The relationship between customer satisfaction and corporate reputation and credibility

Abstract

Service industries, such as banking and finance retailing, are different in many ways to industries that deal with a tangible product. Therefore, service-marketing gurus emphasize process, people, and physical elements to enable service providers to market themselves effectively. There are controversial about the associations between customer satisfaction and corporate reputation and corporate credibility, this study therefore examined the influence of customer satisfaction on the credibility and reputation of the Farmers' Association credit departments (FACDs) in Taiwan. The Farmers' Association (FA) in Taiwan is a multi-purpose organisation that provides a vast number of services to rural communities in Taiwan. As FACDs are credit departments of an association, influenced by the government yet operating as private organisations, their function and services are rather intricate and ambiguous. The aim of this study was to determine the positive effect of customer satisfaction to corporate credibility and reputation of FACDs in Taiwan. Total 334 fully completed questionnaires were received from participants. The outcome of data analysis showed that the two hypotheses are supported that customer satisfaction has positive effect both on corporate reputation and credibility.