Modeling Increased Repurchase Intentions for High-tech B2b Offerings

Overall customer satisfaction for industrial buyers is correlated with repurchase intentions. Components of overall satisfaction include satisfaction with the product (offering), satisfaction with the vendor's performance, and interpersonal satisfaction (satisfaction with the relationship with the salesperson). Research shows that industrial buyers evaluate components of satisfaction non-uniformly across various purchase categories (e.g., components of satisfaction are evaluated differently for capital equipment than for production process items). The same holds true for purchases of differentiated and non-differentiated (commodity) items; satisfaction with high-tech products is evaluated differently than for products with lower levels of technology. Data collected from a cross section of industrial offerings are categorized according to their levels of technology. Items from industries characterized by high expenditures on R&D are categorized as high-tech. Optimal models are developed and the results suggest that if sellers of high-tech offerings reallocate resources in the manner suggested by the optimal model, their repurchases will be increased by an average of 7.5%. This advances prior research by demonstrating the value of segmenting and treating high-tech offerings separately, rather than aggregating offerings with all levels of technology together. Implications for future research are also discussed.