Enhancing customer satisfaction through total quality management practices – an empirical examination

Abstract

This paper attempts to develop a model which shows the relationship between TQM practices and customer satisfaction level particularly in Indian manufacturing context through an empirical approach. Though there is considerable literature available in this area to examine the impact of TQM practices on organisation performance across the globe, still little is known about the effect of TQM practices on firm’s performance in Indian organisations. To examine the linkage more closely, the relationship between individual TQM practices and customer satisfaction level as a performance indicator was investigated explicitly. The empirical data were collected from a survey of 260 Indian manufacturing organisations using a self-administrated questionnaire. The study has contributed a model of 10 TQM constructs. The data were analysed and hypotheses regarding individual TQM practices were tested using multiple regression. In addition to that, structural equation modelling was used to determine the relationship between TQM and customer satisfaction level. Overall, the findings indicated that there exists a positive and significant relationship between TQM practices and customer satisfaction level. The study also revealed that knowledge management and customer focus were perceived as the most dominant TQM practices associated with customer satisfaction.

Keywords:

• total quality management
• customer focus
• customer satisfaction
• structural equation modelling
• knowledge management