The Impact of Critical Incidents on Customer Satisfaction in Business-to-Business Relationships

The few existing studies of satisfaction measurement in business-to-business markets focus on attribute-based approaches and neglect the relevance of critical incidents in relationships. From preliminary empirical studies, we know that critical incidents have a significant impact on customer satisfaction. To analyze this impact, a complementary attribute- and incident-based approach is used. It is assumed that critical incidents exert both a direct impact through influencing the level of overall and attribute satisfaction, and an indirect impact of incidents leading to a changed arithmetic mode in overall satisfaction formation. The results of an empirical study in the logistics industry show several asymmetric direct effects and a tendency for nonlinear satisfaction formation if there are critical incidents.