C. Fornell et Md. Johnson, DIFFERENTIATION AS A BASIS FOR EXPLAINING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ACROSS INDUSTRIES, Journal of economic psychology, 14(4), 1993, pp. 681-696
The paper uses the differentiation of offerings as a basis for explain
ing differences in aggregate, industry level customer satisfaction in
the annual Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer. The results reveal
that differentiated industries have higher aggregate levels of percei
ved performance and subsequent customer satisfaction, and that a large
portion of variance in customer satisfaction across industries can be
explained by the impact of differentiation (via perceived performance
). These findings suggest that it is indeed possible to make meaningfu
l comparisons of customer satisfaction across different industries.