from 367 customers of 16 municipality hypermarkets available in Mashhad. Assumptions of this study are as follows: Assumption 1: Increasing perceived quality of supplied products and services in a store will increase customer satisfaction. Assumption 2: Increasing perceived value of services and supplied products in a store will increase customer satisfaction. Assumption 3: Increasing a customer’s perceived quality of supplied products in a store will increase his perceived value. Assumption 4: Increasing a customer’s perceived quality of services in a store willincrease his perceived value. Assumption 5: Positive perceived image of a store will increase customer satisfaction. Assumption 6: Perceived quality of supplied products and services will have a positive effect onperceived image. Assumption 7: Perceived value of supplied products and services will have a positive effect on perceived image. Assumption 8: Increasing customer satisfaction will increase customer loyalty. Assumption 9: Customer loyalty will lead to his praise، price insensitivity and complaint behavior.

Results of the study represents PLS as best manner and introduces perceived value and image as factors affecting customer satisfaction and praise as the result of customer loyalty and so suggests more surveillance on price level of these hypermarkets and creates a good atmosphere in them for improvement of these two indicators. All tests on PLS results indicate good and adaptable estimates. Average of composite reliability index is 0. 85 and it is higher than 0. 7 for all indices. So، the model has high reliability and all blocks arehomogenous. The average of communality index is 0. 58. It means that on the average0. 58 percent of manifested variables variability is explained by latent variables. With regardto the output of the model، the power of explanation is confirmed. In this model،the average of redundancy index is 0. 2 and larger than 0. 125، so it is an adaptable number. Also the GOF index is estimated to be 0. 48 and implies on good estimating of the model. The square rootsof the AVE values proved to be greater than the rest of the values for all the measuredvariables used in this study، confirming the existence of discriminant validity. The CSI index was 3. 77، which shows customers are relatively satisfied with services of these stores. Between all variables، score of loyalty was lower than others and shows that these storesmust try harder for attaining customer loyalty.

In recent years، customer satisfaction index has been evaluated and measured in different countries across organizations، industries and national level، but in Iran this index is not studied enough. In this paper we devise a suitable model for measuring customer satisfaction index for hypermarkets in Iran. We consider new relationships between factors affecting satisfaction، as we assume that perceived quality and value have most of their effects on customer satisfaction via perceived image. We used PLS and ME Methods for estimating the model and our results confirmed our assumption. Also،the results of this study represent PLS as the best manner. Given the importance of customer satisfaction index، the model presented in this study can be used as a basic model adoptable by governmental and private institutions and organizations in this industry، especially municipality of Mashhad، after due research works.