UC's Lindner College of Business Marketers Earn Best Overall Paper Award at National Conference

Ashley Otto, a doctoral candidate in the marketing program at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, partnered with Lindner Dean David Szymanski to win Best Overall Paper at the 2013 Summer Marketing Educators’ Conference in Boston.

Otto co-authored the article “Satisfaction-Based Strategies for Improved Business Performance: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Evidence” with Lindner Dean and marketing professor Szymanski and P. Rajan Varadarajan, marketing professor at Texas A&M, to win best paper out of more than 300 presented at the August 2013 American Marketing Association (AMA) Conference.

The trio presented their research findings at the annual conference. Their study analyzed 395 customer satisfaction-based correlations and found a strong link between happy customers and business performance. But the simple notion of customer satisfaction delved much further into the empirical evidence, arming business managers with knowledge of which satisfaction-performance based strategies to implement for the greatest outcome.

As an explicit strategy, managers can look at many variables to satisfy the customer in support positive business outcomes. Managers can weigh perspectives in such areas as brand loyalty with an influence on future buys or motivating others to buy through word-of-mouth talk on social networks. Or they can draw on market-force perspectives such as a reputation for customer satisfaction that can lead to gains in market share.

The research can help managers answer the questions of whether pursuing a satisfaction strategy makes sense given their industry conditions and if so, whether improvements in satisfaction results can significantly impact their business performance.