Managing customer-initiated contacts with manufacturers: The impact on share of category requirements and word-of-mouth behavior

The authors examine behavioral outcomes following a customer-initiated cont act (CIC) with a manufacturer and develop a framework to explain the impact of vendor performance during a CIC on a customer's share of category requi rements with a focal brand and word-of-mouth incidence following contact. T he authors propose customer characteristics and context-specific factors th at may relate to differences in the key characteristics of the underlying s ource model of share of category requirements and word of mouth. The author s then assess the overall importance of the explanatory variables in the so urce model and simultaneously test for systematic differences related to CI C-specific factors using survey data from more than 1700 CICs that involve more than 60 brands. A key assumption in much prior research that has exami ned customer-firm interactions is that CIC-specific factors, if they are in cluded at all, create an automatic regularity that must be controlled for. The authors propose and find an additional effect. The responsiveness to fa ctors under a firm's control varies across CICs, and therefore firms that a dapt their processing have an advantage. Rather than provide a uniform resp onse to all CICs, the authors' results offer managers several guidelines on how to customize their responses to the various CIC types and how to impro ve the efficiency and effectiveness of their firms' CIC management efforts.