It is common sense that a customer's expectations affect their satisfaction. But where do their expectations come from? There are seven key influencing factors to be aware of:

1. Communications - "This is what the salesman told me"
2. Brand associations - "This is the kind of thing I expect from Ryanair"
3. Alternatives - "This is how Amazon does it"
4. Learned behaviors - "The shopping cart should be in the top right corner"
5. Past experience - "I got a huge discount last time"
6. Word of mouth - "Brian told me the app is easy to use"
7. Situational factors - "It's urgent, I'd appreciate you making an exception"

We can also think of expectation issues as falling into one of three camps:

1. Absence - No expectation was set
2. Dissonance - Saying one thing but doing another
3. Inference - Strong external sources (friends, competitors etc.) creating an incorrect expectation

Use these simple categories to bring some structure to your work if you’re trying to understand or explain how expectations are affecting customer perceptions. You can also use them to form research hypotheses, or sense-check new ideas and solutions.

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