Examining the effect of customer education on customer loyalty in business-to-business context: An application on the pharmaceutical industry

S-D Logic recognizes the importance of skills and knowledge as the key competitive advantage (Vargo & Lusch, 2008). The vast majority of prior research on know-how exchange (e.g. Gruen et al., 2006) or customer education (Eisingerich and Bell, 2008), took place in C-to-C and B-to-C respectively. Little is known if this accumulated body of knowledge could be generalized to the B-to-B context. This paper examines the impact of customer education, as perceived from three communication channels (sales people, seminars and conferences) on customer trust and satisfaction and in turn, customer loyalty. The study framework was tested in two dyadic relationships: pharmaceutical firms-physicians (n = 160) and pharmaceutical firms-physicians (n = 160). The data was collected by the means of questionnaires and analyzed by the means of SEM utilizing SMARTPLS approach. The study results showed that perceived educational value of sales people have a consistent impact on the development of customers' trust in the firm, but not on their satisfaction with the firm. The education-loyalty link was fully mediated by customer trust in the physicians' sample, while the same link was fully mediate by customer satisfaction in the pharmacists' sample.