When Management and Customers See Eye-to-Eye: The Agreement Factor and Performance

Abstract:     
Purpose – To focus on management-customer relations as a way to understand the competitive advantages of small/medium-sized family businesses. The aim of this work is to verify whether management perceptions of business strengths and customer perceptions of the same strengths agree and whether this agreement (perceptive concordance) can become an important factor in maintaining the firm’s competitive advantages.

Design/methodology/approach – The research, carried out through a single case study with a sample of 120 customers, indicates that when management and customers agree on certain business issues, performance benefits.

Findings – Comparing management’s perception of strengths and customers perceptions of the same strengths allow us to relate what the firm thinks of itself to what the customer sees in it.

Practical implications – The research offers us useful information about the efficiency of the firm’s external communications and demonstrates that a shared language between the firm and its customers does exist and is understood by both entities. Moreover, practical implications are related to the customers’ degree of satisfaction with respect to management beliefs, and to the managements’ opportunity to correct the weaknesses revealed by the agreement factor.

Originality/value – The paper provides a different perspective on how to analyze the competitive advantage inside small medium family businesses with cases and specific analyses not considered in depth by the family business literature.

Keywords: Family businesses, Perception, Customer-Management Relationships, Competitive advantages, Performance, Business Strengths

JEL Classification: M13

Accepted Paper Series