Actual Purchase as a Proxy for Share of Wallet

Share of wallet is a concept that is growing in popularity among satisfaction researchers. There is no empirical research, however, examining the relationship between satisfaction, retention, and share of wallet. This is largely the result of the inherent difficulty collecting true share of wallet information in most business categories. If the impact of satisfaction on share of wallet is the same as satisfaction on retention, then managers can simply substitute more easily obtainable retention data. Therefore, this research examines the appropriateness of using actual purchase as a proxy for the more difficult to attain share of wallet in two distinct industries, Class 8 trucks and pharmaceuticals. The findings indicate that the top performance attributes in terms of predictive ability are the same and in the same order for each outcome, suggesting that for some firms, actual purchase may represent an acceptable proxy for share of wallet when deriving opportunities for service improvement.