Business-to-business suppliers invest in safety training programs believing that such programs mitigate safety hazards, prevent workplace injuries, and create value for their customers. However, causal evidence of these effects is sparse. Study 1 uses site-level monthly data from a global oil field services company. Exploiting sharp discontinuities in safety training hours due to catastrophic accidents, the authors find that a 10% increase in safety training hours per capita decreases safety hazards per capita by 6.45%–9.57%. Study 2 measures the causal impact of business establishments’ safety training intensity on their workplace injuries: it leverages Local Law 196 requiring workers at construction establishments in New York City to complete at least ten hours of safety training. This legislation reduced injury rates at construction establishments in New York City by .54–.68 percentage points (a 15.56%–18.84% decrease) relative to their counterparts. Study 3, a stated-choice conjoint experiment of business-to-business procurement professionals, documents that the focal supplier's investment in safety training increases the probability of its proposal being selected by those professionals. Collectively, these findings validate the need for suppliers to invest in safety training as a risk-mitigation vehicle that has positive implications for business-to-business buying decisions.

The authors synthesize research on the relationship of customer satisfaction with customer- and firm-level outcomes using a meta-analysis based on 535 correlations from 245 articles representing a combined sample size of 1,160,982. The results show a positive association of customer satisfaction with customer-level outcomes (retention, WOM, spending, and price) and firm-level outcomes (product-market, accounting, and financial-market performance). A moderator analysis shows the association varies due to many contextual factors and measurement characteristics. The results have important theoretical and managerial implications.

This article examines the effect of political identity on customers’ satisfaction with the products and services they consume. Recent work suggests that conservatives are less likely to complain than liberals. Building on that work, the present research examines how political identity shapes customer satisfaction, which has broad implications for customers and firms. Nine studies combine different methodologies, primary and secondary data, real and hypothetical behavior, different product categories, and diverse participant populations to show that conservatives (vs. liberals) are more satisfied with the products and services they consume. This happens because conservatives (vs. liberals) are more likely to believe in free will (i.e., that people have agency over their decisions) and, therefore, to trust their own decisions. The authors document the broad and tangible downstream consequences of this effect for customers’ repurchase and recommendation intentions and firms’ sales. The association of political identity and customer satisfaction is attenuated when belief in free will is externally weakened, choice is limited, or the consumption experience is overwhelmingly positive.

Business-to-business (B2B) companies devote significant resources to measure customer satisfaction but lack guidance on critical aspects of implementing satisfaction programs. Accordingly, executives ask: (1) What are the key strategic attributes driving B2B customer satisfaction? (2) Are the strategic attributes satisfaction balancing, satisfaction maintaining, or satisfaction enhancing based on the pattern of asymmetry? (3) Do the sign and magnitude of asymmetry vary across industry and customer subgroups? and (4) Is there a generalizable link between satisfaction and financial performance for B2B firms? Study 1 uses qualitative and secondary research to identify and validate eight strategic attributes pertinent to B2B companies: quality of product/service, pricing, safety, sales process, project management, corporate social responsibility, communication, and ongoing service and support. Study 2 examines industry-subgroup heterogeneity in the nature of asymmetry across industries, then links satisfaction with performance (i.e., sales). Study 3 finds customer-subgroup heterogeneity in the nature of asymmetry within the customer base of a B2B service provider, then links satisfaction with performance (i.e., dollar value of purchase).

Companies invest in safety-training programs to improve safety outcomes—mitigate hazards and injuries—and potentially create customer value. Yet, executives struggle to quantify return on safety-training programs, and research linking safety-training programs to objective safety outcomes is inconclusive. The authors examine the impact of safety-training programs on safety hazards, workplace injuries, and customer satisfaction. Study 1 uses site-level monthly data from a global oilfield services company. Exploiting sharp discontinuities in safety training hours due to catastrophic accidents, the authors find that a 10% increase in safety training hours per capita decreases safety hazards per capita by 6.5%−9.6%. The authors provide evidence for a plausible mechanism—safety training improves employee knowledge acquisition. Study 2 measures the causal impact of safety training on injuries at 32,061 business establishments leveraging Local Law 196 requiring construction workers in New York City (but not the rest of the State of New York) to complete at least ten hours of safety training. This legislation led to a 15.6%−18.8% decrease in injury rates at construction establishments in New York City relative to their counterparts. Study 3 demonstrates a positive link between public firms’ performance on workplace safety and customer satisfaction, demonstrating marketing implications of safety training.

Value-appropriation activities enable a firm to extract more profits from existing customers. The authors examine how investments in two types of value-appropriation activities—advertising and receivables—are jointly associated with abnormal stock returns and idiosyncratic risk. Using data from 1,375 firms over the period of 2003–2015, the authors find that advertising investments and receivables investments interact as substitutes, such that increasing advertising (receivables) investments is detrimental to the beneficial effect of receivables (advertising) investments on firm shareholder value. They find that this association is contingent on firm business scope, such that the joint effect of advertising investments and receivables investments becomes weaker when firms have a broader business scope compared with a narrower business scope.

Firms may allocate scarce resources to two fundamental strategic processes: value creation and value appropriation. The relative investment in these processes (i.e., a firm's relative strategic emphasis) may be associated with firm-idiosyncratic risk. Empirically, a firm's relative strategic emphasis is represented by the difference between its advertising expenditure and its research-and-development expenditure. Using data from 2,403 firms over the period of 2000–2014, the authors find that firms’ relative strategic emphasis on value appropriation versus value creation reduces firm risk, though in a contingent manner. This association is weaker when firms have larger positive or negative relative performance. Furthermore, these contingent associations are stronger when demand instability in an industry is higher. Overall, the results demonstrate that a firm's strategic emphasis should be examined in light of its relative performance, as well as in the context of current market conditions, when making judicious resource allocation decisions.

Scholars have used the attribute-based model of overall satisfaction extensively in consumer markets. Yet, business-to-business (B2B) firms also strive to improve overall satisfaction and financial performance by improving satisfaction on key attributes. We develop an attribute-based model to link attribute-level satisfaction to overall customer satisfaction and its downstream outcomes, specifically loyalty intentions and financial performance in B2B firms. The key contributions of this research are to identify and validate four key strategic attributes used in B2B markets (i.e., quality, pricing, safety, corporate social responsibility), and to empirically test the attribute-based model of satisfaction. While extant research has primarily focused on negative asymmetry (i.e., losses loom larger than gains) in how the attributes are associated with overall satisfaction, our results also demonstrate complete symmetry and positive asymmetry. Moreover, our results offer insights into the role of safety and corporate social responsibility, two key attributes in B2B settings. Finally, we show that overall customer satisfaction not only affects behavioral intentions (repurchase intention, recommend intention, and positive word-of-mouth), but also affects short- and long-term financial outcomes (sales revenue, gross margin, Tobin’s q), which has implications for resource allocation across key attributes.

How did the 2016 film Deepwater Horizon affect BP’s corporate brand? How can a company reliably measure and track its brand for strategic planning purposes? This study provides a practical approach for measuring the effect of external events on a firm’s corporate brand. Such a measurement approach requires a consistent set of corporate-brand attributes that should be measured on an ongoing basis. Results show that the film’s release did not have the expected negative impact on corporate brand for Shell and Exxon. The impact was similarly small for BP, though BP’s corporate brand was already lower prior to the movie’s release.

We report results for the Midstream Oil & Gas sector from the Strategy and Performance in the Energy Industry (SCOPE) Survey conducted among professionals in the energy industry (so called “insiders”) to measure their perceptions about specific companies on multiple dimensions of strategic performance. The study includes nine of the most prominent midstream oil & gas companies: 1) Buckeye Partners, 2) Enbridge Energy Partners, 3) Enterprise Products Partners, 4) Genesis Energy, 5) Kinder Morgan, 6) Plains All American Pipeline, 7) Spectra Energy, 8) Sunoco, and 9) Targa Resources. This report includes analysis based on a total of 828 individual company evaluations provided by 665 O&G industry insiders. Using indexed scores, we report the relative performance of the nine companies on ten different dimensions of strategic performance: leadership and strategy, financial management, customer focus, corporate social responsibility, innovation, human resources, safety, global focus, crisis handling, and vendor satisfaction. The results of each company’s overall reputation among O&G industry insiders are also reported.