Customers are one of core success drivers for an organization. Satisfied customers return to organization, make repeat purchases, recommend company to others. Customer satisfaction with supermarkets in Lithuania is being analyzed in the article. The aim of the article is to define the factors determining satisfaction based on estimation of customer satisfaction with supermarkets in Lithuania. The research is based on adapted methodology of European Customer Satisfaction Index. Research results highlighted models variables which should be enhanced for the enforcement of customer satisfaction with supermarkets in Lithuania.

In recent decades, as a result of globalization, environmental instability, and growing competition, customers are becoming tough receivers of information, criticizing products and having large spectrum of choice possibilities. Organizations which seek for a profitable business are forced to find measures for maintaining market shares, attracting and keeping their customers. Unsatisfied with organization’s product consumer will choose a competitor. Therefore, many organizations become consumeroriented. One of the features of consumer-oriented organization is customer satisfaction management. Customer satisfaction is being measured by calculation of customer satisfaction indexes. Many national and international models of customer satisfaction indexes are created. By calculating the index, organization finds out the level of customer satisfaction and main factors which affect satisfaction. By managing latter factors, organization better serves its customers and affects its competitive positions in a market. Moreover, customer satisfaction indexes are being calculated not only for a single company, but for an industries, countries or continents, as well. Catering industry is very popular because of being necessity. There are many catering companies all over the world, as well as in Lithuania. JSC “Cili Holdings” has a biggest net of restaurants in Baltic countries. Pizzerias “Cili pica” are very popular in Lithuania. However, achieving to keep their market share and popularity, the company has to keep their customers satisfied. Therefore, the problem of the research is what is: what is customer satisfaction with services of “Cili pica” pizzerias and what are the factors determining their satisfaction. [...]

Relevance of the research. Customer satisfaction researches can be named as one of the most popular scopes in the marketing research area. Customer satisfaction is evaluated by customer satisfaction index, which is reflected by the customer satisfaction index model. A wide variety of national and international customer satisfaction index models can be found in the world. The evaluation of customer satisfaction index provides the level of customer satisfaction with the product, organization or sector. Previous customer satisfaction researches (see Grigaliūnaitė, Pilelienė, 2012, 2013; Pilelienė, Grigaliūnaitė, 2012, 2013) revealed that customer satisfaction is not a homogenous concept – there is a set of internal and external factors, each of which individually or in interaction with others affects customer satisfaction with the object (product, organization, sector). Tourism has become one of the fastest developing areas of the service sector not only in Lithuania, but in the entire world; the importance of tourism is constantly growing. M. M. Selladurai and K. K. Sundararajan (2013) suggest that when developing tourism industry, the aim for many countries should be tourist satisfaction. The worldwide researches on tourist satisfaction (such as: Krešic, Prebežac, 2011; Song et al., 2011; Al-Majali, 2012; Siri et al., 2012; etc.) revealed that application of traditional customer satisfaction indexes in tourism does not achieve optimal results. Furthermore, the determinants of tourist satisfaction vary in different countries due to the residents’ values, habits, cultural heritage or lifestyle (Quintal, Polczynski, 2010). The problem of the research rises out of the question: what are the determinants of tourist satisfaction? Considering the fact that tourism has become one of the fastest developing areas of the service sector in Lithuania, the research aims to elaborate the Lithuanian tourist satisfaction index model. [...]