The importance of intangible assets as important value drlvers and critrcal success factors has increased in the customer centric world of today. Despite the importance of the intangible assets, intangible assets other than purchased goodwill are generally not recognised in the financial statements. Thls has resulted in declining relevance and declsion usefulness of corporate annual reports to the users of annual reports There have been suggestions for disclosure of intangrbie assets m the annual reports These suggestions have argued for expermentation wlth development of measurement technology for measuring and reporting intanglble assets in the annual reports. Thls research identifies customer satisfaction as a signal of the intangible assets to explore the possibility of disclosure of lntanglble assets like customer satlsfaction in the annual reports.\ud
\ud
Ths thesis is a behavioural exploratory study that adopts a user orientation approach to answer two research queshons of why and how customer satisfaction should be disclosed in the annual reports The theoretical framework developed to explore the main research questions argues that in vrew of the relevance of disclosure of customer sabsfaction to the users of the annual reports, positive and negative, \ud
'internally' and 'externally generated' measures of customer satisfaction may be disclosed qualitatively or quantitatively in the Operating and Financial Revlew of the annual reports. Research hypotheses are suggested for assessmg the relevance of the customer satisfaction dlsclosure to the users of annual reports and for assessing the reaction of the users of annual reports to different types of customer satrsfactron disclosures Using a triangulation research approach, the research uses qualitative and quantitative research methods in explonng the research hypotheses. A number of economic financial reporhng and psychological theories for example Fuzzy Trace Theory, Attribute Framing Effects and Affective Reaction Model are used to explain the findings of the research study The research concludes that even though there are existing rneasure~nentt echnologies that can be used to report customer satisfaction in the annual reports but the reluctance of the preparers of annual reports to report anything negative or qualitative in the annual reports is the main obstacle in reporting relevant information about customer satisfaction in the annual reports The research suggests policy recommendations for reporting customer satisfaction in the annual reports and outlines future areas of research