The Impact of After Sales Service Quality on Customer Brand Loyalty: With Special Reference to Construction Machinery Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

In Sri Lanka construction is the 4th largest sector with contributing 6-7% to GDP over past decade and provides employment to 4-5% of labour force. Construction industry mainly depends on construction machineries and there is no heavy construction machinery manufactures in Sri Lanka. Therefore, separate business sector has been developed for importing and distributing construction machineries. However, only few brands are dominating the market with strong CRM strategies and effective aftersales services. However there is no sufficient evidence whether effectiveness of after sales services has significant influence on the brand loyalty of construction companies towards heavy construction machinery brands in Sri Lanka. With the aforesaid background, the present study is focused on the assessing the impact of after sales service quality of heavy machinery providers on brand loyally of their clients towards heavy machinery brands. This study has been designed as quantitative research based on the positivism research paradigm. Both primary and secondary data will be collected for the study. Secondary data will be mainly collected through available online data, published government reports, journals, and company annual reports in construction industry. Primary data will be collected based on the survey among employees of construction companies. Accordingly, survey was conducted among the selected sample which is 396 and sample was selected randomly among the technical officers and other executives who are directly involved with purchasing of machinery from the machinery suppliers of industry. The research instrument will be a self-administrated questionnaire. Data will be analysed based on frequencies, percentages and descriptive statistical tools such as mean value and standard deviation while correlation analysis and regression analysis will be adopted for testing hypothesis. The findings of the study may be helped to develop effective after sales services heavy machinery suppliers for developing brand loyalty towards products among the construction companies in Sri Lanka.