A study on the dimensions of customer expectations and their relationship with cognitive dissonance

Abstract

Cognitive Dissonance is a post-purchase phenomenon where the consumers are in fix with their recent decision. It is a situation that exists when consumers who have made recent purchases feel doubts about the wisdom of their decisions. Customer expectations can be explained as the ideas and feelings of a customer about the product or service and depends on what he or she needs from the product. The relation between customers’ expectations and its relative importance in generating Cognitive Dissonance to such customers have been studied by the authors and reported in this paper. The study is conducted among the students’ belonging to the age group of 19-25 years in a University from the state of Kerala, who bought a durable product very close to the time of study (in seven days). The dimensions of customers’ expectations has been classified as expectation on quality, expectation on after sales service, expectation on customer consideration, expectation on offers/promotions, and expectation of price. The study revealed that when expectation of price, expectation of offers/promotions and expectation on after sales service are high or very strong, then the chance for cognitive dissonance are also very high, and other two expectations such as expectation on quality and expectation on customer consideration have not been found as important in generating cognitive dissonance