Developing inventories for satisfaction and Likert scales in a service environment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to produce up‐to‐date inventories for satisfaction and Likert scales that contain commonly used scale point descriptors and their respective mean scale values and standard deviations. Design/methodology/approach – All data were collected online using the SSI Survey Spot Panel. This panel is national (USA) in scope. Thirty‐nine satisfaction items and 19 agreement items were tested on a random sample consisting of individuals 21‐65 years old. Findings – The mean value and the standard deviation were calculated for each of these descriptors. Even though only six of the items that had been tested by Jones and Thurstone (1955) were included in the list of satisfaction scale descriptors, the semantic meanings of those six have changed very little over the years. Research limitations/implications – One limitation might be that scale point descriptor inventories developed within the context of health insurance might not be valid in other service contexts. Practical implications – Since the present study focuses on Likert and satisfaction scales which are frequently used in service environments, the major contribution of this study is to provide services marketers with quantitative measurement of the meanings of commonly used scale point descriptors. This permits the development of successive and/or equal interval scales and thus aids in the analyses of data sets. It will thus help service marketers to develop questionnaires that more accurately reflect actual consumer satisfaction and opinions. Originality/value – The development of up‐to‐date inventories for satisfaction and Likert scales.