This paper examines how the target's customer concentration affects merger performance. We find that the acquirer purchasing a customer-concentrated firm experiences significantly lower stock market returns and worse long-run operating performance. The effect is more pronounced when customers face lower switching costs or the target undertakes a higher level of relationship-specific investments, exhibits higher cash volatility, or is acquired by a less well-known company. Further analysis shows that the negative association is mainly driven by corporate customers, while relatively safe government customers moderate the effect. We also find that shared major customers, overconfident CEOs, and poor corporate governance are more likely to increase the likelihood of customer-concentrated acquisitions. Overall, our findings suggest that higher customer concentration leads to lower value creation in mergers.

This study empirically investigates the relationship between customer concentration and corporate risk-taking. We find that overall customer concentration significantly reduces corporate risk-taking. However, the relationship varies across different settings. Specifically, the negative relationship between customer-base concentration and corporate risk-taking is only significantly present in more marketized regions, more competitive industries, firms with lower market shares, less innovative and non-state-owned firms, and those without major governmental or state-owned-enterprise customers. Moreover, our panel threshold models indicate significant threshold effects. When customer-base concentration is below the first threshold (low concentration level), it is positively associated with corporate risk-taking. When customer-base concentration increases to above the second threshold, the association turns significantly negative, suggesting that a highly concentrated customer base prompts suppliers to take more precautionary measures and avoid excessive risk-taking. Overall, our findings suggest that the concentration of a supplier’s customer base significantly impacts its risk-taking behaviours.