Customer Loyalty in Industrial Clusters: Perceived Value and Satisfaction as Antecedents

SATISFACTION AS ANTECEDENTS ABSTRACT Purpose: This paper studies, from the perspective of relationship marketing, the loyalty behavior of industrial customers in the context of a cluster. Loyalty is a key variable for studying long term relationships between firms. Research implications: Recent advances in consumer and services marketing consider that perceived value and satisfaction are central to explaining customer loyalty. However, very few studies in B2B explain the antecedents of customer loyalty. This study adopts the relationship marketing approach, and loyalty behavior is being analyzed in a specific setting: an industrial cluster. Furthermore, the effect of the number of suppliers is analyzed as a possible moderator in the relationships of the model. Methodology Approach: We have chosen the Spanish tile cluster to test a series of the hypotheses. Questionnaires were elaborated from primary and secondary information and SEM has been used for statistical treatment and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Findings: Importance relationships between perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty and the importance of the different dimensions of perceive value. Practical implications: The empirical study and the results provide an importance evidence for managers: the critical influence of the Emotional and social perceived values by the customer on his level of satisfaction and on the achievement of final loyalty. And the importance in the commercial training programs of this matters. Originality/value/contribution of the paper: The importance of the most intangibles dimensions of value for the industrial cluster relations between companies.