Perceptual Congruence between IS Users and Professionals on IS Service Quality - Insights from Response Surface Analysis

Despite the importance of matching different viewpoints on IS service quality in organizations, there is still little understanding about how perceptual congruence between IS professionals and users affects user satisfaction. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory and perceptual congruence research, our study examines 169 matched-pair survey responses using polynomial regression and response surface analysis. We demonstrate that perceptual congruence on IS service quality between IS professionals and users can have a nonlinear relationship with user satisfaction. We find that greater perceptual congruence is associated with higher user satisfaction and that user satisfaction increases when congruent perceptions of both IS professionals and users are high compared to when they are low. Moreover, the rate in the decrease of user satisfaction away from perfect congruence is dependent on the direction of incongruence, highlighting the importance of developing awareness of congruent perceptions to increase user satisfaction. Implications for research and practice are discussed.