American Customer Satisfaction Index - Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Findings

Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Findings

One interesting set of findings discovered by academic researchers involve predictions of macroeconomic growth as functions of changes in aggregate customer satisfaction. These researchers have argued that there is a robust relationship between aggregate ACSI data (i.e. the National ACSI score discussed above) and some important macroeconomic indicators. For instance, Fornell has argued that the National ACSI score has proven to be a strong predictor of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and an even stronger predictor of Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) growth. This latter result is especially surprising, given that many economists continue to identify PCE growth as a "random walk" with no significant or consistent predictors.

Furthermore, Fornell and his collaborators have shown that ACSI data predicts stock market performance, both for market indices and for individually traded companies. In a 2006 paper published in the Journal of Marketing, Fornell and his coauthors argued that a hypothetical, back-tested portfolio of stocks chosen based on their performance in ACSI outperformed the New York Stock Exchange (the Dow), the NASDAQ and the S&P 500, a finding that has since been supported by other researchers.