1、Service quality and marketing performance in business-to-business markets: exploring the mediating role of client satisfaction原文:Keywords Service quality assurance, Product quality, Information systems,Business-to-business marketing, Customer loyalty, Customer satisfactionAbstract Drawing on relevan
2、t literature, the authors empirically test a model of business loyalty in a sample of 234 clients of information systems suppliers, integrating the concepts of service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty. The study builds on recent advances in services marketing theory and assesses the relationships
3、underlying the identi?ed constructs in the speci?c industry. A clear pattern of service quality dimensions is established following the Gronroos conceptualisation. Several important ?ndings are reported, including the empirical veri?cation of the mediating role of industrial satisfaction in the form
4、ation of loyalty attributes. Industrial satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between accessibility and loyalty and partially mediates latent constructs relationship with technical assistance and delivery service. The results provide robust evidence concerning the direct effect of industrial
5、satisfaction on loyalty,accessibility, delivery, and product reliability as antecedents of industrial satisfaction.Introduction The advent of relationship marketing and the increased competition that has characterised markets over the past 30 years has resulted in consumer satisfaction and related r
6、esearch constructs becoming central topics in the services literature. Particular attention has been given to the conceptualisation and measurement of the variables of quality and satisfaction. These variables are central to modern marketing theory and practice as principal indicators of marketing p
7、erformance Babin and Grif?n, 1998; Walker, 1995; Jones and Suh, 2000. The importance of studying and understanding these two related variables can be illustrated by their relation with behavioural intentions and loyalty Newman and Werbel, 1973; LaBarbera and Mazursky, 1983; Cronin and Taylor, 1992;
8、Rust et al., 1995; Singh, 1990; Taylor and Baker, 1994; Zeithaml et al., 1996. Although numerous studies have made an effort to clarify, conceptualise, and measure these constructs in a business-to-consumer environment, in a business-to-business B2B context there continues to be debate regarding: th
9、e identi?cation of the variables responsible for external effects; the form and/or strength of the relationships between them; and the presence of interaction or mediational effects between them. There is a large body of contradictory empirical evidence Schellhase et al., 1999; Parasuraman, 1998. In
10、 assessing the effects of perceived quality, many researchers have suggested its positive in?uence on loyalty Carman, 1990; Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988; Boulding et al., 1993. However, recent ?ndings demonstrate that this correlation is either not signi?cant or mediated by satisfaction Cronin and
11、 Taylor, 1992; Spreng and Singh, 1993; Cronin et al., 2000 The paucity of research assessing quality and satisfaction in B2B markets has created a need for conceptual and empirical research to: establish a pattern of dimensions that formulate the quality perceptions of industrial buyers; de?ne the c
12、oncept of industrial satisfaction and clarify its role within a B2B services framework; establish theoretical and empirical links between these two constructs in terms of industrial behavioural intentions and loyalty levels; and identify an appropriate method of measuring the constructs involved One
13、 of the main objectives of the present research was to clarify the contradictory evidence with respect to the relationships among the concepts of service quality, industrial satisfaction, and loyalty, and to provide evidence of the mediating role of industrial satisfaction In particular, the purpose
14、s of the present study were: to develop a validated instrument of loyalty measurement using the key constructs of quality perceptions and industrial satisfaction; to create the theoretical basis upon which hypotheses can be formulated concerning the variables of perceived quality, industrial satisfa
15、ction, and loyalty; to explore and identify a stable pattern of the dimensions of quality perceptions in an industrial context; and to test the hypotheses and the mediating role of industrial customer satisfaction empirically The present paper begins with an examination of the literature pertaining
16、to each of the concepts involved and the presentation of the studys conceptual framework. The methodology employed in this research is then explained and the study results are presented and discussed. Finally, conclusions and managerial implications of the study are provided and a set of future rese
17、arch directions is examined, as are the limitations of this study.Literature reviewService quality In the services marketing literature, the service-quality construct is a controversial topic Brady and Cronin, 2001; Zeithaml, 2000; Zins, 2001; Rust and Oliver, 1994; Lapierre et al., 1996. In the bus
18、iness-to-consumer literature, researchers have adopted three broad conceptualisations. The ?rst, proposed by Gro nroos 1982, 1984, de?ned the dimensions of service quality in global terms as being functional and technical. The second, proposed by Parasuraman et al. 1988, identi?edservice-quality dim
19、ensions using terms that describe service-encounter characteristics reliability, responsiveness, empathy, assurances, and tangibles. The third, proposed by Rust and Oliver 1994, considered overall perception of service quality to be based on the customers evaluation of three dimensions of service en
20、counters: the customer-employee interaction, the service environment, and the service outcome. It is not clear, however, which of these conceptualisations and dimensional patterns are the most appropriate to use Brady and Cronin, 2001; Rust and Oliver, 1994.Industrial satisfaction Although manufactu
21、rers and retailers consider satisfaction to be a key variable ? indicative of the success or failure of a business relationship ? a review of the pertinent literature reveals:.a lack of a consensus de?nition for consumer satisfaction ? thus posing serious problems for researchers in terms of concept
22、ualisation,operationalisation, and measurement Babin and Grif? Woodruff and Gardial, 1996; Giese and Cote, 2000; and a lack of a comprehensive, theoretically based, empirical research stream Schellhase et al., 1999. In B2B markets, the principal differences among end-consumers arise from the decisio
23、n-making unit evaluating the product or service. When considering the satisfaction of an industrial client, it is necessary to evaluate the satisfaction of the different constituents of the buying centre who are in contact with the industrial supplier Parasuraman, 1998. Even though the individual me
24、mbers of a buying centre are guided by the companys objectives, they have their own motivations and objectives and evaluate the performance of the product or service according to their own reference standards Anderson and Narus 1990, in their effort to model manufacturer-distributor relationships, d
25、e?ned satisfaction as a positive, affective state resulting from the appraisal of all aspects of a ?rms working relationship with another ?rm. This de?nition posits that satisfaction understood as affective can be contrasted with an objective summary assessment of outcomes ? thereby forming a target
26、-performance comparison mechanism. If expectations are exceeded by performance, satisfaction is generated Churchill and Surprenant, 1982; Bearden and Tell, 1983; LaBarbera and Mazursky Previous research has used various methods of satisfaction measurement. Objective measures of satisfaction have inc
27、luded the acquisition of data on variables such as market share and loyalty as indicators of client satisfaction Oliver, 1980; Oliver and Swan, 1989. Due to the suspect validity of objective measures, information on satisfaction can alternatively be collected on a subjective basis. Attribute-oriente
28、d procedures acquire data on satisfaction indirectly by using indicators such as complaints ?gures Oliver, 1980; Bearden and Tell, 1983 Explicit approaches have directly measured satisfaction using single overall or multidimensional scales. Using these scales, overall satisfaction is an aggregation
29、of all previous transaction-speci?c evaluations and is updated after each speci?c transaction ? in much the same way as expectations of overall service quality are updated after each transaction in a business-to-consumer environment Boulding et al., 1993. Transaction-speci?c satisfaction might not b
30、e perfectly correlated with overall satisfaction ? because service quality is likely to vary from experience to experience, especially in an industrial context. Overall satisfaction can be viewed as a moving average that is relatively stable and similar to an overall attitude Parasuramanet al., 1994
31、 After thorough interviews with professionals in the area under investigation, it was clear to the present researchers that none of the existing de?nitions depicted the elements of buying centres and relationship evolvement over time. The present researchers therefore decided to adapt the cumulative
32、 de?nition of industrial satisfaction of Chumpitaz 1998:Industrial satisfaction is an overall evaluation of the total purchase, use and relationships experience with a product or service over time, as expressed by members of the buying decision centre.This de?nition provided the basis for conceptualising and measuring effectively the industrial satisfaction construct in the present study. To conceptualise perceived service quality, Oliver 1993 distinguished between quality and satisfaction by noting that the dimensio
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