ASSESSING THE THEATRICAL COMPONENTS OF THE SERVICE ENCOUNTER - A CLUSTER-ANALYSIS EXAMINATION

The relative influence of setting, employees, other customers, and ove rall performance of a service on customers' satisfaction/dissatisfacti on with the service organization was the focus of this study. The resu lts revealed that some service components were more important in custo mer assessments of satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Furthermore, three di fferent segments of customers were discovered. While each segment diff ered in terms of the importance placed on the four service components, the segments did not possess distinct demographic profiles. The impli cations of these findings are then discussed.