Researchers from Tilburg University, Singapore Management University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the impact of customer satisfaction on the future cost of selling (COS) of a firm and the extent to which this impact is influenced by firm- and industry-level factors.
The study forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing is titled “Customer Satisfaction and its Impact on the Future Costs of Selling” and is authored by Leon Gim Lim, Kapil R. Tuli, and Rajdeep Grewal.
While much of companies’ recent focus has been on improving the customer experience to increase satisfaction, reducing costs is a rising priority. Of particular salience to marketing managers is COS —the expenditures incurred by a firm to persuade customers to purchase its offerings and to make it convenient for customers to do so. In fact, investors and analysts also closely track COS and generally view a reduction as a positive signal. While customer satisfaction is assumed to reduce a firm’s future COS, there is neither an empirical test of this assumption nor is it clear how this varies across firms and industries.
The researchers find that customer satisfaction has a statistically and economically significant negative impact on future COS. Lim explains, “Specifically, a one-point increase in customer satisfaction can result in a reduction of almost US$130 million in future COS. That equates to nearly 3% of the future COS for a firm with approximately US$25 billion in sales. Given that cost reduction is a top priority for CEOs, this finding has direct communication implications for senior marketing managers because they can now articulate another economic value of customer satisfaction.” Importantly, investors and financial analysts also can incorporate the effects of customer satisfaction on future COS in their firm valuation models.
The results also identify specific conditions under which marketing managers can expect higher customer satisfaction to result in a higher or lower reduction in the different components of a firm’s future COS. First, a firm’s strategic focus matters. While diversified firms enjoy a higher reduction in their future cost of persuasion, they struggle to utilize the benefits of higher customer satisfaction to lower their future cost of convenience. A direct implication for these firms is to evaluate their formal and informal mechanisms for sharing customer insights related to the provision of convenience. Such an exercise could identify specific steps to enhance the effectiveness of customer satisfaction in lowering the future cost of convenience.
Second, strategic flexibility makes a difference. Capital-intensive and leveraged firms should expect a lower reduction in their future cost of persuasion. To overcome this relative disadvantage, capital intensive firms can conduct cost-benefit analyses to explore potential payoffs from increasing the salience of their positive word-of-mouth for prospective customers and from increasing customer-facing opportunities for their employees. Similarly, leveraged firms should carefully assess whether their current systems and procedures are creating impediments to utilizing the benefits of customer satisfaction. It is plausible that diverting managerial attention to servicing high levels of debt leads to selling activities that do not consider higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Third, a firm’s operating environment can influence the extent to which higher customer satisfaction can lower its future COS. Although firms in less concentrated industries enjoy a higher reduction in their future cost of persuasion, they should expect a lower reduction in their future cost of convenience. Thus, while the findings alert firms in such industries to the financial benefits of customer satisfaction, especially in terms of lowering the future cost of persuasion, they also highlight the need to re-evaluate firm efforts to understand customers in order to allocate spending to provide convenience. Furthermore, firms in industries with lower growth and labor intensity should expect smaller reductions in the future cost of persuasion. These findings suggest that firms in such industries should carefully consider whether they are over-investing in selling efforts and not utilizing the benefits afforded by higher customer satisfaction.
Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242920923307
About the Journal of Marketing
The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Christine Moorman (T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.
http://www.ama.org/jm
About the American Marketing Association (AMA)
As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what’s coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences.
http://www.ama.org/
Matt Weingarden, Vice President, Communities & Journals, leads the diverse team that supports the AMA’s network of community leaders from its three broad communities and four scholarly journals.