Customer value-in-use monitoring in business markets: An investigation into its determinants and consequences

Abstract

Monitoring customers' value-in-use (VIU) is the necessary next step in relationship management, as the emerging literature on customer success and value management shows. However, despite considerable academic and managerial interest, how suppliers' internal structures and processes can adequately support VIU monitoring—and what relationship effects can be expected from this process's execution—remain unclear. Drawing on two unique data sets, we build on supplier and customer evaluations of VIU monitoring to empirically examine the constructs' determinants and consequences. In Study 1, we survey 140 supplier firms to demonstrate that two factors positively affect VIU monitoring: top managers' support for customer success management and a supplier's ability to engage in task discourse with customers. In Study 2, we test VIU monitoring's effect on customer-perceived relationship value using data from 155 customer firms. Our results demonstrate that VIU monitoring positively affects relationship value as it is perceived by the customer firm. However, VIU monitoring is not equally important for each supplier–customer relationship. Moderator analysis reveals that a customer's absorptive learning capacity can partially compensate for a supplier's weak VIU monitoring activities.