I've always been a huge admirer of Jack Bogle, founding CEO of Vanguard. 

He articulated a clear vision for his company and exercised uncommon discipline in building Vanguard into one of the most successful loyalty leaders around.  Vanguard has grown to become the largest US mutual fund company.  While he can be almost dogmatic in his beliefs and business philosophy, he built an institution that has survived far beyond his personal stewardship.  Now on the company's third CEO, Vanguard has successfully demsonstrated it has sustainable values that have helped it achieve extraordinary gains.

It is interesting to note that Vanguard has generally lost market share during market bubbles, but gained it back (and more) during downturns.  This happens, I believe, because their investment philosophy intertwines with their design target customer segment, which is far less driven by the whims of the market than many other investor segments, creating a source of stable growth for Vanguard.

They espouse and follow a long-term, index fund-driven investment philosophy.  Owned by their fund investors, the entire organization is geared to delivering value to them.  They drive costs out of their system with vigor and energy so they can maintain the lowest fund fees in the industry.  Although their funds do well, they don't advertise their fund performance.  In fact, several times over the course of the last 20 years, they have either closed funds to new investment or actively discouraged investors from investing in funds that had experienced huge run-ups in value during asset price bubbles.  They also have a reputation for acting ethically and responsibly, and their reputation for service quality is excellent.

As a result, Vanguard attracts investors who like their investment style:  self-directed long-term investors seeking index-like returns with low fund fees.  These investors tend to bring Vanguard a significant portion of their investable assets and they tend to stick around through good times and bad.

So Vanguard has low advertising and customer acquisition costs, low fund management costs (they don't pay "star managers" to "beat the index"), low customer churn, and much of their business comes to them through referrals from existing investors.  Their "top-down" Net Promoter Score, measured against similar competitors, is at the head of the pack by leaps and bounds.

I was prompted to write this after seeing Jack Bogle's byline on an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago.  You may not agree with him, but he espouses a consistent and thoughtful point of view.  You can read the article online by following this link.