In a commodity product area, this Fortune 500 company wanted to assess through customer satisfaction research, the non-price attributes of its performance, both at the mill product quality level and for sales and customer service. While the drivers of customer preference were mainly price driven, customer satisfaction with the sales and product quality issues were of growing concern.

We designed a comprehensive customer satisfaction research methodology to reach busy commercial B2B buyers. Our research design measured customer satisfaction with mill customer service, product packaging, product shipment, product quality grading, and mill-level customer service. At the sales floor level, customer satisfaction dimensions included responsiveness, 'fair and ethical dealings', corporate reputation and brand image dimensions, quality of information, competitive pricing, and other attributes.

Customer satisfaction research design also involves assessing attribute importance. Here we constructed 'overall' ratings as independent variables, and measured directly importance of each attribute.

We used a hybrid methodology focused on a quantitative market survey approach It combined an online internet market survey of B2B buyers, and a phone survey option. Here, we started with Data. We conducted a nationwide study among builders and dealers. Uncovered in our detailed study were buying trends, the importance of product traits, future intentions to switch, and the usage situation (roof, sidewall, flooring) where each competitive material was preferred.

RESULTS

Using multivariate analysis, we identified the customer satisfaction drivers, and how our B2B industrial client measured on each attribute cluster. The client made specific strategy decisions based on the study findings.