Could satisfaction be compared across customers? Some opposite evidences from China

Though the debate of interpersonal comparisons of satisfaction lasts for a long time, few researchers focus their attentions on whether the comparisons are empirically meaningful. This paper carries out two empirical studies to examine this issue and find that there are some validity threats when we compare customer satisfaction across customer groups without first considering the basic differences among these groups. The results in this study give some challenges to those that take customer satisfaction as a type of measurement for evaluating the performance of individuals and economic sectors.