Definition
Willingness to recommend is a key metric related to customer satisfaction. When a customer is satisfied with a product, she/he might recommend it to friends, relatives and colleagues.
This willingness to recommend can be a powerful marketing advantage. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 57 percent responded that they found the willingness-to-recommend metric very useful.[1]
Purpose
Although sales or market share can indicate how well a firm is performing currently, satisfaction is perhaps the best indicator of how likely it is that the firm’s customers will make further purchases in the future.
Construction
Willingness to recommend: The percentage of surveyed customers who indicate that they would recommend a specific product to others.
The usual measures of willingness to recommend involve a survey with a set of statements using a Likert Technique or Scale. The customer is asked to indicate how willing they are to make a recommendation (of a brand, service, etc.) to others. Their willingness is generally measured on a five-point scale. Both the wording of the question and the wording of the scale item responses may vary widely among surveyors. Willingness data can also be collected on a 7-point or 10-point scale.
Methodologies
Perhaps the best known measure of willingness to recommend is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) first introduced by Fred Reichheld.[2]
Note: No willingness-to-recommend methodology has been independently audited by the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) according to the Marketing Metric Audit Protocol (MMAP).
See Also
References
- ^ Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; and David J. Reibstein (2010). Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance (Second Edition). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
- ^ Reichheld, Fred (2006). The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
- Common Language in Marketing Project, 2021.