Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in a Multi-Channel B2B Environment
Total Quality Management
Vol. 18, No. 8, 915 –925, October 2007
Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in a Multi-Channel B2B Environment
RITA MADALENO,Ã HUGH WILSONÃÃ & ROGER PALMER†
Ã
AC Nielsen, Lisbon, Portugal; Ã Ã Cranfield School of Management, UK; †Henley Management College, UK
ABSTRACT This study set out to ascertain the impact of channel satisfaction and multi-channel integration on relationship quality, as measured by overall customer satisfaction, within a multichannel B2B environment. The sparse previous empirical research on the multi-channel experience focuses on consumer markets and does not explicitly measure multi-channel integration. Our research design involved a survey of 579 small and medium-sized business customers of a large high-technology service provider and takes into account both the web channel and the sales force, with sub-samples for companies served directly and those served via an intermediary. This research concludes that multi-channel consistency has a strong impact on customer satisfaction. Choice among channels, satisfaction with those individual channels, product satisfaction and payment equity are also factors that influence overall satisfaction. These findings hold both for direct customers served by the provider’s own sales force and for indirect customers, where consistency between the intermediary’s sales force and the supplier’s website is equally important. We suggest that practitioners should therefore track and optimise both the individual channel experience and multi-channel integration. We call for further research replicating this work in other industry contexts including consumer markets to assess the generality of our findings.
KEY WORDS : marketing Customer satisfaction, multi-channel marketing, channel integration, industrial
Introduction
With the progressive development of information technologies, customers are being offered multiple channels through which to engage with
Vol. 18, No. 8, 915 –925, October 2007
Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in a Multi-Channel B2B Environment
RITA MADALENO,Ã HUGH WILSONÃÃ & ROGER PALMER†
Ã
AC Nielsen, Lisbon, Portugal; Ã Ã Cranfield School of Management, UK; †Henley Management College, UK
ABSTRACT This study set out to ascertain the impact of channel satisfaction and multi-channel integration on relationship quality, as measured by overall customer satisfaction, within a multichannel B2B environment. The sparse previous empirical research on the multi-channel experience focuses on consumer markets and does not explicitly measure multi-channel integration. Our research design involved a survey of 579 small and medium-sized business customers of a large high-technology service provider and takes into account both the web channel and the sales force, with sub-samples for companies served directly and those served via an intermediary. This research concludes that multi-channel consistency has a strong impact on customer satisfaction. Choice among channels, satisfaction with those individual channels, product satisfaction and payment equity are also factors that influence overall satisfaction. These findings hold both for direct customers served by the provider’s own sales force and for indirect customers, where consistency between the intermediary’s sales force and the supplier’s website is equally important. We suggest that practitioners should therefore track and optimise both the individual channel experience and multi-channel integration. We call for further research replicating this work in other industry contexts including consumer markets to assess the generality of our findings.
KEY WORDS : marketing Customer satisfaction, multi-channel marketing, channel integration, industrial
Introduction
With the progressive development of information technologies, customers are being offered multiple channels through which to engage with
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