Optimizing Business-to-Business Customer Satisfaction Analysis through Advanced Two-Stage Clustering: Insights from Industrial Parks

Abstract

Traditional research on customer satisfaction (CS) estimation has focused on the business-to-customer (BTC) business mode. Customers in the BTC mode have been assumed to be familiar with the full range of services or products and to be able to make estimations of their CS. However, in the business-to-business (BTB) mode, diverse services have often been required and provided. It may be difficult to find members who have experience with all kinds of services or to generate common CS estimation results supported by different members. In this study, the difference between BTC and BTB was verified using structural equation modeling (SEM), and a model of CS estimation was developed with respect to BTB. The empirical results show that perceived service quality has no direct impact on enterprise satisfaction, indicating that traditional models are limited. A two-stage clustering algorithm was adopted to optimize the traditional CS evaluation model based on SEM, i.e., (1) K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classification and (2) density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN). In order to verify the feasibility of the proposed model, CS with respect to six industrial parks was estimated empirically. The results show that the proposed model can improve the results of CS estimation compared with the results obtained using traditional methods. During the clustering process, each park generated and eliminated a certain number of noise points to optimize the satisfaction evaluation results. Specifically, park A generated and eliminated seven noise points, while park C generated and eliminated five noise points. The results of the satisfaction evaluation of each park obtained using the proposed model are more realistic, i.e., park A > park B > park C > park E > park D > park F. The proposed model extends the existing research on CS estimation in theory and can support applications in the BTB business mode.