City distribution service quality: A factor impacting on supplier-customer relationship and customer satisfaction

This paper seeks to propose a conceptual structural equation model to investigate the relationships among city distribution service quality (SQ), supplier-customer relationship (SCR) and customer satisfaction (CS) and to demonstrate their direct and indirect effects on each other. An empirical study is conducted in Beijing and the collected survey data are used to verify the relationships among the three factors expressed in the proposed structural equation model. The results show that SQ has a direct and significant impact on SCR and CS. In addition, SQ influences CS indirectly through SCR which has direct and significant influences on CS. The most significant dimension of SQ is responsiveness and the least one is tangibles. The results are useful for other large international cities where the circumstances are similar to Beijing since data from Beijing were collected and used in this research.