Abstract
Orientation: Service fairness in industrial business-to-business procurement remains underexamined,
particularly in emerging-market supply relationships.
Research purpose: This study examined the associations between four service fairness
dimensions and business-to-business (B2B) customer loyalty in South African cement supply
relationships.
Motivation for the study: Evidence on multidimensional fairness in industrial procurement
remains limited despite repeated buyer-supplier interactions and operational dependence.
Research design, approach and method: A quantitative cross-sectional online survey was
conducted among organisational cement buyers in Gauteng. Of 300 survey links distributed,
220 completed questionnaires were received. After seven multivariate outliers and five cases
with missing model indicators were excluded, 208 responses were analysed. Statistical
package for the social sciences (SPSS) was used for supplementary one-way analysis of
variance (ANOVA), while analysis of moment structures (AMOS) was used for confirmatory
factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling. Discriminant validity was assessed
using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio.
Main findings: The model explained 56.5% of loyalty variance. Procedural fairness (β = 0.438,
p = 0.003) and informational fairness (β = 0.186, p = 0.006) had significant positive associations
with loyalty. Distributive and interpersonal fairness were not significant. The highest HTMT
ratio was 0.887. The duration of support, but not the preferred brand, was associated with
differences in several construct scores.
Practical/managerial implications: Cement suppliers should apply ordering, allocation and
complaint-resolution procedures consistently and provide timely, specific and credible
explanations when supply conditions change.
Contribution/value-add: The findings extend service fairness model (FAIRSERV) to industrial
procurement and identify process-level and information-level fairness as the clearest unique
fairness correlates of B2B loyalty in the sampled relationships.