Simester, Duncan I, John R. Hauser, Birger Wernerfelt, and Roland Rust (1999), "Implementing Quality Improvement Programs Designed to Enhance Customer Satisfaction: Quasi-experiments in the United States and Spain," (June), forthcoming, Journal of Marketing Research.

A multinational firm uses sophisticated, state-of-the-art methods to design and implement customer satisfaction improvement programs in the United States and Spain. Quasi-experimental analysis reveals a complex and surprising picture that highlights (1) implementation issues (enpowerment), (2) a construct of residual satisfaction not captured by customer needs, and (3) the managerial need for combining nonequivalent controls and nonequivalent dependent variables.

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