Drivers Impacting Customer
Date
2011-04-15
Authors
Holton, Wayne
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Abstract
South African businesses have been under pressure to generate revenue in the
short term and deliver long term profitable growth for shareholders. The recent
global economic slowdown has presented new business challenges for these
organisations. Some of these challenges call for a clear focus on customer
deliverables, understanding a customer’s specific needs and meeting those needs
by differentiating from the competition. The purpose of this study was to conduct
customer satisfaction research into South Africa’s engineering components
market.
A structured questionnaire was designed to determine customer demographics,
the important drivers of customer satisfaction and the dependence of customer
satisfaction on a strong interpersonal customer/supplier relationship. Thirty six
respondents from various South African industrial companies completed the
questionnaire. The data collected from these questionnaires was analysed using
quantitative analytical tools.
The research findings identified six meaningful drivers of customer satisfaction in
South Africa’s engineering components market. Four of these six drivers found
were also cited in the literature. The four drivers found were speed of delivery,
product quality, product availability and the human element of service delivery.
Two other drivers were found, being ethics and trust and product brand. It was
found that customer satisfaction is not entirely dependent on a strong
interpersonal relationship between the customer and supplier as cited in the
literature.
Description
MBA - WBS
Keywords
Customer satisfaction, Engineering consumables