Revealing Marketing Criteria of Customs Services: a Dyadic Approach

Abstract

The increasing importance of marketing services has led services industries to pursue ways of providing better services and improve customer satisfaction in a competitive marketplace. Knowing what can be promoted and what customers consider in choosing the service provider are important factors in a strategic marketing plan. Recognizing core competences with customer expectations and perceptions is undoubtedly the best tool for success. While services marketing has been studied for many services industries, logistics, particularly customs services, is rarely addressed. Exploiting services quality and perception scales, this qualitative study applied content analysis to semi-structured interviews to explore the marketing criteria of customs service providers from a dyadic perspective within business-to-business (B2B) services. Marketing criteria for customs services were categorized as company, personnel, and service-oriented. Three genuine dimensions were created in accordance with their relevance to the service provider company, employees working in the service provider company and the service itself. The results reveal that customs services marketing criteria taken into consideration by customers for service provider choice can be different when compared to other services within a B2B environment. This study contributes to services marketing regarding customs services by comparing the factors of logistics services quality and perception literature.