1. Visit www.theacsi.org and learn about the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI). Write a report explaining the index and compare indices for five different industries along with the national average. Are there differences in customer satisfaction across industries? Explain why or why not.
2. The Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) is measured similarly in other countries. Find another country's CSI and compare these results to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Are U.S. consumers more or less satisfied than consumers in the other country? Are trends in the national score similar?
Consumer consumption makes up a large portion of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an economic barometer of consumers' satisfaction with goods and services across many sectors of the economy. The company that produces the index interviews nearly 80,000 Americans annually to create national, sector, industry, and company satisfaction indexes. The ACSI benchmarks ten economic sectors, forty-three industries, and hundreds of companies and federal and local government sectors. While sales and profit data are historical, the ACSI is considered a leading economic indicator of macroeconomic growth. Marketers use this index to measure the pulse of the consumer. Research has shown it to be a predictor of GDP and Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) growth and even stock market performance.