Customer Loyalty in Clusters: Perceived Value and Satisfaction as Antecedents

Abstract

Purpose: This article studies, from the perspective of relationship marketing, the loyalty behavior of industrial customers in the context of an industrial 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 business-to-business (B2B) studies explain the antecedents of customer loyalty, where perceived value acquires a multidimensional perspective. This study adopts the relationship marketing approach, and loyalty behavior is 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 hypotheses. Questionnaires were elaborated from primary and secondary information and structural equation models (SEM) have been used for statistical treatment and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Findings: This study highlights the importance of the relationships among perceived value, satisfaction, and loyalty and the importance of the different dimensions of perceived value. Practical implications: The empirical study and the results provide important evidence for managers, specifically, the critical influence of the emotional and social perceived values by the customer on his or her level of satisfaction and on the achievement of final loyalty—the importance in the commercial training programs of this matters. Originality, value, and contribution: This study highlights the importance of the most intangibles dimensions of value for the industrial cluster relations between companies.