A Program of Research on Organizational Listening Practices and Effectiveness

This chapter provides an overview of our five-phased, mixed-methods program of research. The overarching objective of this research was to determine how—and how effectively—commercial business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations listen and respond to their customers (the external stakeholders in this case). We also examined potential hierarchical and role-based influencers of perceived organizational listening practices and effectiveness. The research program included two qualitative studies, one cross-sectional survey, and two quasi-experiments. The specific objectives of each of these studies are briefly discussed. Chapter 5 also includes a description of the initial exploratory qualitative study conducted to identify organizational listening elements that (a) align with our proposed conceptual model, (b) are specific to corporate VoC programs in a B2C setting, and (c) could be transformed into quantitative survey measures.