Willingness to Recommend

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

Willingess to Pay More
Willingness to search

References

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ Reichheld, Fred (2006). The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
  3.  Common Language in Marketing Project, 2021.

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