Customer satisfaction is one of the most important metrics in marketing, since
firms regard customer satisfaction as one of the key business goals for evaluating the
effectiveness of their business operations. In addition, customer satisfaction is a starting
metric of the value chain between customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, firm product -
marketplace performance and financial performance, and shareholder wealth, as
demonstrated by recent studies. Marketing academics and managers have been
increasingly interested in the effects of an increase in customer satisfaction levels on firm
financial performance since the 1990s. For instance, customer satisfaction has been
shown to positively impact operating margins (Bolton 1998; Rust et al. 1996), accounting 11
returns (Ittner and Larcker 1998), returns on investment (Anderson et al. 1994), and cash
flow and shareholder value (Anderson et al. 2004; Gruca and Rego 2005)