Survey Finds Decline in Satisfaction Level of U.S. Consumers

U.S. consumers were less satisfied overall with the quality of goods and services in the past year, according to a survey released Monday.

“The data suggest that speculation and conventional wisdom about a significant improvement in the quality of goods and services is somewhat off-base,” University of Michigan economist Claes Fornell said Monday.

Overall consumer satisfaction declined 1.1% between October, 1994, and last month as measured by the American consumer satisfaction index.

The latest economic sector surveyed, the broad manufacturing category of non-durables that includes products ranging from underwear to shampoo, showed a 0.5% decline.

The decline was led by a 5.6% drop in consumer satisfaction with newspaper quality.

The quarterly survey of more than 10,000 consumers nationwide is conducted by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the American Society for Quality Control in Milwaukee. It was begun one year ago.

Most non-durables examined in the latest survey showed no change from their high ranking, including processed food products, soft drinks, athletic shoes and personal care products such as toothpaste.

“These are all products for which quality is consistent and very little service is involved,” Fornell said.

That was not the case with newspapers, in which many more factors enter into the customer’s evaluation of quality, such as content, editorial policy, delivery and production, he said.

While manufacturing of non-durables is the highest-performing sector of the seven surveyed, its stagnant performance is not a good sign, the index’s creators said. Customers’ expectations are rising faster than the quality of the goods and services they buy, said Jack West of the American Society for Quality Control.

“What we sense is that the heavier the service component of any product, the more dissatisfaction from customers. And it’s because their expectations have been ratcheted up,” West said.

“Companies like Federal Express and UPS, which have very high consumer satisfaction ratings, tend to raise the bar for everybody else.”

More dissatisfied customers are bad for the economy, which is why the index should prove useful with other statistical measurements as a tool to understand economic trends, the index’s creators said.

The index tracks customer satisfaction with goods and services from 200 companies and government agencies and 40 industries. It scores one or two sectors each quarter on a 100-point scale.

The survey has a margin of error of 0.3 percentage points for the manufacturing results, and 0.2 percentage points for the overall ranking.