New and Evolving Paradigms. The Emerging Fuuture of Marketing
The authors address the important issue of when suppliers should exce ed customers expectations by analyzing how supplier behavior creates positive negative affect and cognitive responses in terms of satisfac tion, and subsequently behavioral intentions in terms of share of bus iness with the focal supplier, motivation to continue the relationshi p, likelihood of positive word of mouth, and motivation to expand the scope of the relationship. Recent research has suggested that affect ive responses to disconfirmation of expectations are important, but h as mainly focused on consumer markets. The authors extend past resear ch by examining affective and cognitive responses in an industrial co ntext, and the suppliers' performance in buyer-seller relationship. I n a study of 150 established buyer-seller relationships in the indust rial telecommunication market, they found that customers' affective r esponses to supplier reliability were different from their responses to supplier benevolence. Low supplier reliability created negative af fect, and high supplier benevolence created positive affect. However, high reliability did not create positive affect, and low supplier be nevolence did not create ne