Customer References and the Buyind Behaviour of Capital Equipment

Resumo/Abstrat: In the process of marketing references, existing customers act as advocates for the firm. With their enthusiasm they provide testimonies, receive visits from potential customers, and yield information on the characteristics of the solutions adopted and their performance. This activity becomes highly valuable for firms as they are able to build strategic assets that allow profitable marketing action, either by increasing credibility and reputation, or by reducing the perceived risk derived from the purchasing of services or products from a particular supplier. This paper suggests that organizational buying behaviour literature still lacks empirical work that may support a theory of customer referencing. In particular, it evinces that the potential customer view is missing in the study of the customer reference practice. In fact, empirical research has favoured the supplier as its unit of analysis and has ignored the other two constituents of the reference triad: the reference customer and the potential customer. Therefore, empirical work featuring the potential customer as the unit of observation is an open research opportunity that will allow for a deeper understanding of customer reference relationships and their impact in the buying behaviour of industrial firms. The paper proposes to fulfil this gap and to raise the following research question: “what role does customer reference marketing play on capital buying decisions?” It aims to respond to this question by adopting a conceptual framework for analysis in case studies from a firms acting in the Portuguese energy industry. This research work features a critical realism approach.

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