 Market share has become a mantra both in industry and at business schools. There are three reasons. The first reason is economies of scale. So firms with a large market share, large companies are able to reduce their costs more than small share companies. The second reason is market power. So the market leader is able to demand higher prices from their customers and to negotiate lower prices with their suppliers. And the third reason is from a consumer perspective that consumers use the market share of a brand or of a company as a quality criterion in their purchase processes. There are actually reasons why there should be a positive relationship between market share and financial firm performance. But is that really still valid in times of digitization and globalization? The internet allows small share companies to market their products via e-commerce and search engine advertising to a global audience. Customers are able to use the internet to increase the transparency of their purchase decisions, for example via product review sites. And then there are today lots of startups, small companies that are actually a lot more agile than the large corporations. That are all reasons why there should maybe not be such a strong relationship between market share and financial firm performance. So the general first research question of our work is how the relationship between market share and financial firm performance is, whether it's positive or negative. And then we are also interested in the question whether there are actually certain circumstances, where the relationship between market share and financial firm performance is stronger or weaker. So for example, in certain regions, for example, in certain markets, there might be a higher or lower relationship between market share and financial firm performance. So what method do we use? There have actually been many studies on the relationship between market share and financial firm performance, many individual studies. But the limitations of these individual studies is that they are always limited to a certain region, to a certain industry and so on. So it's difficult to generalize from these individual studies. That's why we use an analysis method called meta-analysis. A meta-analysis actually tries to achieve two aims. The first aim of a meta-analysis is to find an average relationship between two concepts. In our case, market share and financial firm performance. This effect size is in our case the so-called elasticity. That means how does financial firm performance change in percentage if market share is increased by 1%. So this first aim of the meta-analysis actually matches quite well to our first research question. The second aim of a meta-analysis is to find moderators. So situations in this case where market share is more or less relevant for financial firm performance. So again, that fits very well to the second research question that I outlined in the beginning. How does our database look like at the end? So in total we have 863 elasticity that stem from 89 individual empirical studies. The timeframe is quite impressive. We are looking at studies that were published between 1972 and 2017. They used data from 1949 until 2013. Also in terms of regions, it's very broad. So it covers companies from six different continents. And in terms of industries, we look at manufactured goods, we look at services. We also look at different types of customer relationships. Business to consumer and business to business. So in total we have a very broad data set from which we are able to get generalizable results regarding the market share of financial firm performance relationship. My co-author Alex in the Adeling has raised the question if it's always worthwhile to be the number one or number two in the market. Based on that we have derived our research question if firms with a high market share are awarded with a better financial performance. What we find with our meta-analysis is that the relationship between market share and financial performance is not what it seems. Specifically, if market share increases by 1%, the firm financial performance increases on average by just only 0.13%. That means the average elasticity is just 0.13%. Furthermore, 45% of all the elasticities are in the range between 0 and 0.1 and 18% of the elasticities are even negative. So let us focus on this average market share performance elasticity of 0.13. This sounds small and it is small. Let us put this number into context. Other research has found with regard to very important marketing assets like customer relationships and brands that their elasticities with regard to firm financial performance is 0.72 and 0.33 respectively. What does that mean? That means that the impact of customer relationships on financial performance is 6 times the impact and the impact of brands on firm financial performance is 3 times the impact of market share gains alone. My co-author has also raised the question if there are certain conditions or situations where the impact of market share on firm financial performance is more or less pronounced. We identified 27 factors that may influence the elasticity. Let me highlight three important situations that we have identified. First, for manufacturing firms the impact of market share on firm financial performance is stronger than for service firms. So obviously for manufacturing firms they benefit from high market shares with regard to higher efficiency and market power. The second situation or the second difference is with regard to B2B versus B2C firms. What we found is that the elasticity for B2C firms is more pronounced than for B2B firms. So private consumers typically show low price sensitivity with regard to strong brands while for B2B situations business consumers typically follow a more rational buying process by having bidding processes or buying centers. Finally, what about the regions? So what we find is that the elasticity in emerging countries and in Europe is more pronounced than in the US. Why is that? Probably in the US we have a very highly competitive environment and a very mature market where market share gains can only be achieved at the expense of profitability. The main implications of our results refer to the design of performance measurement systems and the determination and allocation of sales and marketing budgets. So first, market share is a very popular metric that is often used in performance measurement systems of companies. And this is understandable because market share is easy to measure and is motivating for managers to beat the competitors. However, our results show that market share doesn't have such a strong performance impact. It's better probably to focus on more customer-related and brand-related metrics because they have a stronger profit implication. What could that be? So for example, include in your performance measurement system customer satisfaction or customer loyalty also regard to brand, brand awareness or brand image. Of course, these metrics are more difficult to measure and it takes more time to change them. But what we show is it's really worthwhile to think about these metrics and trying to invest and to change them because they have much stronger profit implications. Of course, what we have also shown is that the impact of market share on firm financial performance is different for different situations. So naturally, performance measurement systems should be adapted to certain contexts. So for example, with regard to certain industries, regions or if it's more B2B or B2C relationship. Market share should not be the one-size-fits-all indicator that should always and everywhere be given as a target figure. Second, our results have also strong implications with regard to the design allocation of sales and marketing budgets. What we provide with our results is to structure this process more from a quantitative kind of view. Market share should be allocated in proportion to elasticities. So based on our results and the derived elasticities we have in our study, we recommend the following with regard to the allocation of the sales and marketing budget. 60% of this budget should be allocated to customer-related measures. So for example, building a customer service center in order to improve customer satisfaction. 30% of that budget should be focused on brand-related activities. So for example, creating a certain campaign in order to create a certain brand awareness or brand image. Then the final 10% should then be used for trying to change market shares, for example, by having promotion campaigns. Investing more into these long-term-related measures has a very strong profit implication. So in short, managers should really focus on building marketing assets, not boosting market shares. So what are avenues for future research regarding the market share financial firm performance relationship? First of all, there are some companies that were enabled by the Internet. For example, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and these four companies are firms that actually have a very high market share. So they're very dominant and they are also very profitable. On the other hand, the Internet has also produced many small niche players that have a very low market share and that are also very profitable. So this begs the question, what is the relationship between market share and financial firm performance in industries that are very much driven by digitization and the Internet? That's something that our meta-analysis was not able to answer. A related research topic are platform firms. So companies such as Facebook or Google are platform companies that serve two sides of one market. Other examples are Uber and Airbnb. For example, Airbnb serve both hosts and travelers. One interesting research question could be how the market share on one side of the market actually affects the profitability of these firms. Or a second question could be what is the relationship between the market share of these platform firms and the financial firm performance of traditional companies in these markets such as Hotel Chains, Hilton or Sheridan?