The Peak-End Rule in Customer Experience Design: A Quantitative Study of Service Satisfaction, Memory, and Evaluation Bias

Abstract

This study examines the application of the peak-end rule in customer experience design within service industries through a quantitative investigation of customer evaluations of engineered service encounters. The sample consists of 100 customers who assessed structured service experiences designed with manipulated peak moments and controlled ending conditions. Grounded in the Peak-End Rule (Kahneman et al., 1993) and the Service Blueprint Framework, the research investigates the cognitive mechanisms through which remembered experience rather than total experience duration shapes satisfaction judgments. Findings indicate that service experiences engineered with pronounced positive peaks and favorable endings produce substantially higher satisfaction ratings, increasing overall evaluations by 38% compared to uniformly moderate experiences with identical average service quality. Regression analysis reveals that the final phase of the service encounter exerts the strongest influence on overall satisfaction, with the last two minutes predicting 44% of variance in satisfaction ratings (β = 0.44), while the initial two minutes exert a comparatively weaker effect (β = 0.18). Peak intensity is also significantly associated with behavioral intentions, particularly customer willingness to recommend the service (r = 0.54), underscoring its role in shaping advocacy behavior. Multiple regression results show that ending quality (β = 0.38), peak intensity (β = 0.28), and peak–end alignment (β = 0.22) collectively explain 46% of the variance in overall customer satisfaction. The study also confirms the phenomenon of duration neglect, as 30-minute and 60-minute service experiences with equivalent peak and end structures receive statistically indistinguishable satisfaction ratings, indicating that temporal length is largely discounted in retrospective evaluation. The findings demonstrate that customer satisfaction is disproportionately influenced by salient experiential moments rather than cumulative experience quality. The study contributes to behavioral science by refining understanding of memory-based evaluation processes and offers practical implications for service design, customer journey optimization, and experience management in competitive service environments.