A Study On Construction Machinery Industry Customer Satisfaction And Customer Loylaty Based On Service Quality And Switching Barrier

In recent years, with the rapid and stable development of our country's economy, the investment put into national infrastructure construction has been continually increasing. As the result of that, the construction machinery industry has experienced significant development. However, the situation of overcapacity of some subordinate industry has come out, and owing to the competition with foreign advanced enterprises, the construction machinery enterprises of our country are confronted with increasingly intensified threatens and survival pressure. Meanwhile, as quality and prices of the products tends to become homogenized, service quality instead of super quality and competitive price has become the magic weapon in competition, and achieving customer satisfaction together with retaining loyal customers have become the important strategy for enterprises to become more competitive. A great number of studies show that customer satisfaction has a positive influence on the financial performance of enterprises.Construction machinery is the large amount goods, which belongs to production means and is bought for gaining profit. Owing to the high working intensity and bad working condition, damages caused by quality or operation occur frequently. Thus, if the manufacturers cannot obviate the faults efficiently in time to ensure the normal production, their customers will bear great loss, and more seriously, it's likely to results in customers' grumble, complaint, dissatisfaction and even customer loss. Via document searching and market survey, the author finds that service quality has become the key determinant for customer satisfaction within construction machinery industry, and switching barrier has turned into the key factor that customers concern.This study applies the SERVPERF model acknowledged by the academic circle, which is for measuring the five service quality factors. Taking the example of the construction machinery company A, the author expounded the study from five factors for service quality of tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, from two dimensions for switching barrier of positive switching barrier and passive switching barrier, and from two dimensions for customer loyalty of attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty. Besides, the author also applies SEM modeling approach and utilizes PLS analysis techniques to discuss various factors'influences on customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as the pertinence between them by regression analysis and correlation analysis. Meanwhile, in order to provide references for enterprises to make the marketing service program, the author also analyzes if there are differences among various kinds of customers in five service quality factors, two dimensions for switching barriers, customer satisfaction and two dimensions for customer loyalty.Result of the study shows that service quality and switching barrier will influence the customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction will also affect customer loyalty. However, there are differences in the five service quality factors and two switching barrier dimensions' influences to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Among the influences, service responsiveness and empathy's influences on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and passive switching barrier's influences on customer loyalty are obvious; but service reliability, assurance and tangibility's influences on customer satisfaction and loyalty, and positive switching barrier's influence on customer loyalty are unobvious. Therefore, this study not only fills the gap of domestic and foreign studies on the driving factors of customer satisfaction and loyalty in construction machinery industry, but also achieves the considerable referential value and instructive significance for enterprises to make marketing service strategy or improve service level.