Eugene W. Anderson

The American Customer Satisfaction Index: Nature, purpose, and findings

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a new type of market-based performance measure for firms, industries, economic sectors, and national economies. The authors discuss the nature and...

Customer Satisfaction and Word of Mouth

Do dissatisfied customers engage in more or less word of mouth than satisfied customers? There is theoretical and empirical support for both possibilities. To better understand this issue, the authors developed a utility-based model of the relationship between customer satisfaction and word of mouth. The hypothesized functional form-an asymmetric U-shape-cannot be rejected based on data from the United States and Sweden. In addition, the estimation results based on the two samples are similar, suggesting that the proposed relationship is generalizable. The findings also indicate that although dissatisfied customers do engage in greater word of mouth than satisfied ones, common suppositions concerning the size of this difference appear to be exaggerated.

Strengthening the Satisfaction-Profit Chain

Customer satisfaction programs do not always deliver anticipated results. Disenchanted, some have labeled satisfaction measurement a “trap” and argued for abandoning customer satisfaction as a means for optimizing customer retention and profitability. The authors argue that doing so may be a mistake because the satisfaction-profit chain is conceptually solid. However, to achieve results, an important step is to recognize that the links in the satisfaction-profit chain are asymmetric and nonlinear. In this article, the authors review recent developments pertaining to the asymmetric and nonlinear nature of the links involved. They also discuss several examples based on commercial satisfaction studies where incorporating the asymmetry and nonlinearity added significant value to the firm’s understanding of the satisfaction-profit chain.

Customer Satisfaction and Shareholder Value

In this article, the authors develop a theoretical framework that specifies how customer satisfaction affects future customer behavior and, in turn, the level, timing, and risk of future cash flows. Empirically, they find a positive association between customer satisfaction and shareholder value. They also find significant variation in the association across industries and firms.

Rational and Adaptive Performance Expectations in a Customer Satisfaction Framework

This article develops and tests alternative models of market-level expectations, perceived product performance, and customer satisfaction. Market performance expectations are argued to be largely rational in nature yet adaptive to changing market conditions. Customer satisfaction is conceptualized as a cumulative construct that is effected by market expectations and performance perceptions in any given period and is affected by past satisfaction from period to period. An empirical study that supports adaptive market expectations and stable market satisfaction using data from the Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer is reported. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.

Foundations of the American Customer Satisfaction Index

How do we know if an economy is performing well? How do we know if a company is performing well? The fact is that we have serious difficulty answering these questions today. The economy-for nations and for corporations-has changed much more than our theories and measurements. The development of national customer satisfaction indices (NCSIs) represents an important step towards addressing the gap between what we know and what we need to know. This paper describes the methodology underlying one such measure, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). ACSI represents a uniform system for evaluating, comparing, and - ultimately - enhancing customer satisfaction across firms, industries and nations. Other nations are now adopting the same approach. It is argued that a global network of NCSIs based on a common methodology is not simply desirable, but imperative.

Customer Satisfaction and Price Tolerance

This study investigates the association between customer satisfaction and willingness-to-pay or price tolerance. The goal is not only to determine whether the association between customer satisfaction and price tolerance is positive or negative but also to gauge the degree of association. The Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer provides the data. The empirical analysis indicates a negative association between the level of customer satisfaction provided by the firm and the degree of price tolerance exhibited by its customers. However, a positive association is found between year-to-year changes in the levels of customer satisfaction and price tolerance.

Cross-Category Variation in Customer Satisfaction and Retention

Perceived quality, expectations, customer satisfaction, and effect of customer satisfaction on repurchase likelihood are found to be higher for products than for services, but repurchase likelihood for products is lower. Retailers have the highest repurchase likelihood and score lowest on the other variables. A set of relevant category characteristics is used to further understand variation in both the levels of these variables and their relationships. Quality, expectations, satisfaction, and satisfactions effect on repurchase are higher — and repurchase likelihood is lower — when competition, differentiation, involvement, or experience is high and when switching costs, difficulty of standardization, or ease of evaluating quality is low.

Understanding Firms' Customer Satisfaction Information Usage

Despite theoretical and empirical research linking a firms business performance to the satisfaction of its customers, knowledge of how firms collect and use customer satisfaction information is limited. The authors investigate firms’ customer satisfaction information usage (CSIU) by drawing on in-depth interviews, a focus group of managers, and the existing literature. They identify key characteristics of the major processes involved in firms’ CSIU and compare the CSIU practices revealed in their fieldwork with widely held normative theory prescriptions. They also identify variations in CSIU among the firms in the fieldwork and uncover factors that may help explain the observed differences.

The Formation of Market-Level Expectations and Its Covariates

A formal model of market-level expectations is developed and used to identify testable hypotheses. The empirical findings indicate that market-level expectations are more adaptive in nature than previously thought. The study also provides the first systematic investigation of cross-industry variation in the formation of market-level expectations. Several factors, including advertising, word-of-mouth, market growth, and purchase frequency, are found to have a significant moderating influence on the adaptation rate. Finally, we find that market-level expectations adjust faster when perceived quality declines, suggesting that negativity biases manifest at a macrolevel--a phenomenon that has not been previously observed. Copyright 2003 by the University of Chicago.