Does Customer Satisfaction Matter to Investors? Findings from the Bond Market

This paper examines whether customer satisfaction is associated with key metrics from corporate bond markets - credit ratings and cost of debt financing. We draw on theory in marketing and finance to predict how customer satisfaction should be associated with both measures. To test our hypotheses, we employ the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) database of more than 150 publicly traded firms during the period from 1994 to 2004. We...