Reexamining the Market Share–Customer Satisfaction Relationship

Abstract

Market share and customer satisfaction are often used to assess marketing performance. Despite the widespread assumption of a positive relationship between these two variables, the limited extant empirical literature on the subject indicates either a negative or a nonsignificant relationship. The authors reexamine this relationship over a longer time period than has previously been possible in a representative sample of U.S. consumer markets and find a consistently significant negative market share–customer satisfaction relationship. This is because customer satisfaction is generally not predictive of firms' future market share, but market share is a strong negative predictor of firms' future customer satisfaction. In follow-up analyses, the authors find that a firm's customer satisfaction can predict its future market share when it is benchmarked against that of its nearest rival and customer switching costs are low. In examining why the market share–future customer satisfaction relationship is generally negative, they find strong support for preference heterogeneity as a key mediator in this relationship. They also show that marketing more brands moderates the negative effect of preference heterogeneity on future customer satisfaction. Thus, larger brand portfolios offer a strategy solution for the general market share–satisfaction trade-off.