28:T4a7,

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is used by many service organizations as a key customer loyalty metric and driver of growth. Yet, despite its widespread adoption and consequent benchmarking benefits, the methodological soundness and usefulness of NPS has been questioned. Compounding these problems, few guidelines on NPS enhancement strategies exist, since research on antecedents to NPS remains elusive. The combination of (a) questionable research underpinning the original proposal for NPS, and (b) an under-researched nomological net, creates an unfortunate paradox, whereby service organizations strive to raise a score that may or may not lead to organizational success, with little evidence-based knowledge on how to raise this score strategically. To address this, we utilize a guiding framework to interrogate NPS though a services marketing lens. We use this framework to underpin a critical review of NPS as it applies to service organizations, and through the review, identify and discuss ten NPS interrogations. We then propose recommendations that address each of these to enhance further knowledge development and improve ongoing practice of NPS by service organizations.

29:T512,

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a popular metric for measuring customer loyalty and is claimed by Reichheld to predict a company’s growth. However, various academic studies provide controversial results regarding its reliability and prediction powers. This study analyzes how respondents answer the likelihood-to-recommend (LTR) question in different predescribed and validated situations. One thousand participants are presented with situation descriptions that consist of previous and recent experiences with a bank and are asked how they would respond to the LTR question after such an experience. The results indicate that respondents do not always give a high score for good experiences, and a low score for bad experiences. However, with a high number of respondents, the different answering approaches even out, and the NPS results are higher for good than for bad experiences. Additionally, we notice that whereas negative experiences are evaluated as low by all respondents, Generation X and Boomers tend to give lower scores for neutral and positive experiences. Those with lower income and basic education give lower scores for neutral experiences. The recent experience influences the customer’s likelihood of recommending more than the previous experiences with the company.

2a:T425,

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most popular customer feedback metrics (CFMs) with benefits and limitations. One limitation is that prior research has shown that NPS is not better in explaining outcome variables such as sales growth or churn than other CFMs. Most prior research, however, has not considered combinations of CFMs, CFMs related to the antecedents of customer satisfaction, and CFMs with affective components. Therefore, we argue that NPS should be supplemented with other CFMs, e.g., emotions. In an empirical investigation in the mobile phone industry, we choose Net Emotional Value (NEV) to measure of emotions. We show that a combination of NPS and NEV leads to a better explanation of two out of three outcome variables compared to using NPS only or NEV only. We also illustrate how emotional profiles and driver analyses can be used to identify the most relevant emotions of Detractors, Passives, and Promoters and conclude with limitations and potential for further research.

2b:T7b9,