Customer satisfaction after the milestone revolutions: Why a mature field requires a new theoretical breakthrough
คำสำคัญ:
customer satisfaction, theoretical paradigm, milestone revolutions, socio-institutional judgment, configurational dynamicsบทคัดย่อ
Customer satisfaction has long been regarded as a cornerstone construct in marketing and service research. Over several decades, the field has evolved through multiple milestone revolutions, moving from cognitive evaluation models to multidimensional and experiential frameworks, relational perspectives, and increasingly advanced analytical techniques. Despite these developments, satisfaction research now faces a paradox of maturity, where methodological sophistication continues to expand, while theoretical innovation has become increasingly limited. Adopting a conceptual and problematization-oriented approach, this article reinterprets customer satisfaction research through the lens of milestone revolution. It argues that the cumulative success of past theoretical breakthroughs has unintentionally produced a condition of paradigm closure, in which satisfaction is treated as a stabilized managerial metric rather than an evolving theoretical problem. By critically examining dominant frameworks alongside emerging digital and post-crisis service contexts, this study identifies structural limitations that constrain the explanatory power of contemporary satisfaction theory. In response, the article outlines directions for a new theoretical breakthrough grounded in five core principles: 1) satisfaction as socio-institutional judgment; 2) configurational causality; 3) dynamic evaluative trajectories; 4) contextual intelligence; and 5) a tripartite conceptualization of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and delight. Rather than proposing a single dominant model, the study advances a renewed research program that emphasizes conceptual governance, contextual sensitivity, and theoretical renewal. This repositioning restores customer satisfaction as a theoretically consequential lens for understanding customer experience, organizational legitimacy, and market governance in increasingly complex service systems.
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