Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether customer-perceived service quality and expectation of service quality have causal impacts on overall customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach -Data on all the variables were elicited from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and these were analyzed using the Granger causality method. Findings -Satisfaction and perceived quality were positively related. Even though perceived quality did not Granger-cause satisfaction in the short term, it did so in the long term. Likewise, even though satisfaction did not Granger-cause perceived quality in the short term, it did so in the long term. But customer expectations Granger-caused both satisfaction and expectation in the short-term and the long term.Research limitations/implications -The findings are based on only one company. Extrapolation to other companies demands caution and the data may not satisfy asymptotic assumptions. Originality/value -The study contributes to the literature by advising managers to extend their customer satisfaction tracking to overall customer satisfaction with its strategic implications.

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to advocate and implement cointegration methods for the estimation of interconnectedness of service quality and customer loyalty as intangible strategic assets within management decision.Design/methodology/approachUsing longitudinal time series quarterly data on loyalty and service quality, the paper uses cointegration methods to empirically estimate the weight of interconnectedness of customer loyalty and service quality as intangible strategic assets.FindingsThe research evidence suggests that customer loyalty and service quality are interconnected intangible strategic assets that managers can develop, accumulate, estimate and deploy for superior competitive advantage.Originality/valueTo the extent that the global economies are increasingly service‐driven, managerial capability to estimate intangible strategic assets as drivers of superior competitive advantage will remain strategically important. Assumedly, this paper is the first to illustrate how cointegration methods can be used by managers to estimate interconnectedness of intangible strategic assets. In this sense, to the extent that this method is new to managers, it represents another toolkit of intangible strategic asset management for managers.

This paper employed times series econometric methods to test the theoretically-grounded link between customer retention and customer perceived quality.The results suggest that customer retention and quality have a stable positive linkbinding them together, which allows them to move together in the same directionover time. Importantly, empirical evidence of long term Granger-type causalityrunning from quality to retention, was found in support of this positive linkFinally, customers' perception of quality yesterday has a positive impact on theirlevel of retention today. It suggests that customers' memories of quality lingeron beyond the current period to positively impact customer retention levels inthe future. In this sense, quality is an intangible strategic asset in which servicemanagers should invest their capital.