The impact of product superiority on customer satisfaction in project management

Abstract

This paper investigates direct and moderating role of product superiority between project management and customer satisfaction. The data comes from customer satisfaction surveys conducted for a Fortune 500 company in building control systems industry. Data was aggregated over 18 consecutive months with 3129 surveys completed. Results showed that product superiority in project management has a significant direct impact on perceived customer satisfaction throughout the project. Furthermore product superiority somewhat strengthens the relationship between the project management stages and customer satisfaction. Due to this dual impact of the product superiority on the project management and customer satisfaction relationship, product superiority is a quasi-moderating variable in statistical terms. The results also suggest that product superiority, being a precursor for customer satisfaction, has lower impact on customer satisfaction than the actual project management aspect. This may be an indication of the higher service rather than product oriented nature of the system delivery projects.