Title: Economic influences on customer satisfaction: an international comparison

Authors: Bjorn Frank, Takao Enkawa

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2–12–1 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152–8552, Japan. ' Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2–12–1 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152–8552, Japan

Abstract: The marketing literature has extensively analysed firm-level influences on customer satisfaction. Since macro-level customer satisfaction data have not become available until recently, researchers have just taken first steps towards analysing economic influences on customer satisfaction. Identifying economic influences is important because their existence would impair the interpretability of corporate customer satisfaction surveys. Using principal component and regression analyses, we examine economic influences on customer satisfaction across a number of countries: Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the USA. Our analyses reveal that economic expansion exerts a positive influence on customer satisfaction, whereas economic expectations exert a negative influence. As a measure to improve today|s quality management practices, we thus recommend that firms correct the scores of multiperiod customer satisfaction surveys for economic influences.

Keywords: customer satisfaction; business environment; economic growth; expectations; consumer confidence; stock index; international comparison; disconfirmation of expectations; quality management; economic development; Denmark; Germany; Hong Kong; Japan; South Korea; Sweden; USA; United States.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBE.2009.023795

International Journal of Business Environment, 2009 Vol.2 No.3, pp.336 - 355

Received: 11 Apr 2008
Accepted: 28 Aug 2008
Published online: 11 Mar 2009 *

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