Factors influencing customer satisfaction in competitive beverage companies: a case of Tanzania Breweries Limited.

Customer satisfaction has received great attention in product/service competitive companies. One of the major ways to differentiate a product from other company's product or service is to deliver consistently higher quality products than competitors (Kotler, 1992: 461). Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL) has for along time bound in the question of providing quality products to its customers. Customers always expect quality products/services from any competitive beverage company. Their expectations of the product quality are affected by the brewers perceptions of the product quality. Such products are Safari larger, Kilimanjaro premium lager, Ndovu lager, Castle lager, Balimi extra lager and Bingwa lager. Brewers perceptions of customer's expectations are the driving force for the product quality improvement during the delivery of the product or services in any beverage company. TBL has a significant opportunity to improve its product reputation by providing high percentage of the basic quality products that customers expect. The main objective of this study was to examine factors influencing customer satisfaction in competitive beverage companies in Tanzania. To achieve this objective three hypotheses were developed and tested using a Chi-square statistical package. Data collected from the field were subjected to statistical tests using a special computer package known as spss/pc where, Chi-square; multiple regression for dependent and independent variables were carried out. It was statistically found that the level of customer satisfaction is not significantly independent with the level of the perceived product quality. It was found that customer satisfaction is not significantly independent on the expectation of the service rendered by the TBL. Also it was found that products in TBL filled a gap in that, customer satisfaction increases with the increase in the products/services quality. Statistical tests of multiple regression analysis, from the linear model, indicated that the coefficients that estimated the customers' expectations and perceptions were both positive, indicating that the more customer expectations and perceptions towards TBL products the more the customer satisfaction was. On the other hand, the goodness of-fit-test indicated significant room for TBL to improve quality of their products to attain customer's satisfaction and loyalty.