Supplier quality, customer commitment and satisfaction, and marketplace performance

A manufacturing supplier adapts its products and services to meet the needs of its customers, and an individual customer's judgment of its supplier's quality reflects the supplier's adaptation to its needs.;Academics have studied the relationships between service quality and supplier marketplace performance (Zeithaml et al., 1988, 1985) and between a market orientation and supplier marketplace performance (Narver & Slater, 1990). The present research re-examines those relationships, adding the supplier's physical product to the study framework and focusing on the industrial marketplace. The industry studied is electrical/electronics distribution.;The primary research intent was to determine what customers consider when they judge a supplier's quality and to investigate the connection between overall supplier quality (defined here as adaptability) and supplier marketplace performance (measured here in terms of market share). In addition, the research investigated the connections between supplier quality, customer commitment to and satisfaction with the supplier, distribution channel usage, and supplier marketplace performance.;The research method uses a self-report survey. The responses were analyzed using the SAS statistical analysis computer program, primarily employing confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, path analysis (using CALIS), and regression analysis. It demonstrates that there is an inverted-U relationship between supplier quality and supplier marketplace performance. This strongly suggests that a supplier should not assume that just adapting to meet each of the needs of each of the customers will always optimize market performance. Increasing perceived supplier quality increases customer commitment. Also, increasing customer commitment increases supplier marketplace performance. In addition, improving customer satisfaction improves supplier marketplace performance. Increasing customer satisfaction increases customer committment to the supplier. There is also a positive relationship between supplier quality and customer satisfaction with the supplier: raising supplier quality raises customer satisfaction with the supplier. Finally, there is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction with the distributor and with the supplier: customer satisfaction with the distributor increases customer satisfaction with the suppliers. These findings mean that measures aimed at improving customer satisfaction with the supplier and the distributor, and customer commitment to the supplier will improve the supplier's marketplace performance.