Customer perceived quality, relationship quality and business loyalty:An example of B2B organization

Abstract

The rapidly growing field of services has a strong focus on relationship marketing. Numerous researches are carried out on the effect of paradigm shift in marketing principles from transactional marketing to relationship marketing, but not many been discussed within industrial services and manufacturing environment. This study aims to examine how relationship quality can influence customer loyalty in the business-to-business (B2B)context. By targeting a Malaysian wooden product manufacturer as case organisation, tailored questionnaire surveys were sent with responses of 36 business customers. The study proposes a theoretical framework of relationship quality, customer perceived quality (using a modified Grönroos’s model of bi- imensional service quality theory involving both product and services aspects) as antecedent of relationship quality and business loyalty as ultimate dependent variable. The findings of this study suggest that customer satisfaction towards service provider can be improved by focusing on their perceived quality on both service and product. Consequently, customer loyalty and relationship quality can be enhanced by increasing customer satisfaction. Furthermore, this study reinforces the belief that relationship satisfaction has an important role to play in the manufacturing environment. It puts forward one possible causal explanation of the elusive link between satisfaction and relationship. The study concluded with theoretical and managerial implications of the findings.