Marc Wouters

2018

Using social media data provides opportunities for management accounting and marketing. In this paper, it is investigated how Twitter data can be used as a new way for measuring customer satisfaction. The effects of polarity (positiveness or negativeness) extracted from Twitter posts on customer retention are examined. Empirically, a significant predictive effect of customer validation, as expressed by polarity, on churn and net addition was found. Since the observed effect can be explained with the satisfaction-retention relationship, the author further tests the appropriateness of Twitter posts as an estimator for customer satisfaction. The results have implications for both, customer relationship managers and researchers, which predict consumer behavior.