After losing money with the shares of a particular company, individual investors are unlikely to buy that particular product or service again. Although investment results appear to have little to do with how satisfied a customer is with a company’s product, stock market losses do tend to diminish customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the long run. This was found in research by Dr Arvid Hoffmann and Dana Ketteler of Maastricht University, which will be published in the International Journal of Bank Marketing. According to this study, individual investors are more likely to switch to a competitor after an investment loss and more likely to complain about the product or service of the firm they invested in. These results are surprising given that traditional financial theory sees no correlation between investment behaviour and consumer behaviour.
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