THE QUALITY OF ECONOMIC OUTPUT - EMPIRICAL GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT ITS DISTRIBUTION AND RELATIONSHIP TO MARKET SHARE

As more nations add customer satisfaction-as a measure of quality of e conomic output-to what they presently collect about the economy, it be comes increasingly important to understand the role of customer satisf action and its relationship to other economic measures. In an attempt to contribute to such an understanding, this paper presents two empiri cal generalizations about customer satisfaction. First, the distributi on of customer satisfaction is negatively skewed. It is suggested that negative skewness is a condition for a free market. Second, the assoc iation between market share and customer satisfaction is not positive (and often negative) in cross sectional analysis. While challenging to firms that pursue both market share goals and increased customer sati sfaction, the finding is consistent with fundamental economic theory a nd the strategy literature.