Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention: B2B Buyer-Seller Relationships in Medium-Technology Industries

Abstract

INTRODUCTION It is important for supply chain practitioners to understand customers' repurchase intentions and the factors that influence repurchase intentions (Patterson, Johnson & Spreng, 1997) because increased repurchases (customer loyalty) are important to profitability (Fornell, 1992). Patterson, Johnson, and Spreng (1997), Shapiro, Slywotzky and Doyle (1997), and Preis (2003) find increased customer is one factor leading to such increased repurchase intentions. Thus, it is important to obtain a good understanding of the factors that affect and hence influence repurchase intentions. While a great deal of research on customer has been performed in consumer markets, the influence of customer on supply chains has been largely ignored (Patterson, Johnson & Spreng, 1997; Szymanski & Henard, 2001; Homburg & Rudolph, 2000). Kellar and Preis (2003) show that the components of that influence repurchase intention are different for high-tech and low-tech industries. This finding naturally leads to the question of whether components of for offerings from industries that are neither high-tech nor low-tech, i.e., medium-tech, differ substantially from those from high-tech and low-tech industries. Researchers have concentrated their attention on high-tech industries (e.g. Dunn & Probstein, 2003; van Hulst & Olds, 1993) but relatively little attention has been paid to medium-tech and low-tech industries. Medium-tech industries include industries that produce products such as coke, rubber products, nuclear fuel, railroad equipment, transport equipment, motor vehicles, trailers, electrical machinery, basic metals, basic chemicals, plastics, and refined petroleum products (OECD, 2009a). REVIEW OF LITERATURE As the investigation of customer matures, the implicit assumption that customer is a uniform construct across all product categories and in all markets has occasionally been questioned. Yi (1994), in a review of consumer satisfaction, anticipates that varies from one product category to another when he questions, Are the links between the variables different across consumers, products, or situations? (p. 107). This suggests that the nature and characteristics of an industry may influence the aspects of the offerings that consumers use to evaluate their repurchase intentions. Customer has a significant impact on repurchase intention (e.g. Fornell, 1992; Oliver & Swan, 1989; Eggert and Ulaga, 2002) and is modeled as an overall emotion or judgment constructed of components, i.e., a multi-attribute model. In industrial markets, Patterson, Johnson, and Spreng (1997) find that components of customer have different relative weights than in consumer markets. Similarly, Kauffman (1994) shows that product attributes: physical, nonphysical, price, and distribution, are more or less important to industrial buyers depending on the product application, such as capital equipment, administrative, and production process. Kauffman (1994) also finds that differentiated products are evaluated differently than undifferentiated (commodity and hence low-tech) products. Homburg and Rudolph (2000) state, many firms producing and marketing industrial goods are strongly technically-minded implicitly assuming that the product is the most important source of customer satisfaction (p. 30). The TQM and six-sigma concepts are implicitly based on this assumption. Moving beyond the quality of the offering, Homburg and Rudolph (2000) show that customer consists of different components depending on the functional role of the individual within the buying organization. Our study builds on and extends this body of work by modeling and analyzing differences in the effects of the components of on overall and repurchase intention for offerings from medium-technology industries. …