Study on Customer Satisfaction in Benefit/Sacrifice Hierarchy

This thesis first discusses the concepts of customer value and satisfaction and relationship between them, as well as the components of customer value, including benefit and sacrifice, which have different impact on customer satisfaction. Furthermore, we make classification of benefit and sacrifice, summarized into inherent, expected and surprising levels, based on the comparison between customers´ expectation and perceive. Relevant benefit/sacrifice hierarchy is also referred. According to the above hierarchy relations, we have come up with the hypothesis that different levels of benefits and sacrifices have different levels of effect on the overall customer satisfaction. With the student credit card as the research object, we categorize 34 benefit/sacrifice items according to the benefit/cost attributes hierarchy structure. Finally, we verify the assumption using deep interview and questionnaire.