Background

American Customer Satisfaction Index: What it Measures

Quantifying Quality

National competitiveness and economic health depend on the productivity of economic resources and the quality of the output that those resources generate. Attempting to improve one without the other will eventually harm real economic growth. The purpose of the SAS Index, like the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), is to measure quality of economic output.

ACSI was launched in 1994. Its major objectives are to:

Measure quality of economic output, as experienced by users (i.e. buyers) of that output.
Obviously, quality is important in its own right as a part of living standards. The ACSI recognizes that quality in a market economy is not determined by government inspectors or by company engineers, but by buyers. It is their evaluations of quality that determine what they are willing to purchase and how much they are willing to pay.

Contribute to a more comprehensive picture of the economy.
For example, it is difficult to interpret the CPI without broader measures of quality.

Provide a leading indicator of future economic profits (and, by implication, shareholder value).
The ACSI captures a critical, albeit intangible, economic asset: The strength of buyer-seller relationships.

Deliver a measure of how well markets function.
If, for example, profits go up while customer satisfaction declines over time, one must ask whether we have a market with more monopoly power and less consumer choice than desirable. In this sense, the ACSI, coupled with profit data, provides information on industries where the market economy works and where it doesn’t.

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