Customer Relationship Management in B2B Niche Markets: A Case Study of a Buying Firm in the German Food Machinery Industry and Four of Their Customers Including One Potential Customer

The main goal of this study is to find an answer to the question if there is a relationship between customer relationship management and customer satisfaction in business-to-business niche markets setting specifically. It was expected that there is a positive relationship and this study confirms this expectation. For the purpose of keeping all possibilities open, an exploratory research design has been used. A small sample case study of a buying firm, three of their customers and one potential customer was used to obtain qualitative data, collected through the use of semi-structured interviews. This study reports various elements contributing towards customer satisfaction. Amongst these factors are splendid communication and the clarity of agreements. The majority of the factors found has received support from the literature. Limitations to this study are the relatively small sample in the case study and the demographical scope, which limits the generalisability of this study. In order to determine the significance of the findings of this study, future research is required. Furthermore, this study is based on the scarce understanding obtained on one particular niche market, since available academic literature on niche markets and its management is limited. This implies that the characteristics of distinct niche markets may differ considerably from the unit of analysis in this study. For this reason, the validity of the reported findings may be confined to the German food machinery industry.