Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Power equipment suppliers that manufacture goods to customer requirements face various
opposing forces, such as increasing customer expectations, increasing competition and
escalating costs. To sustain margins, companies need to understand what constitutes
customer satisfaction, thereby enabling them to differentiate their goods and services from
those of competitors, and to charge appropriately for those goods and services.
Although customer satisfaction is important to industrial goods suppliers such as power
equipment suppliers, most studies have been conducted in the business-to-consumer
(B2C) environment, focusing on consumer goods and services, with very few studies
focusing on the business-to-business (B2B) environment. Compounding the difficulties with
customer satisfaction for South African industrial suppliers is that most literature on the
subject is applicable to markets outside of South Africa. This paper aims to give South
African industrial goods suppliers some insight into those factors that improve customer
satisfaction.
The identification of critical success factors seen as important by customers was, therefore,
the focus of this research assignment. First, customer satisfaction as a critical success
factor is reviewed by comparing it to other success factors in an attempt to validate whether
it influences organisational performance positively. Second, a list of appropriate items
comprising customer satisfaction is identified from the literature review, and the differences
between direct customers and indirect customers are identified and discussed. To reduce
the number of constructs to be surveyed, the variables that make up customer satisfaction
were ranked using prioritisation matrices against Porter’s Five Forces model (Porter, 2008)
and the Blue Ocean Strategy model (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004). The shortened list
comprised 39 items, which measured ten constructs of customer satisfaction.
Questionnaires were sent to customer representatives who were critical decision-makers
when deciding on purchases of industrial equipment. The responses were evaluated as a
complete group and showed some statistical significance between the constructs. The
responses were then evaluated according to organisational types, which showed no
statistical significant differences or interaction effects.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/97334 |
| Date | 04 1900 |
| Creators | Johnson, Bryan |
| Contributors | Heckroodt, S., Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Graduate School of Business. |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | xi, 93 pages |
| Rights | Stellenbosch University |
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