The central role of a company's technological reputation in enhancing customer performance in the B2B context of SMEs

Within the B2B context, this paper examines whether technological reputation mediates the relationship between employee skills for innovation, internal social capital (i.e. knowledge sharing among employees) and brand orientation (i.e., the extent to which the brand has a dominant role throughout the firm), and customer performance (i.e., customer satisfaction and loyalty). SEM is employed to analyze primary data from a survey of 150 SMEs. Results show a complementary mediation of technological reputation in the relationship between employee skills for innovation and customer performance, instead an indirect-only mediation between brand orientation and customer performance. This paper makes an important contribution to the literature concerning the determinants of customer performance and the importance of technological reputation for B2B SMEs, an under-investigated area. Indeed, on the one hand, this article proposes an integrated perspective on the different antecedents of customer satisfaction, based on a robust methodology providing academics with a solid foundation upon which to build future studies. On the other hand, managers find evidence that an integrated approach, which encompasses the development of employee capabilities and the spread of a brand culture, seems to be key to enhance technological reputation and, in turn, customer performance.