An Evaluation of Business to Business (B2B) Customer Relationship Management Practices at Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL)

Abstract

Customer relationship management has been broadly thwarted as the panacea to improving supplier-customer relationship in literature. However, business-to-business relationships are often characterized by deeply complex relationships in the supply chain. This research therefore evaluates the customer relationship management practices/initiatives employed by Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL) as a supplier to manage its relationships with trade partners in the supply chain. It sorts to assess the behavior of CRM practices on customer satisfaction in a business-to-business setting. The variables on CRM practices (trust, communication, order handling, conflict handling, socials bonds, commitment) and customer satisfaction variables (happy) were coded using a scale (1-5), where 5=strongly agree and 1= strongly disagree. Data was collected using questionnaires from 254 Retailers and 35 Key Distributors who are commercial trade partners of Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited. Reliability test and multiple regression analysis were carried out using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study found that the six CRM constructs cumulatively had significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. The study also revealed that key distributors are more satisfied than retailers. Individually, order handling, trust and communication, commitment, and complaint handling were found to be significant drivers of customer satisfaction. The study strongly recommends CRM adoption as a strategy to ensuring customer satisfaction in the business-to-business environments. In B2B relationships such as GGBL, the tendency to form closer ties with Key distributors is often high to the neglect of the retailers who actually interface with consumers. The study also recommends that, CRM be applied to the whole supply chain if the needed benefits are to be realized.