Customer satisfaction barometers and economic development: An explorative ordinal regression analysis

Abstract

The national customer satisfaction barometers are aggregated measures of customer satisfaction, which have the potential to provide broad-based benchmarks for business organisations. These barometers may also explain changes in national economic returns and stability, and thus they are able to give a measure of the economic welfare and the quality of a national economic output. The aim of this paper is to examine the linkage between national satisfaction indices and several macroeconomic development data. The presented approach is an explorative ordinal regression method, in the context of goal programming modelling. Stability evaluation of the provided results is also discussed, using a post-optimality analysis approach. The application presented concerns the comparative analysis of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer (SCSB), and the German Customer Satisfaction Barometer (GCSB), while the results are mainly focused on measuring the contribution of macroeconomic indicators to the national level of satisfaction.