Research about service management strategies effect on customer satisfaction is scarce. Service management and its implications on firms’ performance is a timely topic as many industries experience increased competition. This study attempts to contribute to this field by examining relationships between service management strategies and customer satisfaction within the Swedish high-end consumer electronics retail industry. The study also attempts to explore which service management strategies that store managers use as well as how they adopt themThis is done by combining data from interviews with a number of store managers and sellers, with data about customer satisfaction and customer’s perceptions of the service quality. 

The authors of this thesis found that store managers use a range of strategies to varying extent, for example empower employees and develop service oriented internal processes, and that these strategies are used actively and consciously to pursue a specific outcome. In addition, the study shows that there is a positive relationship between empowering sellers and customer satisfaction, this relationship is stronger when the sellers are properly informed about their authority. The thesis also suggests that well-functioning internal processes, such as inventory management, affect service quality and therefore also customer satisfaction positively. On the opposite, dysfunctional internal processes can be harmful for the service quality. At last, the authors found indications that a structured and ambitious effort to train sellers in technical skills increase customer satisfaction.