Business to business branding: external and internal satisfiers and the role of training quality

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether the affective components of brand association influence the key stakeholders of business‐to‐business (B2B) brands. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of branding to organisations involved only in B2B markets by testing three hypotheses: that the customer's affective brand associations predict satisfaction with the company; that customer and employee affective brand associations correlate, and; that the better the training employees believe they receive, the stronger their affective brand associations and the higher their satisfaction with the organisation.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses a survey of the customers (280) and employees (367) of two construction companies involved only in B2B markets using a multidimensional measure of corporate brand personality. Structural equation modelling and regression are used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Customer satisfaction is predicted by corporate brand personality. The customer view correlates significantly with the employee view. The quality of training in turn helps predict the employee view and their satisfaction.

Practical implications

Building affective associations with a pure B2B brand is an effective way to increase customer satisfaction. This in turn appears to depend on the employee view which depends, inter alia, on their view of the quality of training they receive. Further work is required to identify other factors that may influence the employee view of a B2B brand and how the employee view influences the customer view.

Originality/value

Few studies in B2B marketing are of companies involved only in B2B markets, despite the large number of firms and the volume of business that is conducted in this sector. The study demonstrates both the influence of a strong brand image in B2B marketing but also how customers might acquire such an image.

Citation

Roper, S. and Davies, G. (2010), "Business to business branding: external and internal satisfiers and the role of training quality", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 44 No. 5, pp. 567-590. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090561011032270