The Antecedents of Service Expectations

Expectations are an important element in the modelling of both service quality and customer satisfaction, through the expectation-disconfirmation paradigm. However, understanding of the way in which differing classes of expectations are formed is limited. To date, studies concerned with the antecedents of expectations have been highly exploratory and mainly qualitative in nature. Although this study is also to an extent exploratory, it advances the debate surrounding expectations by offering systematic quantitative testing of two different classes of expectations. Data were collected on service expectations for bank accounts prior to consumption, along with information on possible antecedents. Hierarchical regression analysis was then employed to interpret the data. The results showed implicit service promises are an important antecedent of both 'predictive' and 'desired' classes of expectations. In addition, explicit services promises have some influence on predictive expectations, whilst word of mouth influence desired expectations. In general, many of the posited antecedents of expectations were not significant predictors of expectation levels.