Toward the development of a service provider sociality scale and its relationship to customer satisfaction and loyalty

This study assessed the dimensional structure of the Service Provider Sociality Scale, then determined whether service providers' use of different sociality dimensions predicts customer satisfaction and, in turn, whether customer satisfaction predicts loyalty. A survey of 256 undergraduate student “customers” revealed two significant dimensions of sociality: Personal Connection and Courteous Expressions. These dimensions explained 74% of the variance in customer satisfaction, but only Courteous Expressions accounted for significant unique variance in satisfaction. Satisfaction, in turn, strongly predicted loyalty.