C. Fornell, THE QUALITY OF ECONOMIC OUTPUT - EMPIRICAL GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT ITS DISTRIBUTION AND RELATIONSHIP TO MARKET SHARE, Marketing science, 14(3), 1995, pp. 203-211
As more nations add customer satisfaction-as a measure of quality of e
conomic output-to what they presently collect about the economy, it be
comes increasingly important to understand the role of customer satisf
action and its relationship to other economic measures. In an attempt
to contribute to such an understanding, this paper presents two empiri
cal generalizations about customer satisfaction. First, the distributi
on of customer satisfaction is negatively skewed. It is suggested that
negative skewness is a condition for a free market. Second, the assoc
iation between market share and customer satisfaction is not positive
(and often negative) in cross sectional analysis. While challenging to
firms that pursue both market share goals and increased customer sati
sfaction, the finding is consistent with fundamental economic theory a
nd the strategy literature.