A baseline study of practices and perceptions of marketing and aftermarketing activities among commercial general contractors

The practice of marketing and customer retention is a new activity to commercial construction contractors. There are two objectives for this research. First, is to determine the level of general marketing practiced among commercial contractors and what demographic relationships exist. Second, is to identify the best aftermarketing practices in general business and discover the level of those activities being practiced by construction contractors and their perceived value in retaining customers. Eight research questions were developed with the cooperation of the Associated General Contractors of America. The response from the survey was n = 120. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the findings along with contingency tables and chi-square analysis to identify significant relationships. An over-all alpha level of . 05 was used. Over 65% of contractors said that less than 25% of their annual business comes from marketing. The general building segment does the most marketing followed by industrial, municipal utilities/others and heavy highway contractors. The research also revealed that larger companies engage in more marketing than smaller companies and companies that have been in business over 20 years engage in marketing more than those who have been in business less than 20 years. Keeping customers happy is the best defense against competition and a key strategy to increasing long-term profitability. The best aftermarketing practices in general businesses are: (1) blueprinting customer contacts, (2) management commitment to the customer, (3) employee customer service training, (4) managing a customer information file, (5) seeking customer feedback, (6) managing customer complaints, (7) staying in contact with the customer, and (8) reclaiming lost customers. Contractors currently practice aftermarketing activities only 28% of the time while 59% perceive that the aftermarketing practices would increase client repurchases. The research showed that blueprinting customer contacts, employee customer service training, managing a customer information file, staying in contact with the customer, and reclaiming lost customers has a strong relationship to percent of annual contracts attributed to marketing and annual business volume. There is also a relationship between current and perceived aftermarketing practices. These research findings will assist researchers and commercial general contractors to better understand construction marketing and aftermarketing.