Abstract:
Cognitive Dissonance is a post-purchase phenomenon where the consumers are in fix with their
recent decision. It is a situation that exists when consumers who have made recent purchases feel
doubts about the wisdom of their decisions. Customer expectations can be explained as the ideas
and feelings of a customer about the product or service and depends on what he or she needs from
the product. The relation between customers’ expectations and its relative importance in generating
Cognitive Dissonance to such customers have been studied by the authors and reported in this
paper. The study is conducted among the students’ belonging to the age group of 19-25 years in a
University from the state of Kerala, who bought a durable product very close to the time of study (in
seven days). The dimensions of customers’ expectations has been classified as expectation on
quality, expectation on after sales service, expectation on customer consideration, expectation on
offers/promotions, and expectation of price. The study revealed that when expectation of price,
expectation of offers/promotions and expectation on after sales service are high or very strong, then
the chance for cognitive dissonance are also very high, and other two expectations such as
expectation on quality and expectation on customer consideration have not been found as important
in generating cognitive dissonance
