Examining the Antecedents of Customers'' Future Cooperative Intention for Project Services

• Main Authors: Shu-Han Li, 黎書含
• Other Authors: Huang, Perng-Fei
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/26542050037299319665

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 行銷與流通管理所 === 97 === There have been many studies on relationship marketing and project marketing, but few combine the two areas of research. This study made an attempt to build an integrated framework to cover the research gap. On the basis of relationship marketing, the framework focused mainly on exploring the critical antecedents of excellent project services. An empirical survey was conducted to verify the appropriateness of the conceptual framework. Specifically, the purpose of this study are to examine the important characteristics of project-service firms (expertise, relationship length, previous cooperative experience or performance, customer knowledge, customer orientation, and flexibility) the relationships between these characteristics and customers’ future cooperative intention for project services, and the potential mediating role that trust and relationship commitment might play in these relationships. In the second part of the study we conducted an empirical survey to examine the fitness of the proposed framework. The empirical survey was performed by personal interview with questionnaires. The sample consists of 283 respondents who are working in various institutions, businesses, and government agencies for more than one year experiences in project decision-making or administration. The results of analyses include: (1) Project-service firms’ expertise, customer knowledge, customer orientation, and flexibility all had a significant positive impact on customers’ (contractors’) trust in them, with customer orientation being the most influential. (2) Project-service firms’ previous cooperative experience or performance, together with the above four characteristics in (1), all had a significant positive effect on customers’ (contractors’) relationship commitment, with previous cooperative experience or performance being the most powerful antecedent. (3) The length of the relationship between project-service firms and customers (contractors) had no significant influence on customers’ (contractors’) trust in and commitment to the project-service firms. (4) Trust had a significant positive connection with relationship commitment. (5) Trust and relationship commitment all had a significant positive effect on customers’ (contractors’) future cooperative intention with the project-service firms. (6) Trust and relationship commitment all had a partial mediating effect on the relationships between the six characteristics of project-service firms and the customers’ (contractors’) future cooperative intention. The findings of the study can provide project-service firms and their customers (contractors) with insight into what are the best criteria (or characteristics) for selecting project-service firms. We discussed the managerial implications of the findings and also provided suggestions for both practitioners and researchers who will be interested in this field.