An empirical investigation of the relationship between TQM practices, quality performance, and customer satisfaction level

Although much has been written about TQM, little attention has been paid to determine the effect of TQM practices on organisations performance measures, particularly in the Indian manufacturing context. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the significant impact of TQM practices on quality performance and customer satisfaction level of an organisation through an empirical approach. This paper also extends the research on exploring the mediating effect of quality performance on the relationship between TQM practices and customer satisfaction level. The empirical data was collected from a survey of 260 manufacturing organisations in India using a self-administrated questionnaire. After confirming the reliability and validity of latent variables with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling technique. The findings support the proposed hypotheses that there is a positive and significant relationship between TQM practices and quality performance as well as customer satisfaction level simultaneously. The results of the study also support the hypothesis that quality performance partially mediates the relationship between TQM practices and customer satisfaction level.