This dissertation, which consists of two studies, examines the development of the marketing–finance interface as a growing interdisciplinary research area. Based on a thorough review of existing literature with the help of citation analysis, the first study proposes a theoretical framework for the marketing–finance interface, while the second study is an empirical study of the marketing–finance interface examining the relationship between customer satisfaction and firm performance, grounded in the new theoretical perspective proposed in the first study.

The first study examines the existing literature and provides an overview of the intellectual structure of the marketing–finance interface field. It outlines the assumptions, underlying mechanisms, metrics, and research approaches used in marketing–finance interface research and proposes a theoretical framework integrating resource-based theory (RBT), the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), relational exchange theory (RET), resource dependence theory (RDT), and stakeholder theory. Citation analysis was conducted to identify the most influential articles, authors, and journals in the field. The results of the study will help researchers better understand the development of the marketing–finance interface as an established discipline and can shed light on the future direction of this field. This first study also identifies the limitations of theory development in the existing literature, which heavily relies on the RBT tenet. I propose more theories, such as RDT and stakeholder theory, as theoretical foundations to explain firm behavior and performance in the rapidly changing organizational environment.

The second study investigates the impact of the roles of industry and competitors’ customer satisfaction on firm performance. Previous research has examined individual firms’ customer satisfaction and their impact on firms’ abnormal return on the stock market but has found mixed results. Unlike previous marketing research in this field, which has largely built upon RBT and may not have adequately addressed the impact of external organizational environments, this paper builds upon RDT and stakeholder theory and examines the impact of external factors on the satisfaction–firm performance link. It offers a new perspective for examining the link between customer satisfaction and short-term stock market reactions by considering two confounding factors: rivals’ customer satisfaction and industry benchmarks. The results show a significant positive relationship between focal firms’ customer satisfaction and abnormal return in a 5-day event window. However, this relationship is significantly weakened in the model when considering industry benchmarks and rivals’ customer satisfaction, indicating that investors place particular emphasis on industry benchmarks and rivals’ customer satisfaction when evaluating a focal firm’s customer satisfaction. In highly competitive industries, growth in rivals’ customer satisfaction has a strong negative impact on the focal firm’s abnormal return. When investors access more information about the focal firm, the effect of growth in rivals’ customer satisfaction on the focal firm attenuates. The second study solves a puzzle in the literature and advances extant knowledge by evaluating the satisfaction–firm performance link.