Companies are eager to gather and utilize customer feedback about their core offerings, as it can provide a deeper understanding of customer sentiment and serve as a source of competitive advantage. However, relatively little is known about the factors that drive customers to share managerially valuable feedback with the companies from which they purchase. Analyzing both large-sample customer survey data and experimental data across distinct consumer domains, we demonstrate that customers’ political ideology is an important factor influencing the value of their feedback to firms. Specifically, we find that the more conservative the customer, the more valuable their feedback is to companies. This is because customers who hold more conservative ideologies tend to have higher trust in the private sector, making it easier for companies to build trust with these customers. We also show that the effect of customer political ideology on the value of customer feedback is attenuated for large firms and strengthened for firms that receive external recognition (e.g., third-party awards). These findings contribute to existing research on both the marketing-political identity interface and customer feedback, offering implications for marketing managers and guiding future research and theory.
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