Value of Satisfied Marketing & Sales Employees for Customers and Shareholders

Satisfied employees and satisfied customers are key to a firm's shareholder value. Surprisingly, prior research has provided inconclusive evidence on the associations among employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and shareholder value. Our interviews with 32 CEOs confirm this lack of clarity. Using an empirics-first approach and drawing on our CEO interviews, we develop a conceptual framework that offers conjectures about why the evidence may be mixed. Results from a large-scale dataset spanning 2013 to 2023 support the framework. Specifically, all four components of employee satisfaction-compensation and benefits, career opportunities, work-life balance, and culture and values-matter to marketing and sales employees, with culture and values and career opportunities as most consequential. Furthermore, marketing and sales employees' overall satisfaction is positively associated with customer satisfaction and negatively associated with customer dissatisfaction. However, it is customer satisfaction (and not customer dissatisfaction) that determines the firm's shareholder value. The research contributes to the literature at the intersection of employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and corrects managerial beliefs about pathways from marketing to shareholder value.