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Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration (MBA), Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology in the Faculty of Commerce, 2008 / The conditions for doing business are changing rapidly. In the last decade, the resin market has witnessed a substantial growth and rapid changes globally as well as domestically. Customer satisfaction is a critical issue in the success of any business system, hence, one of the key challenges of this market is how to satisfy and retain their customers. This issue is strongly related to how service quality is managed and which holds a significant importance to customers’ satisfaction and their perceived performance of companies. In order for companies to survive and grow, they must find new ways of thinking, which has led to doing marketing researches, especially those related to customer satisfaction. In this study, the SERVQUAL model was employed to establish the customers’ perceptions versus their expectations of service quality at Cray Valley Resins. Both primary and secondary data were used to inform this particular research. The research was quantitative in nature and conducted in the form of a self-administered survey. The type of study used was the cross-sectional analytical survey method. The summary of the findings reveals that the dimensions with the highest expectation were tangibles followed by responsiveness. Coincidently these two dimensions also had the largest gap scores. The overall mean gap score (-0.326) is relatively small. Thus, it can be concluded that although the customers hold a good opinion of the quality of the services provided, expectations of the services were higher.

M.Com. (Informatics) / This dissertation's objective is to supply a general, functional and business orientated discussion of the measurement of information system users' satisfaction. The result of this measurement acts as a measure of the data-processing function's success. It is however, not the purpose of this study to prescribe or develop a new standard method of measurement. This discussion also supplies a grounding for any further doctoral studies in this field. The dissertation's contents, highlights and exposition are being discussed in this synopsis. The motivation of this study lies first of all in the economical and strategic importance [2,3,44,20,17] of the data processing function for an organisation. Secondly, it lies in the importance of satisfied users, or clients, for the success of the data processing function. It is therefore important to always ensure the success of the data processing function, as well as to measure the subjective user satisfaction, accurately and effectively. This study is based on a previous study by Prof. JHP Eloff and DNJ Mostert [7,43], who created a general measurement process that determines the satisfaction of information system users; as well as various other research projects regarding the development and evaluating of these methods of measurement. The various, existing methods of measurement which were found in the literature, i.e: Pearson [6,33]; Baroudi [4,15]; Bailey [16]; Raymond [5] and Tan and Lo [36] , are being discussed in this dissertation. Due to the objective of this dissertation and the business orientated nature of this study, the statistical and critical evaluation of these methods are not being discussed. An attempt is however made to supply a broad view of the available methods of measurement, as well as the various contributions to the field of study by these research projects.

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration (MBA), Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology in the Faculty of Commerce, 2008 / The conditions for doing business are changing rapidly. In the last decade, the resin market has witnessed a substantial growth and rapid changes globally as well as domestically. Customer satisfaction is a critical issue in the success of any business system, hence, one of the key challenges of this market is how to satisfy and retain their customers. This issue is strongly related to how service quality is managed and which holds a significant importance to customers’ satisfaction and their perceived performance of companies. In order for companies to survive and grow, they must find new ways of thinking, which has led to doing marketing researches, especially those related to customer satisfaction. In this study, the SERVQUAL model was employed to establish the customers’ perceptions versus their expectations of service quality at Cray Valley Resins. Both primary and secondary data were used to inform this particular research. The research was quantitative in nature and conducted in the form of a self-administered survey. The type of study used was the cross-sectional analytical survey method. The summary of the findings reveals that the dimensions with the highest expectation were tangibles followed by responsiveness. Coincidently these two dimensions also had the largest gap scores. The overall mean gap score (-0.326) is relatively small. Thus, it can be concluded that although the customers hold a good opinion of the quality of the services provided, expectations of the services were higher.

Thesis (MTech (Quality))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2009 / The Catalytic Converter Industry (CCI), forms part of the component supply chain in the motor industry. The CCI is made up of a plethora of different suppliers, however for the purpose of this study, the focus will be on three of the five main suppliers, namely the ‘monolith substrate manufacturers’, the ‘coaters’, and the ‘canners’. The latter suppliers supply directly to the car manufacturers, also commonly referred to as the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), and are known as first tier suppliers. Some OEM’s exercise control over the entire supply chain. The control is exercised through various ‘customer requirements’ and ‘customer specific requirements’. Customer specific requirements influence the Quality Management System (QMS) of a supplier. Most OEM’s require that strategic suppliers must be ISO/TS 16949:2002 certified. ISO/TS16949:2002 refers to an internationally recognised specification, specifically adopted for the motor industry, and dictates the certification requirements that an organisation’s QMS must adhere to. The specification also makes provision for additional requirements that could be specified by the customer. In this instance, the customer is the OEM, in terms of which additional requirements can be specified over and above the certification requirements. For organisations manufacturing generic components for the various motor manufacturers, customer specific requirements add to the complexity of activities related to quality management systems. Applying an array of methods to minimise the risk of sending defective products to the customer by building each customer’s specific requirements into the quality management system, can lead to confusion and make work difficult to execute. To mitigate the complexity, the quality management systems should be simplified to ensure that the quality management system is entrenched and adds value to the organisations’ activities.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Business, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree Magister Technologiae in Business Administration. / The different opinion about customer satisfaction amongst academics and practitioners is useful in gaining broader understanding of the term customer satisfaction. This study anchors its definition of customer satisfaction on three main drivers: (1) product’s knowledge such as emotional or cognitive, (2) consumption experience and (3) the response after consumption. Although, this definition departs from market expectation of companies’ production and marketing orientation, it certainly forms the base for concerns about the need for product quality that now drives companies’ quality and competitive strategy. This study evaluates the usage of quality management to understand management perception of product quality and its relationship with customers’ satisfaction and competitiveness. This evaluation used survey research method to collect empirical data from 110 respondents randomly selected from manufacturing companies based in Cape Town. The data received were analysed using descriptive statistic, presented in tables and charts to understand and describe respondents’ perception of the usage of quality management for improved customer satisfaction. The finding shows that quality, management was used to improve satisfaction of customers.

M.Phil. (Engineering Management) / For over a decade, customer satisfaction has received increasing attention in marketing. Customer satisfaction is related to loyalty, which in tum is linked to increased profitability, market share, growth, and decreased costs.8 During the 1980s, Japanese firms won major market shares with their product quality and speed. As most leading western companies caught up with their Japanese competitors on quality, most Japanese firms were focusing on a new strategy to meet and exceed changing customer expectations in the 1990s.1 To produce loyalty to an organization became one of the most popular marketing trends of the last decade.1·32 However, customers remain loyal only as long as they are completely satisfied with the quality of the service or product provided? Research results show that it costs five to seven times more to recruit a new customer than it does to retain one." Numerous research studies have shown that the average customer who is happy with a product and a service tells at least three people of his satisfaction, while a dissatisfied customer tells 9 or 10 people about his dissatisfactionf Knowledge of customers' perceptions and attitudes about an organization's business will greatly enhance its opportunity to make better business decisions." More than 80 percent of innovations in high-performing companies come from customers' ideas.'

M.Com. (Business Management) / In the light of the ever increasing competition characterising today's global economy (Dale, 1995: 48) and the drastic changes brought about by the new South Africa, local businesses would have to make a conscious effort to prosper in future. Research organisations accustomed to being subsidised by the state have a particular challenge to face in the new South Africa where all subsidies are being shrunk. The reason for this is political pressure to redirect state spending towards social upliftment programmes. Quality and customer satisfaction are important topics that get attention world-wide. Well managed service organisations have the following common virtues [Kotler & Armstrong, 1991: 610]: • A history of top management commitment to quality; • High standards for service quality are set; • Service performance is well monitored - both their own and that of competitors; • Employees as well as customers are being satisfied. The distinction between service quality and customer satisfaction is that, perceived service quality is a global judgement relating to the superiority of the service, whereas satisfaction is related to a specific transaction [Parasuraman, et al., 1988: 16]. Incidents of satisfaction over time, result in perceptions of service quality. According to Cronin & Taylor [1992: 65] perceived quality may play a bigger role (in comparison with satisfaction) in customer-intimate companies who need to do more than simply meet customers' "minimum requirements". Customer-intimate companies (for example research organisations) continually tailor and shape products and services to fit an increasingly fine definition of the customer [Treacy &Wiersema, 1993: 87]...

University of Macau / Faculty of Business Administration / Department of Finance and Business Economics

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree M-Tech: Information Technology, Durban University of Technology, 2014. / This dissertation reports on an empirical evaluation of citizen satisfaction with e-government information services provided by Southern African Development Community (SADC) governments, since citizens perceive service quality as an effective indicator of e-government shortfalls. Few studies have been conducted in SADC countries to empirically evaluate the satisfaction of regarding e-government services. An e-government satisfaction model was applied, which is a non-linear framework with interactive quality proxies. A total of 364 respondents was used for data collection. An analytic modelling technique of Partial Least Squares (PLS) was used to predict the factors that most influence citizen satisfaction with e-government information services provided by SADC governments. The resulting model fits the data with a high goodness of fit (GoF) of 0.62 and a model predictive power (R2) of 0.60 for the global model. In addition, the results of this study show that perceived quality is the most influential factor affecting citizen satisfaction with e-government information services, followed by citizen complaint handling and then citizen expectation. Finally, this study used PLS to rank the SADC countries involved in this study in terms of which country is offering the best level of e-government information services and customer satisfaction. The results indicate that South Africa was ranked highest and Tanzania lowest.