Environmental quality as an important dimension of customer satisfaction in apartment industry

This study aims to determine the dimensions of customer satisfaction. For this purpose, researchers developed a model by taking an experiential view. In this article, a standard questionnaire was used for collecting the data and, the authors report a comparative study that was conducted on two samples of real customers at apartment industry (low income and high income) in Iran. The results from a low income sample revealed that the customer satisfaction is influenced more by customer cost and product quality than other constructs. Moreover, the role of customer satisfaction as a mediating factor in the intention of word of mouth is supported. In contrary, in high income sample customer satisfaction influenced more by product quality and service quality than other constructs. In addition, the role of customer satisfaction as a mediating factor in the intention of word of mouth is rejected. A notable advantage of the model developed in this study is that, it covers essentially all the quality issues an apartment customer may encounter (that is, physical or product, service, and environment).   Key words: Customer satisfaction, word of mouth, service quality, apartment industry, Iran.