ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies different methodologies that could be suitable for approaching and measuring customer loyalty, with a particular focus on the B2B context. To achieve this, it opens with an overview of complexity theory and then it applies a multi-step approach of analysis to two cases. The chapter shows how firms participating in business-to-business (B2B) markets can achieve high levels of customer loyalty under different configurations of several variables (for instance, perceived offer quality, service support, and personal interaction). To address this goal, chapter employs qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The QCA method assumes that the influence of attributes on a specific outcome depends on how the attributes are combined. To summarise, beyond more 'standards approaches' such as statistics and quantitative methods (e.g., structural equation modelling, multiple regression analysis, analysis of variance [ANOVA]), the chapter provides a qualitative approach that explains the complex world of understanding and measuring customer loyalty.
