A Taxonomy of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction Measures

Government and business have become more concerned with measuring market performance in terms of consumer satisfactions and dissatisfactions (CS/D). This article is concerned with the question of how one ought to measure CS/D. It offers a taxonomy of alternative CS/D measures and presents data from a national urban study of consumer complaints to evaluate four of the proposed categories. Biases in several scales are identified and recommendations are offered for needed improvements in these measures for future CS/D research. Measures of initial non-price problems and unsatisfied non-price voiced complaints appear to be the preferred measures given our present state of knowledge.