Attitudes towards customer satisfaction measurement in the retail sector

Following criticism of customer satisfaction measurement in the literature, this paper reports on a programme of research aimed at assessing corporate attitudes towards customer satisfaction measurement. The findings are based on a survey undertaken with marketing managers in 86 large (more than 25 outlets) UK retail and retail service organisations. The managers are generally aware of the weakness of using customer satisfaction measurement on its own, and therefore mystery shopping and staff surveys are commonly used to augment the results of customer satisfaction surveys, The research also found that the majority of the managers do not agree with the criticisms of CSM commonly cited in the literature, although a number are not fully satisfied with their CSM programmes. In particular, more needs to be done with regard to the provision of feedback to dissatisfied customers and also in the benchmarking of customer satisfaction against competitors, since very few of the respondents are currently satisfied with their approach to these activities.