ارزش مشتری، رضایت کلی، وفاداری به کاربر نهایی، و عملکرد بازار در صنایع جزئیات فشرده

The objective was to test a customer value variable, as operationalized by a modification of Ulaga and Eggert's scale, as a direct explanatory concept in predicting satisfaction, loyalty, and market performance in a hybrid veterinary pharmaceuticals market. The market was considered to be a hybrid because physicians purchase on behalf of their clients. The scale proved to be reliable and valid in a detail intensive market using 220 veterinary physicians as respondents. To achieve an acceptable structural equation modeling fit, the customer value variable had to be dropped. The final model indicated a direct influence by product, strategic, and personal benefits as well as perceived sacrifices on the dependent variables. Management implications of the study are described.

Marketing academics have identified customer value as one of the top research agendas. The Marketing Science Institute has consistently included customer value in its list of research priorities. The Institute for the Study of Business Markets at the Pennsylvania State University and the Center for Business and Industrial Marketing at Georgia State University have also integrated research on customer value and view it as a key research program. Customer value is on the mission statements of many large corporations (Exxon) and has become a sought after source of competitive advantage. Now that the first scale for the operationalization of this concept has been published (Ulaga & Eggert, 2002), research into customer value can become a more empirical area of inquiry. The needed theoretical areas of research for customer value include “…major antecedents, mediating variables, and consequences” (Ulaga & Eggert, 2002, p.15) and “to investigate relationship customer-value concepts closely related to the construct such as commitment, satisfaction, and trust.” Methodologically, there is also a need to investigate how robust this new scale is outside its original setting of French industrial purchasing managers. The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the model shown below in Fig. 1. This model was synthesized from several available research efforts.

This study empirically tested and supported a large part of a postulated framework of antecedents, processes, and outcomes of customer value. However, the SEM did not support the use of a higher order construct of customer value, as proposed in the earlier theory first by Monroe (1991) and then by Ulaga and Eggert (2002). Most of the influence on the product selection process is through the direct effects of the customer value components rather than through the indirect effect of the higher order construct. Acting directly, these individual customer value benefits and sacrifices also have more impact on the overall satisfaction and end-user loyalty outcome measures than on market performance, most likely because of the time dependent promotional lagged effects. Moreover, the scale's component influence on market performance also appears to be direct and not through the roles of mediating variables like the business buyer's overall satisfaction and end-user loyalty. Therefore, the alternate model had higher goodness-of-fit than the main model. Nevertheless, the research did confirm the general structure proposed—antecedents, dimensions of or higher order customer value construct, linked to the three outcome measures of overall satisfaction to end-user loyalty to market performance.