Hong Kong Consumer Satisfaction Index reaches a record high
The CityU-HKCSI is a performance indicator developed by MS for
Dr H P Lo, Head of MS, said, “In a highly competitive and service-oriented economy like Hong Kong, a company’s success depends more on improving its products’ quality than increasing productivity. In the past eight years, we had successfully conducted approximately 100,000 consumer interviews to collect data to come up with the CityU-HKCSI. The index complements traditional quantity-based economic performance measures. In line with the University’s mission to contribute its research output to the community, the CityU-HKCSI is also aimed to provide valuable information to all parties concerned: the firms, shareholders, investors, government regulators, and consumers.”
Ms Connie Lau Yin Hing, Deputy Chief Executive of Consumer Council, said, “We believe that the models developed by CityU’s Department of Management Sciences using advanced statistical and marketing research methods, and multi-item scales to measure consumer satisfaction, which relate consumer satisfaction to its causes and consequences, help enhance the quality of products and services and ultimately benefit the consumers.”
69 commodities and services were categorised into Clothing & Personal Care, Food & Drink, Housing & Related Items, Transport, Information & Entertainment and Non-CPI Items. The categories, accounting for over 75% of the weightings in the
Announcing the findings for 2004, Dr Geoffrey Tso, Associate Professor of MS, said “The CityU-HKCSI has a scale of 0-100 to represent ascending levels of consumer satisfaction. In 2004, CityU-HKCSI increased 1.8% to a record high of 69.1 from the 2003 score of 67.9. The Sub-HKCSIs of all six product categories registered certain increase. In particular, Clothing & Personal Care witnessed a substantially higher Sub-HKCSI increase of 3.1%, while the other five product categories also achieved noticeable consumer satisfaction improvement rates of 0.8~2.1%.”
Among the six product categories in 2004, Hong Kong consumers were most satisfied with Clothing & Personal Care that achieved the highest Sub-HKCSI of 74.1, followed by Transport of 72.3 and Information & Entertainment of 72.1, and then by Food & Drink of 71.2 and Non-CPI Items of 69.3. They were least satisfied with Housing & Related Items which received a substantially lower Sub-HKCSI of 64.7.
At product level, Hong Kong people were most satisfied with film which reported the highest CSI of 80.0 in 2004, followed by music CDs of 79.7 and jewellery of 78.3. It is noticed that music CDs, film, rice, dairy products & non-alcoholic drinks, edible oil, and proprietary medicines & supplies had continuously showed up in the top 10 CSI lists since 1998.
At the other extreme, local consumers were least satisfied with shopping in Shenzhen which received the lowest CSI of 57.1 in 2004, preceded by job-seeking magazines of 59.0 and renting public houses of 62.5. It is found that renting private houses, renting public houses and weekly magazines had always been among the bottom 10 CSIs since 1998, and shopping in Shenzhen, job-seeking magazines and job-seeking websites had always appeared in the bottom 10 CSIs since they were included into the HKCSI programme in 2001.