University of Twente Student Theses
Birds of a feather flock together : de effecten van affectieve drivers in persoonlijke klantrelaties en de toepassing daarvan bij technische B2B bedrijven
Dijkstra, G.L. (2012) Birds of a feather flock together : de effecten van affectieve drivers in persoonlijke klantrelaties en de toepassing daarvan bij technische B2B bedrijven.
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Abstract: | The Dutch technical industrial sector, which has a strong emphasis on development and delivery of high quality products, needs a more customer oriented approach. Such came across in research of Boer & Croon, initiator of this study. This study aimed for increasing customer loyalty in the sector, by the following research question: How can customer relations in the technical B2B industry be improved by affective manners and to what extend does the industry apply this? Interviews with sales professionals showed that customers’ decision making processes in this industry are difficult to directly improve. This is due to stronger professional procurement and purchase opportunities of the internet. Therefore, strong horizontal contacts based on cooperation in projects do not automatically lead to loyal customers anymore. Because sales professionals have little knowledge on improving customer relations awareness of opportunities is low and structural application is missing. Besides a high contact frequency also corporate citizenship (help a customer with non business issues) and increasing likeability lead to a stronger customer relationship. An experiment measured the influence of liking on mutual trust. Liking was influenced by high or low similarity, an important antecedent of liking. This was done for similarity in both personal and business values. Both caused a positive effect on liking and, therewith, mutual trust. The main conclusion, however, was the role of relationship orientation. Whenever a customer has a high relationship orientation, all methods to increase trust have significantly higher effects. Therefore, customers can be segmented on relationship orientation in order to increase efficiency in relationship marketing. |
Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
Clients: | Boer & Croon, Amsterdam, the Netherlands |
Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
Subject: | 05 communication studies |
Programme: | Communication Studies MSc (60713) |
Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/62296 |
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