CONSUMER CONFIDENCE AND CUSTOMER ATTITUDES:

SURVEYS AND STATISTICS

This guide is for students looking for measures of consumer attitudes and customer satisfaction.  It includes sources for opinion polls and consumer complaint statistics as well as the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) and the Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI), two leading economic indicators which focus on customer perceptions of general economic and business conditions. Books listed here are in the Birnbaum Library.

REFERENCE SOURCES:

American Attitudes: What Americans Think About the Issues That Shape Their Lives.

Ref HN90.P8 A527 2005

Annual Inquiry and Complaint Summary. Council of Better Business Bureaus, 1995-2002.

Ref. HC110.C63 C68

See also BBB website, below.

Annual NACAA/CFA Consumer Complaint Survey Report. National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators.

Ref. HC79.C63 N3 

            See also Consumer Federation of America website, below.

Compendium of American Public Opinion Polls.

Ref. HN90.P8 G56 1988

Economic indicators handbook: time series, conversions, documentation.

Ref HC101 .E385 2002

See “Business Cycle Indicators” for Consumer Expectations, a component of the CSI, going back to 1952.

Gallup Poll.

Ref.  HN90.P8 G35

Library has 1935-1978, 1984-1988, 1990, 1992-1993, 2001.

See also: Gallup Poll Monthly, Birnbaum Periodicals 1989-2000.

Gallup Poll Briefing (formerly Gallup Poll Monthly and Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing), full-text in Business Source Premier (July 1996-Present).

Guide to Economic Indicators.

Ref. R Desk HC 103 .F9 1994

Chapter 12 “Consumer Attitude Indexes,” includes a good explanation of the two economic indicators, CCI and CSI.

National and State Trends in Fraud and Identity Theft, 2003

United States Federal Trade Commission.

Ref.  HV6679 .N3 2003 

PERIODICALS:

Consumer Attitudes and Buying Plans. Conference Board.

Periodicals, 1974-1986 monthly

Consumer Confidence Survey. Consumer Research Center, Conference Board

Periodicals April 1992-Present

INTERNET SOURCES:

American Customer Satisfaction Index

www.theacsi.org

Quarterly data going back to 1996. Can view scores by industry, company, or national totals.

Conference Board

http://www.conference-board.org/

Limited free access to current data and articles on Consumer Confidence and other economic indicators.

Consumer Federation of America

http://www.consumerfed.org

Includes the NACAA/CFA Consumer Complaint Survey Report, listed above.

Consumer Sentinel

http://www.consumer.gov/sentinel/

Fraud complaint website operating since 1997.

Council of Better Business Bureaus

http://www.bbb.org

Gallup Organization

http://www.gallup.com/

Can search by keyword for abstracts of polls and reports. Limited information available for non-subscribers. 30-day free trial available.

General Social Survey Codebook

http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/

The GSS (General Social Survey) is an almost annual, personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). The mission of the GSS is to make timely, high-quality, scientifically relevant data available to the social science research community.

Index of Consumer Sentiment

www.sca.isr.umich.edu

Data available from 1952 to present. Includes components of the Index of Consumer Sentiment (Current Index and Expected Index).

National Opinion Research Center

University of Chicago

www.norc.uchicago.edu

NORC is a national organization for research at the University of Chicago. NORC’s clients include government agencies, educational institutions, foundations, other nonprofit organizations, and private corporations.

PollingReport.com

www.pollingreport.com

“An independent, non-partisan resource on trends in American public opinion.”  Includes comparative methodologies of different consumer comfort and consumer confidence surveys (essentially measuring the same thing, comfort with the state of the economy). Mostly political and social, but includes links to business-related polls (Harris, Gallup, etc.)

Public Agenda

http://www.publicagenda.org/index.cfm

Public Agenda is a non-partisan and non-profit agency founded in 1975 by social scientist Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. It conducts public opinion surveys and compiles and analyses survey data from other sources.  Browse Issue Guides under Economy to find Consumer Confidence Graph (based on Index of Consumer Sentiment), going back to 1970.

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu

Select Public Opinion Matters at left, then choose Business for questions pertaining to confidence in business leaders, or Economy for public views of general economic conditions. Some data from the 1970s is included.

Wirthlin Report

http://www.wirthlin.com/

Click Publications for a list of recent newsletter issues. June 2000 and December 2003 include analysis of American Customer Satisfaction Index. Wirthlin Worldwide conducts customer satisfaction surveys for individual companies.

LIBRARY DATABASES:

Lexis/Nexis

Select “Reference” and then “Polls and Surveys” –

Searches the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. Polls cover politics and government, public institutions, international relations, business, social affairs and consumer behavior and preferences.

Article databases, such as  ABI Inform,  Business Source Premier, and   Business and Industry

Try searching keywords such as “customer satisfaction,” “consumer attitudes,” “polls,” or “surveys” together with keywords from your specific topic or industry.

HISTORICAL SOURCES:

Confidence Gap: Business, Labor, and Government in the Public Mind. Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider. New York: The Free Press, 1983. Stacks HD 2785 .L53 1983

Includes data from late 1950s to early 1980s.

Handbook of Cyclical Indicators. Washington, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis

Ref HC101 .H35 1984 

Includes Index of Consumer Sentiment for 1952-1982.

Katona, George. Consumer expectations, 1953-1956.   Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.

Stacks HC110.C6 K3

For data from the 1950s.

Katona, George and Eva Mueller. Consumer Response to Income Increases. Washington, Brookings Institution [1968]

Stacks HC110.C6 K328

For data from the1960s.

FINDING BOOKS IN THE PACE LIBRARY:

Suggested search terms (Subject searches):

Consumer complaints

Consumer protection

Consumer satisfaction

Consumers – Attitudes

Consumers – Preferences

Consumers – Psychology

Consumers – Research

Consumers – United States

Customer loyalty

Customer relations

For economic and social surveys from the past 60 years, try doing an Author search for “University of Michigan Survey Research Center” or “National Opinion Research Center.”  Browse the list of titles for appropriate surveys.

Citing Your Sources

Once you have found your information, you will need to cite the sources that you used. The library has prepared some information on citation styles for print and electronic resources. You can access it on the Pace Library web site at page.cfm?doc_id=18429.  Please check with your instructor if you are unsure of which citation style to use.

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