Drivers of Customer Loyalty in B2B Services: A Firm-level Analysis Over Time

Identifying the drivers of relationship quality, satisfaction and customer loyalty has been the subject of much marketing research for over twenty years. However, there are a number of gaps in the literature, especially in understanding the nature of the drivers of customer loyalty over time. We explored the relative stability of several customer attitudes over four financial quarters, from a Fortune 100, B2B services provider. Our longitudinal research design allowed us to compare attitudes between the respective time periods. We found that many of the customer attitudes changed substantially across the four quarters. Additionally, some of the path coefficients in our structural models also changed significantly between quarters, suggesting that the nature of the business relationship between a B2B customer and a supplier is also dynamic, even in the short-term. The main implications of this study are that firms should track customer attitudes more closely, anticipate changes in such attitudes quicker, and then proactively manage their customer relationships better. From a theoretical perspective, research must be cautious in drawing firm conclusions from cross-sectional surveys as attitudes appear to be dynamic.