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Previous studies have shown that customer satisfaction plays a key role in the health and future success of any company. When customers are satisfied, they keep coming back to the same store and invite their friends to do the same. Now, a new study from the University of Missouri has found that CEOs who pay attention to employees' job satisfaction are able to boost both customer satisfaction and "repurchase intentions," or the number of customers that intend to purchase products from the store.

Social media use leads to higher satisfaction among owners of smartphones and traditional mobile phones, according to a new report from J.D. Power and Associates. Smartphone owners who use their device to access social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have satisfaction averages of 783 on a 1,000-point scale, nearly 22 points higher than smartphone who rarely access social media sites on their device. Currently, more than half of smartphone owners users their device to access social media sites via the mobile Web or mobile applications. While rates of mobile social media site usage are not nearly as high among owners of traditional mobile phones (9%, on average), satisfaction among traditional handset owners who use their device for social media is notably higher than that of traditional handset owners who don't access social media (754 vs. 696).

The researchers found that fulfillment of a diversity of needs, as defined by Maslow, do appear to be universal and important to individual happiness. But the order in which "higher" and "lower" needs are met has little bearing on how much they contribute to life satisfaction and enjoyment, Diener said. They also found that the fulfillment of more basic needs - for money, food or shelter, for example - was more closely linked to a positive life evaluation, the way an individual ranked his or her life on a scale from worst to best. The satisfaction of higher needs - for social support, respect, autonomy or mastery - was "more strongly related to enjoying life - having more positive feelings and less negative feelings," Diener said. An important finding, Diener said, is that the research indicated that people have higher life evaluations when others in society also have their needs fulfilled.

YouGov BrandIndex shared some findings with us regarding brand perception around Groupon in light of the company's (what some might refer to as) blunders.  A spokesperson for the firm tells WebProNews, "With two strikes under its belt within 10 days of each other (Super Bowl ad, flower debacle), how's Groupon consumer perception faring? People love the bargains of Groupon, but they are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with what's been going on." "YouGov BrandIndex looked at three scores to get a much fuller picture -- buzz (what are you hearing), satisfaction (are you a satisfied customer) and value (does this give you good value)," he says.

As more shoppers arrive in stores with price and product data literally at their fingertips via smartphones, their interaction with sales associates - most still earning a risible $7-10 an hour in an era of $4-per-gallon gas - is more crucial than ever. A study conducted by the Verde Group and the Wharton School of Business found that the single most critical element in customer satisfaction was not billion-dollar branding, advertising or extensive use of social media, but the quality of those personal moments when a shopper chooses -or not - to become a paying customer.

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