Switching barriers in business‐to‐business services: a qualitative study

Purpose – To investigate the determinants of behavioural brand loyalty amongst dissatisfied customers in the business‐to‐business (B2B) services sector.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative study was conducted, with 28 personal interviews undertaken with managers who are involved in the choice of service providers. The respondents belonged to 24 organisations located in Australia. Template analysis and eyeballing were techniques used to analyse the data collected.Findings – Assessment of the reasons why dissatisfied customers stayed with the service providers resulted in six categories. The categories were found to be, in order of decreasing frequency, impact of alternative providers, switching costs (18), others (17), inertia (14), investment in relationships (13), and service recovery (13). The results not only confirmed factors found in the literature, but also uncovered 11 other factors.Research limitations/implications – The sample size, whilst appropriate for qualitative research, should be co...