Donald Lehmann

Customer Satisfaction, Market Share, and Profitability: Findings from Sweden

Coauthor(s): Eugene Anderson, Claes Fornell.

Abstract:
The widespread belief in the intuitive relationship between quality, customer satisfaction and economic returns, as well as the growing frustration with attempts to improve quality, serve to underscore the importance of analytical and empirical work increasing understanding of customer satisfaction and how it relates to economic returns. Firms that actually achieve high customer satisfaction also enjoy superior economic returns. Economic returns from improving customer satisfaction are not immediately realized because efforts to increase current customers' satisfaction primary affect future purchasing behavior. While it is possible that customer satisfaction and market share go together, there is growing evidence that this is not always the case in the short run or a cross-sectional analysis.

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