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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction measured as Extended Performance Satisfaction Index (EPSI) and the financial performance of the banking sector for seven European countries over the period 2004–2014.

Using panel models, this study finds a significant positive influence of EPSI on banking financial performance at the country level.

Findings suggest that the value of the customer satisfaction index is important in explaining the financial performance of the banking industry at the aggregative country level. The customer satisfaction index measured as EPSI has a strong positive influence on the financial performance of the banking industry for the various North European countries studied. It was shown that EPSI has a positive influence on both total assets and total equity, with a higher relative influence and stronger significance on the total assets of the banking sector than on total equity.

The study contributes to understanding the importance of measuring and maintaining customer satisfaction as a profitability driver in the banking industry, providing new cross-country evidence. It also contributes to the literature focussing on a group of countries that have not previously been studied.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the usefulness and efficiency of customer-based measures such as customer satisfaction (CSI) and perceived loyalty for monitoring and enhancing the financial performance in corporations.

General financial data for the empirical modeling is compiled from national and international databases (Alla Bolag, IMF/IFS, Bloomberg, Eurostat, etc.) and company-specific data from the studied corporation. Customer perception data (like CSI and loyalty) are taken from the Extended Performance Satisfaction Index-initiative database (annual observations for the period 2001-2014 and quarterly for 2008-2014). A hierarchy of structural models is devised on a combined time-series and cross-section (panel and multi-level) approach. The results are based on models estimated by Arellano–Bond procedures (Arellano and Bond, 1991).

The core findings are two. First, there is a strong positive relationship between customer-based measures and financial performance. Second, it is effective to regularly monitor CSI as a forward- looking indicator for understanding future financial performance.

Customer-based measures are highly useful as leading indicators of companies’ future performance and should be incorporated even more into corporate decisions.

According to this survey of contemporary research, very little is academically documented for the full-circle from corporate to branch level. Thus, the prevailing study should be of potential value for companies in general.

The purpose of this paper is to examine tweens' (8‐12 year‐olds) satisfaction with and loyalty to their mobile phones and the relationship between these.

Based on literature studies, hypotheses about tweens' satisfaction with and loyalty to their mobile phones are developed. A survey in Denmark forms the empirical basis for the study, and the hypotheses are tested and discussed.

The results indicate that tweens are far more satisfied with their mobile phones than adults are and that the mobile phones fulfill children's expectations to a much higher degree. Still, brands are not able to turn tweens into loyal customers who will recommend their mobile phones to friends. Tweens' loyalty is lower than what is experienced for adults and the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is very weak.

This study is limited to the mobile phone market. The low degree of loyalty in this market may not necessarily be the case in other markets. However, it is believed that many of the arguments share such generic characteristics that they are transferable to other product areas. Another limitation is that this study is based on a survey in Greater Copenhagen in Denmark. Therefore, the results can be influenced by a city effect.

The paper presents findings, which are useful for mobile phone marketers' marketing strategy and promotional plans towards tweens.

The study combines tweens, mobile phones, and customer satisfaction and loyalty theory. Findings on this combination have not been published previously. However, the combination is important due to the growing mobile phone penetration among tweens and the fast development of mobile phones and telecommunication services.

In 2003 Reichheld published an article in HBR, in which he claims that the net promoter score (NPS), is the only number you need to grow, and the only number you need to manage customer loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the NPS is inferior to the standard measures of loyalty used by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and EPSI rating.

In 2006 a customer satisfaction survey of the entire insurance sector in Denmark was conducted. The survey design was based on the questionnaires from EPSI rating and ACSI supplemented with insurance-specific questions, consumer sentiment questions and the basic Net Promoter Question. The sample consists of approximately 2,000 observations.

The analyses presented in this paper show that the NPS it not what it claims to be: the one number you need to grow. The NPS is found to be a very poor predictor of both customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. The measure is very sensitive to changes in the underlying distribution, and finally the precision of the NPS was found to be low compared to other measures of loyalty, and it is not possible to predict the NPS categorization and hence it is hard to say precisely, how organizations can influence corporate growth based on the NPS.

The analysis is only conducted on data collected in a Danish business-to-consumer setting. More research is needed to shed light on the performance of the NPS across cultures as well as in a business-to-business setting.

The paper demonstrates the dangers of using the NPS as an input to managerial decision making. Organizations are far better off using a standard customer loyalty measure such as those employed by the ACSI or EPSI instead of the NPS.

Previous studies of the NPS have not replicated the methodology directly. Either there have been differences in scale length or in wording. The authors have constructed an experiment in the Danish insurance industry that answers some of the questions concerning the NPS without the shortcomings that most of the previous studies have suffered from.

The purpose of this study is to examine crisis effects on customer satisfaction and underlying drivers by adding a new set of data to previous research. The core questions are: are the findings from Hallencreutz and Parmler (2019, 2021) sustained or can new customer demands, needs, expectations and behaviours be traced in the wake of the ongoing crisis?

A first study covering 2005–2017 was completed in 2018, published online in 2019 and in print in 2021 (Hallencreutz and Parmler, 2021). This new study adds the years 2018–2023 to the data set and reuses the partial least squares (PLS) approach to structural equation models, also known as PLS path modelling.

This additional study sustains the results from the initial study (Hallencreutz and Parmler, 2019, 2021). The variable product quality has been substituted by service quality as one of the most crucial drivers for customer satisfaction together with brand image, and the current state of permacrisis has not changed that.

The study is built on Swedish data from the EPSI Rating Initiative (Eklöf and Westlund 2002) covering customer perceptions in banking, insurance (life and non-life), telco (mobile operators, broadband and Pay-tv) and energy (trade, distribution and heating) over the years 2005–2023.

The study emphasizes the importance of understanding how customer satisfaction drivers evolve over time in different industries and societal sectors, especially during crises. This additional study sustains the paradigm shift in the studied industries – product quality has been substituted by service quality as one of the most crucial drivers for customer satisfaction, and the current state of economic downturn has not changed that.

Society will have to learn to live with political and economic instability and unpredictability for the foreseeable future. To recognize the increasing value deriving from firms’ intangible assets while providing flawless deliveries seems to be a way forward in troublesome times. This is also a catalyst for existing societal trends: the necessary reforms to master sustainable transformations will require an ongoing adaptation process, with both winners and losers across continents.

The world has coped with a global pandemic, and Europe is currently experiencing a humanitarian, political and economic crises caused by a war in Ukraine. This extended period of global instability and insecurity could be called a permacrisis (Collins dictionary, 2022). This study offers a unique quantitative analysis built on Swedish data from EPSI Rating initiative.

The purpose of this paper is to ask two questions. How does the customer's loyalty in the banking sector change (at both the structural and quantitative level) in the light of the financial and banking crises? Are any differences observed in those changes between developing and developed countries?

The paper consists of two parts: theoretical and empirical. In the theoretical part the authors discuss the nature of the banking and financial crises, the historical perspective of banking crises occurrence and main causes and consequences of those crises. The second part of the paper demonstrates statistical analysis of the obtained data from the Polish and European banking sector. The authors also present socio‐demographic characteristic of the research samples and the character of the bank‐client relations, comparative analysis of customer satisfaction index changes in the European banking sector and structural equation modes for the Polish banking sector for the years 2007‐2009.

The analyses allowed the authors to confirm the main research hypotheses: first, clients of developing European countries demonstrate generally lower satisfaction and loyalty levels than clients of banks in Western Europe. Second, the recent banking crisis has affected the level of customer satisfaction much more strongly in developing European countries than in developed ones. Third, the recent banking crisis has changed the character of the process of building customer satisfaction and loyalty in Poland by strengthening the influence of the image area.

Hardly anyone has tried to measure the influence of the banking crises at the level of customers’ satisfaction and the structure of the process of building long‐term relations between banks and their clients before.

Past research showed that overly positive attitudes and intentions towards fast food contribute to obesity. In the face of rising childhood obesity, the purpose of this paper is to explore attitudinal and behavioral reasons behind adolescents' suboptimal food choices. It tests hypotheses about differences between teenagers and adults in customer attitudes and intentions regarding fast food restaurants.

The hypotheses are tested with German survey data and moderated regression analysis.

Teenagers do not underestimate the negative effects of fast food. However, their decision making fails to incorporate existing knowledge on competitive advantages and gives greater weight to customer satisfaction compared with adults. Behavioral differences between teenage and adult consumers result from differences in cognitive development rather than social pressure.

As this study uses subjective consumer data from Germany, future research could validate the conclusions with objective behavioral data from various countries.

Of importance to fast food restaurant managers, the primary determinants of customer attitudes and intentions are food quality, the public brand image, social recognition, and perceived competitive advantages. By contrast, service quality and perceived value are less influential. Satisfying teenage customers is more important than informing them about competitive advantages.

The results imply that fast food‐related childhood obesity may be caused by lack of rationality rather than peer pressure or lack of knowledge.

As an original contribution, the paper compares adolescents' and adults' decision making regarding fast food restaurants and captures the regularly overlooked influences of the public brand image, social recognition, and perceived competitive advantages.

Customers from different cultures might have different expectations and perceptions of quality, leading to different levels of satisfaction. Together with the construct and measurement equivalence issues of cross-cultural surveys, this raises the question of the comparability of customer satisfaction measurements across countries. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the survey method of anchoring vignettes as a tool for improving the comparability of customer satisfaction measurements across countries and to shed some light on cultural influences on customer satisfaction measurements.

Based on the models of American Customer Satisfaction Index and European Performance Satisfaction Index, the authors designed and conducted a survey using the method of anchoring vignettes to measure and compare customer satisfaction with mobile phone services in four countries – Costa Rica, Poland, Sweden and Thailand. The survey was carried out with young adults aged 20–30 years, who were mostly university students.

This study demonstrates how anchoring vignettes can be used to mitigate cultural bias in customer satisfaction surveys and to improve both construct and measurement equivalence of the questionnaire. The results show that different conclusions on cross-cultural benchmarking of customer satisfaction would be drawn when using a traditional survey compared to the anchoring vignettes method.

This paper evaluates the survey method of anchoring vignettes as a potential quantitative research method for studying customer satisfaction across countries. The results also contribute to customer satisfaction research as these shed some light onto how culture influences customer satisfaction measurements. The practical implication for firms and managers is that allocating resources among different countries based on traditional customer satisfaction surveys may be misleading.

This paper describes the need for intangible measurements for non‐financial reporting. Nowadays book value accounts for just around one quarter of the market value making the relevance of the balance sheet questionable. There is therefore a need for developing standardized methodologies for quantifying intangible assets and this is already underway. Two recently developed methodologies, The European Performance Satisfaction Index and The European Employee Index, is described in the paper and the benefit of applying these methodologies is exemplified through empirical data. These data stems from Amtsparekassen Fyn which is a medium sized Danish bank that has measured employee/customer satisfaction systematically since 1997 and the data used for this analysis is from the surveys conducted in 2000. The analysis shows that the measures for employee and customer satisfaction are good predictors of financial performance.

A strong brand is among the most valuable intangible assets for any company. This paper aims to provide empirical evidence of a brand equity model and illustrates the application of the model on a Danish bank.

The conceptual model is founded on a customer‐based approach to brand equity. The model links customer‐brand relationships to rational and emotional brand responses, which are in turn linked to six drivers including product quality and service quality. The conceptual model is operationalized by a structural equation model with latent variables and a measurement system. To validate, the model surveys were conducted for four brands in three industries, and the paper presents results from 351 interviews with customers of the largest Danish retail bank. The model is estimated and tested by using partial least squares.

A high level of explanatory power is obtained, and the results indicate strong support for the proposed model. The estimated model gives performance indexes for each variable in the model and impact scores for the relationships between the variables. The findings are discussed and a brand equity map is developed.

The study in this paper is limited to one brand in the banking sector. However, the model and the measurement system are generic and should be applicable to all types of brands and industries.

The paper provides a model to understand brand equity building. The proposed brand equity map depicting impact versus performance of brand equity drivers may support the brand strategy development process.

The paper provides a brand equity model, which is based on state‐of‐the‐art thinking within branding and includes both rational and emotional brand responses. The model has been applied in practice with good results, and the proposed brand equity map is useful in assessing and developing a brand's strength.