ANTECEDENTS OF RELATIONSHIP INTENTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS ENVIRONMENTS: A FACTOR ANALYTICAL APPROACH

Year 2020, Volume: 12 Issue: 1, 147 - 162, 19.02.2020

Lehlohonolo Amos Masitenyane Manilall Dhurup Bakae Aubrey Mokoena Asphat Muposhi

Abstract

A growing interest in relationship marketing as a practice and research focus has been witnessed over the last two decades and this was spurred primarily by the need to create sustainable competitive advantage in business-to-customer (B2C) environments. This has prompted marketers to shift their attention from their short-term transactional business approach to more enduring relationship-building strategies. An extant literature review revealed that limited research studies have been conducted in business-to-business (B2B) settings. This study examined the antecedents of relationship intentions in B2B settings in the South African construction industry, in the Gauteng province. The study is imbedded within a post-positivist approach with the use of a quantitative research design. Data were collected from a structured self-administered questionnaire (n=560) from civil and building contractors. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were employed to determine possible factors and to establish the data’s goodness-of fit to the model. In addition, the reliability as well as validity of the study’s measuring instrument was established.
The findings offer support for an eight-factor structure (flexibility, information sharing, trust, fear of relationship loss, forgiveness, expectations and feedback) with 36 items that explain the antecedents of relationship intentions. Moreover, the confirmatory factor results show satisfactory goodness-of fit of the proposed factor structure to the data. In B2B environments, relational partners can leverage these eight relationship intention strategies in order to enhance their association for business longevity. A comprehensive framework has been proposed, which can be used as an archetype to measure and understand the antecedents of relationship intentions within B2B environments.

Keywords

Concrete products, civil and building contractors, relationship intentions, antecedents and exploratory factor analysis

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