Why Do Dissatisfied Customers in the Business-to-Business Services Sector Stay With Their Existing Service Providers? An Exploratory Study

There have been few studies that investigate the reasons that dissatisfied customers stay with service organisations. Further, there have been no studies that have investigated a range of factors simultaneously in a single model in the business services sector. This paper attempts to address this research gap. A qualitative study was conducted, with 17 personal interviews undertaken with managers who are involved in the choice of service providers. The results not only confirmed factors in the literature: switching costs, impact of alternative service providers, investment in relationships, service recovery and inertia, but also uncovered seven other factors: the service provider offers sales leads, lower price, legal issues, delivers good quality core product, favouritism, impact on other business units and need to keep the existing service provider as a back-up option. Contrary to the literature on buyer-seller relationships in business markets that state that relationships are of utmost importance, this category was not considered as important by customers as a reason not to switch. Switching costs and quality of alternatives were much more important. Implications of the findings are discussed.