Research On Relationship Between Service Quality Of Supplier And Satisfaction And Loyalty Of Distributors

At present,, there are numerous brands in beer market, domestic brands and the continuous influx of foreign brands lead the competition in beer market enter a white-hot stage-price war being intensified, beer brand constantly being weakened, homogeneous phenomenon of beer products being serious and product differentiation being few; In addition, costs of attracting new customers continued to increase,all of these make the beer manufacturers put more emphasis on maintaining relationships with their distributors but not on the terminal consumers in the entire marketing channel, the attempt of which is to increase the loyalty of the distributors to increase the possession of products on the shelf and thus increase their market share. In this context, exploring the relationship between the service quality of suppliers and satisfaction and loyalty of distributors is of great practical significance.In addition, through inspecting the literature of previous, it was found that academic researches on customer loyalty in the field of B2C has achieved very fruitful results, but research on satisfaction and loyalty of distributors in the field of B2B is relatively rare, therefore, for filling the gaps in previous studies, enriching the existing theoretical models and the associated marketing theory, the study is of great theoretical value.This study aimed to explore the relationship between the service quality of suppliers and satisfaction and loyalty of distributors. First, a descriptive analysis on the basic conditions of the snow brands, such as brand strategy and distribution channels was done, and then the relative theories and literature about the quality of service suppliers, distributors emotional commitment, the distributor satisfaction and distributors loyalty were reviewed. Based on these, a theoretical model of this study was put forward, that is, a prerequisite for the satisfaction of distributors is the distributor's evaluation on the supplier is mainly based on the satisfaction of quality of its services in technical and emotional; Meanwhile, satisfaction of distributors can generate the emotional commitment, and affective commitment reflects the degree and needs of the distributors for the relationship with the supplier. Similarly, the emotional commitment may produce distributor loyalty. Several basic assumptions were proposed based on the model:H1:for distributors, the quality of technical service has a positive effect on satisfaction.H2:for distributors, the quality of relationship service has a positive effect on satisfaction.H3:for distributors, satisfaction has a positive effect on affective commitment.H4:For distributors, the emotional commitment has a positive effect on loyalty behavior.Then, based on the existing literature, the existing scales of measurement were improved to meet the evaluation on beer distributors and suppliers according to the beer industry specialty. Taking technical service quality and service quality as the basic constructs and using qualitative research methods, a number of initial items were set, which were verified and researched by the distributors and suppliers to design appropriate scale; scale was designed by taking distributor satisfaction, distributors affective commitment and distributor loyalty as the variables.An investigation was carried out accoring to the designed scale. Survey was conducted in distributors in Northeast China of Huarun co.. The relationship length of the distributors is at least a year and a maximum of 25 years, and the size of the terminal distributors are different. Annual turnover of each distributor is less than 5 million. Using survey methods, these 304 distributors were interviewed and eventually 234 valid sub-volume were received. By describing analysis, structural equation analysis, regression analysis and SPSS17.0, the basic statistical features, reliability and validity were analyzed;The model was tested, including the structural model fitting, structural model explaining and hypothesis testing on intermediate variables. The model and assumptions were tested and the analysis results were discussed finally.the results shew that:(1) the quality of technical service for the distributors did not affect satisfaction; (2) the relationship between satisfaction with the quality of service for the distributors had a positive influence, that is, the higher the quality of relation service was, the higher the satisfaction of distributors was; (3) the distributors'satisfaction affected the distributors'emotional commitment positivly, that is, more satisfied the distributors were with the suppliers, the more affective dependence could the distributors produce. As a result, distributors had more affective commitment, which enhanced them form loyalty; (4) through the distributors'high degree of emotional dependence, distributor satisfaction transformated the loyalty on the supplier. Baded on these, this paper presented a few marketing suggestions on the co-operating process for Huarun Snow Beer Co. with its distributors:to set up a reasonable organizations; to optimize business processes; to attach great importance to the establishment and strengthening of the relationship with the distrubutors, to work closely with distributors emotional ties through multiple kinds of forms and in all directions to enhance satisfaction of distributors to help them build advanced management concepts; to improve the market operational capabilities of distributors; to strengthen resources mutual complement between the company and distributors to form a strategic alliance-based development, and so on.