Hit with record losses, American auto manufacturers are suffering from slumping customer satisfaction, according to the University of Michigan’s National Quality Research Center’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for the second quarter of 2008.
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No domestic car maker was among the top four brands though the bottom three were all American brands.
Yet the report found customer satisfaction for the industry as a whole remains at an all-time high (unchanged at 82), and that one American car maker, GM’s Saturn, showed considerable improvement, climbing 5% to tie its all-time high from 1998.
“The problem for domestic companies is that they now lag further behind their foreign counterparts,” said said Claes Fornell, the university’s ACSO head.
“This is not going to be helpful as the Big Three will lose more pricing power and be forced to continue dependence on rebates and discounting in a market where consumer preferences keep shifting away from domestic cars.”
Lexus and BMW led all other auto manufacturers at 87. Toyota and Honda each improved 2% to 86. Mercedes Benz, once top for customer satisfaction, continued to fall behind the leaders.
In fact, from being the top scorer in ACSI eight years ago, Mercedes has seen a slow but steady erosion in customer satisfaction and is now no better than the industry average, the report noted.
Chevrolet, GM’s best-selling brand, had the biggest fall, losing 4% to 79. Chrysler’s Dodge (-3% to 78) and Jeep (+1% to 76) were at the bottom of the list.
The index also rated personal computer and major appliance manufacturers and e-business providers.
The index is described as “a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States” updated each quarter with new measures for different sectors of the economy replacing data from the prior year.
The overall ACSI score for a given quarter factors in scores from about 200 companies in 44 industries and from government agencies over the previous four quarters.
The index is produced by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in partnership with the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and CFI Group.
