Impact of Service Value on Satisfaction and Repurchase Intentions in Business-to-Business Cloud Computing

Businesses are starting to use several cloud computing services, but we do not know much about how these business-to-business (B2B) customers view the service value that they receive from these services. Service value in the business-to-consumer (B2C) literature has been seen to be made up of four components, all shown to relate to the customer’s satisfaction and intention to repurchase. In this current paper, we examine whether these same four components can be used in a model explaining satisfaction and repurchase intention for B2B cloud computing services. We describe a two-step research project consisting of (1) a set of exploratory interviews and (2) a questionnaire survey of 328 information technology (IT) managers. The interview step resulted in confirmation of the existing four components of service value from the B2C literature. We also uncovered a fifth component that we have called cloud service governance. We then developed a survey instrument to measure these five service value dimensions as well as satisfaction and intention to repurchase. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to estimate a structural model that linked the perceptions of these service value components to customer satisfaction and repurchase intentions. Our results will enable B2B customers to better understand the components of service value in cloud services, and cloud service vendors will be able to measure how well their services are leading to value and satisfaction for their customers.