DIFFERENTIATION AS A BASIS FOR EXPLAINING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ACROSS INDUSTRIES

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.