Resumo

VAN TONDER, E  e  NEL, CB. Validating relationship marketing factors predicting B2B customer loyalty towards crop protection suppliers. JCMAN [online]. 2018, vol.15, n.1, pp.224-249. ISSN 1815-7440.

Little is known about the contribution of relationship marketing factors to business-to-business customer loyalty towards suppliers of crop protection solutions. Insight into these matters may assist in winning the loyalty of independent sales agents who sell suppliers' products to farmers. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to validate the impact of trust, commitment and service support on independent sales agents' business-to-business customer loyalty towards suppliers of crop protection solutions. Moreover, the paper sought to verify the degree to which commitment as an outcome of trust and service support would play a central role in contributing to business-to-business customer loyalty. A survey was conducted among 121 independent sales agents who have sold the crop protection solutions of their preferred suppliers in the past two years. Only trust and service support have a positive and significant impact on business-to-business customer loyalty. Furthermore, only trust has a positive and significant impact on commitment. Therefore, commitment may not always be fundamental to a long-term relationship. Rather, trust and service support are seen as pillars of equal importance, and should be managed by suppliers of crop protection solutions to win the loyalty of their agents.

Palavras-chave : Business-to-business (B2B) customer loyalty; commitment; service support and trust.

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