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The High Price of Customer Satisfaction

March 18, 2014 | Timothy Keiningham, Sunil Gupta, Lerzan Aksoy, Alexander Buoye | Marketing

No company can last for long without satisfied customers. But misguided attempts to improve satisfaction can damage a company's financial health. Research finds that the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer spending behavior is very weak, and that the return on investments in increasing customer satisfaction is often trivial or even negative. What matters is how customers rank your brand in satisfaction relative to your competitors.

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