Service fairness and business-to-business customer loyalty in South African cement market supply relationships

Abstract

Orientation: Service fairness in industrial business-to-business procurement remains under-examined, particularly in emerging-market supply relationships.
Research purpose: This study examined the associations between four service fairness dimensions and business-to-business (B2B) customer loyalty in South African cement supply relationships.
Motivation for the study: Evidence on multidimensional fairness in industrial procurement remains limited despite repeated buyer-supplier interactions and operational dependence.
Research design, approach and method: A quantitative cross-sectional online survey was conducted among organisational cement buyers in Gauteng. Of 300 survey links distributed, 220 completed questionnaires were received. After seven multivariate outliers and five cases with missing model indicators were excluded, 208 responses were analysed. Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) was used for supplementary one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), while analysis of moment structures (AMOS) was used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling. Discriminant validity was assessed using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio.
Main findings: The model explained 56.5% of loyalty variance. Procedural fairness (β = 0.438, p = 0.003) and informational fairness (β = 0.186, p = 0.006) had significant positive associations with loyalty. Distributive and interpersonal fairness were not significant. The highest HTMT ratio was 0.887. The duration of support, but not the preferred brand, was associated with differences in several construct scores.
Practical/managerial implications: Cement suppliers should apply ordering, allocation and complaint-resolution procedures consistently and provide timely, specific and credible explanations when supply conditions change.
Contribution/value-add: The findings extend service fairness model (FAIRSERV) to industrial procurement and identify process-level and information-level fairness as the clearest unique fairness correlates of B2B loyalty in the sampled relationships.