Var det värt det - Hur prisnivå påverkar uppfattad kvalitet, prisvärde och kundnöjdhet

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect that price has on quality expectations and customer satisfaction and how price fits into a customer satisfaction model. An experiment in which participants are subject to scenarios of a high or low quality flight are used to test the hypotheses. The analysis shows that perceived quality has a bigger impact on satisfaction than price. Furthermore, price and quality do not affect customer satisfaction independently of each other. The importance of value compared to quality changes whether the actor is a high or low price actor. It is not necessary for a high quality actor to focus on affordability as it in this case rather is quality that determines customer satisfaction. A low quality actor would instead be advised to not focus on quality perceptions as it is affordability that determines customer satisfaction. While previous studies to some extent seem to neglect the impact price has on customer satisfaction, this study explores the part price plays in such a model. This improves our understanding of how low price and quality actors manage to retain customers. Future research could possibly investigate if the relationships between price, quality and satisfaction found in our experiment on the air industry are relevant also in other industries.