Rational and Adaptive Performance Expectations in a Customer Satisfaction Framework

This article develops and tests alternative models of market-level expectations, perceived product performance, and customer satisfaction. Market performance expectations are argued to be largely rational in nature yet adaptive to changing market conditions. Customer satisfaction is conceptualized as a cumulative construct that is affected by market expectations and performance perceptions in any given period and is affected by past satisfaction from period to period. An empirical study that supports adaptive market expectations and stable market satisfaction using data from the Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer is reported. T here is an extensive and growing body ofresearch on customer satisfaction that focuses primarily on disaggregate or individual-level satisfaction with par-ticular goods or services (Yi 1991). Relatively little at-tention has been paid to the determinants of market-level satisfaction, which is defined here as the aggregate satisfaction of those who purchase and consume a par-