Do integrated products and services increase customer satisfaction? The case of the mobile industry in Korea

As the importance of service offering is increasing in not only service areas but also manufacturing areas, manufacturers and service providers strive to integrate products and services simultaneously. The integration in service delivery has helped in the provision of better products or services with increasing convenience and usefulness. In previous research, strategic management and case studies of integrated products and services (IPSs) have been conducted in various fields. However, research on finding significant service characteristics which affect customer satisfaction and service quality has been rarely investigated and interested although service integration into products offers more functions and advantages. With regard to this limitation, this paper proposes a research model that is subject to finding the significant factors for customer satisfaction in terms of service characteristics and quality. In the case of the mobile industry in Korea, the findings show positive and different relationships between customer satisfaction and service characteristics as well as service quality with respect to three types of IPSs: advice, maintenance, and content services. These significant results imply that IPS is one of the critical factors to improve customer satisfaction in the mobile industry.