Pre-Experience Brand Quality Expectations

What it measures

Assesses a customer's anticipated quality of a brand's products or services before direct experience. Part of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), where expectations are treated as one of three key drivers of satisfaction. Items tap overall quality expectations, anticipated fulfilment of personal requirements, and the likelihood of things going wrong.

Response format

10-point bipolar scale (e.g., not very high / very high)

Scale items

• Thinking about your overall expectations of the quality you would receive from _____, how would you rate your expectations? (not very high / very high)
• How would you rate the degree to which you expected that your personal requirements would be met by _____? (not very well / very well)
• Thinking about your expectations before your recent experiences with _____, how often did you expect that things could go wrong? (very often / not very often)

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Part of the American Customer Satisfaction Index battery. Data collected from ~60,000 customers across primarily Fortune 500 companies. Higher scores indicate more positive expectations. AVE = .915. Note high cross-loadings with the satisfaction factor (.798–.824), indicating some discriminant validity concern. Administered with respect to a specific brand rather than the company where differences exist.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Hult, T.M., Morgeson, F.V., Morgan, N.A., Mithas, S., & Fornell, C. (2017). Do managers know what their customers think and why? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(1), 37–53.

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