City University of Hong Kong’s Department of Management Sciences (MS) announced the findings of the “CityU Hong Kong Consumer Satisfaction Index (CityU-HKCSI) 2005” on 7 January. The findings show that HKCSI stayed at 69.5, up 0.6% from the previous record high in 2004.

 

CityU-HKCSI, an example of the University’s applied research effort, is a performance indicator for Hong Kong businesses which measures consumer satisfaction with the quality of products (goods and services) purchased in Hong Kong.

 

“Findings are based on more than 113,000 interviews with consumers conducted over the last nine years using a computer-assisted telephone interview system, involving more than 10,000 successful interviews every year,” said Dr Geoffrey Tso, an associate professor in MS.

 

CityU-HKCSI has a scale of 0 to 100 to represent ascending levels of consumer satisfaction. HKCSI readings from 2001 to 2005 were 66.1, 65.1, 67.9, 69.1 and 69.5, respectively. These results indicate a continuing upward trend over the last three years.

 

Sixty-nine commodities and services were categorized into Clothing & Personal Care, Food & Drink, Housing & Related Items, Transport, Information & Entertainment and Non-Consumer Price Index (Non-CPI) Items. The categories, accounting for over 75% of the weightings in the Hong Kong composite Consumer Price Index, have been taken into account in calculating the CityU-HKCSI.

 

Dr Wu Minglu, a research fellow in MS, pointed out that with respect to the 69 major goods and services (please refer to Table 1) covered in the study, tunnels and paid television programmes experienced the greatest deterioration (-10.7% and -8.1%) in consumer satisfaction, resulting in low levels (60.8 and 61.6) of consumer satisfaction. Consumers were still most satisfied with music CDs (81.1), rice (77.9), jewellery (77.2), dairy products & non-alcoholic drinks (77.2) and edible oil (76.2), due to their high quality relative to consumers’ expectations.

 

Shopping in Shenzhen, entertainment in Shenzhen and job-seeking magazines experienced significant improvements (4.4%, 3.6% and 3.9%) in consumer satisfaction, although consumers were still dissatisfied (59.6, 66.1 and 61.3).

 

Regarding the six major product categories (please refer to Table 2) covered in the study, Hong Kong people are still most satisfied with Clothing & Personal Care (73.4), and consider these products to have the highest quality and most reasonable price relative to quality, followed by Transport (72.4) and Information & Entertainment (72.1), and then by Food & Drink (70.0) and Non-CPI Items (69.6).

 

Consumers were least satisfied with Housing & Related Items (66.7), but these products reported the greatest improvements in quality (4.5%), quality/price ratio (5.4%) and consumer satisfaction level (3.1%).