A Summary of the Main Discussion Post on ‘The Ethics of Research’

Customer Satisfaction and Business Performance: A Firm-Level Analysis

Given that any research must have a researchable topic and a purpose, this study aimed to assess the relationships between customer satisfaction against a variety of company performance metrics analyzed from a firm-level perspective (Purcell and Russell, 2009). The study sought to establish the contribution and significance of customer satisfaction to both financial and market performance. The study was conducted on one of the Fortune 100 firms based in the USA (Williams and Naumann, 2011).

The research followed a clear methodology taking into consideration of ethical issues that a research study has to adhere to relating to relevance, reliability, citations among others (Zikmund and Babin, 2010).  The study methodology involved a detailed methodology outlining the objectives and variable under study, clear analysis and presentation of findings, limitations and implications of the study. To contextualize the study and provide a better understanding of the variables, a theoretical review was carried out clearly showing the relationships and acknowledging other scholarly work carried out on the same area in the past.

Ethical assessment of the study show that the researchers adhered to required research ethical standards. For example, the study clearly cited all materials reviewed, clearly defined the study variables, and analyzed the data properly. The researchers have also withheld the name of the company to avoid exposing it. To ensure that the findings were reliable, respondents were randomly selected among customers who had interacted with the firm for some time and considered to be well qualified to comment on satisfaction levels. The study also clearly outlined limitations and implications for further research which provides the leader with a better synthesis of the information contained in the study report (Ruane, 2005).