Economic influences on customer satisfaction and their difference by core and peripheral functions

Recent literature has revealed that CS (customer satisfaction) is not only driven by corporate efforts at the micro level, but also by economic processes at the macro level. Using time-series data from three durable goods industries, pioneer work in this field discovered that CS is negatively influenced by the stock index, a measure of economic expectations. Extending their research and adding new data measured in 2004 and 2007, analyses were conducted under the following two hypotheses: 1) CS is influenced negatively by economic expectations and positively by economic growth, and 2) economic expectations should have a particularly strong influence on CS with peripheral product functions, compared to CS with core product functions. These hypotheses were supported, but the positive impact of economic growth on CS was not significant in all analyses. Managers and researchers should design methods to correct longitudinal CS values from economic influences, so that they better reflect the customer-oriented performance of firms.