Toward addressing customer migration: measuring B2B salespersons’ perceptions of customer ownership

Abstract

Purpose One of the pivotal questions facing all firms is “Who owns the customer?” Despite the longstanding acknowledgment that customer ownership is critical to a firm’s success, to date, little research attention has been afforded to conceptualizing and measuring customer ownership. This study aims to address this research gap by exploring, measuring and validating a customer ownership scale through the lens of the business-to-business salesperson. Design/methodology/approach The classical multi-item scale development involving a multistep process was used in developing and validating this scale measuring customer ownership. Using a grounded theory approach, the customer ownership scale is developed and justified as distinctive from customer loyalty. Findings The two-factor customer ownership scale reflects the underlying factors of the salesperson–customer bond and provides a pathway to empirically assess mechanisms for addressing customer migration. The findings suggest an opportunity for greater precision in both meaning and measurement for both academics and practitioners. Originality/value The question “Who owns the customer?” has been a venerable enigma in sales organizations, and it remains an underdeveloped construct in sales and marketing research. This research empirically explores the construct of customer ownership in a systematic manner that is conspicuously absent from extant studies.