Do institutional investors pay attention to customer satisfaction and why?
Introduction Institutional investors are the major players in the capital market. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 13F filings, U.S. common stocks are mainly owned by institutional [...]
Extant marketing, accounting, and finance research has neglected to examine the relevance of customer satisfaction information for institutional investors, despite their potential importance. This study develops and supports a framework suggesting that firms with positive changes in customer satisfaction are more attractive to transient institutional investors than to non-transient institutional investors. We also find that the impact of customer satisfaction on transient institutional investor holdings is contingent upon firm intangible asset intensity, product-market demand uncertainty, and financial market volatility. In addition, transient institutional investor holdings at least partially mediate the effects of changes in customer satisfaction on firm abnormal return and idiosyncratic risk. Thus, transient institutional investor investments represent a mechanism through which customer satisfaction affects firm value. Keywords Customer satisfaction * Investor community * Institutional investor holding * Intangibles * Marketing-finance interface