Factors influencing business to business relationship commitment within the road transport industry

M.Com. (Business Management)Abstract: Success for the road transport industry in South Africa with reference to the side tipper business, is dependent on how well transporters understand their customers’ needs and wants and subsequently service them, ensuring not only their customers’ commitment but also their loyalty. Being customer focused and understanding your customers’ needs and wants is the essence of marketing and requires a strong relationship to be built and maintained between a road transport service provider and their customers’. Transporters who adopt this attitude towards business are the ones who ensure customer satisfaction, retention and ultimately the customers’ loyalty. Relationship marketing is a tool that is used not only to attract new customers, but more importantly to develop relationships with existing customers. However, in order for relationship marketing to be effective, relationship commitment needs to be established. Relationship commitment indicates how willing either party is to invest time or money into a relationship, which will result in benefits being achieved for both parties. Customer commitment is a dependent variable in determining whether or not a customer will remain loyal to their service provider. This study aimed at determining the influence that the factors of trust, communication, shared values and attractiveness of alternatives have on customer relationship commitment and ultimately loyalty, within the bulk road transport industry in South Africa. The research focused on customers of the bulk side tipper road transport industry and due to the geographical split of customers within this industry, the research took place in the Gauteng, North-West, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Free State provinces of South Africa. Although there has been previous research done on trust, communication, shared values and attractiveness of alternatives and its influence on customer commitment in various industries, no research has been done on these factors and their influence on customer relationship commitment within the bulk road transport industry in South Africa..