Communicating customer references on industrial companies' Web sites Anne Jalkala ⁎, Risto T. Salminen 1 Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Technology Management, Lappeenranta University of Technology, P.O. Box 20, 53851 Lappeenranta, Finland ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 16 April 2007 Received in revised form 28 April 2008 Accepted 30 April 2008 Available online 18 June 2008 Keywords: Customer references Word-of-mouth Customer relationships Discourse analysis Web sites Industrial marketing Customer references are important marketing tools for companies operating in industrial markets. This paper reports on an exploratory case study examining how six industrial companies communicate about their customer references on their Web sites, by using qualitative content and discourse analysis as methods for analyzing the data. The existing research on customer reference utilization and concepts related to it, such as word-of-mouth behavior and referrals in industrial markets are reviewed and the specific features of Web- based reference utilization are discussed. The empirical data consists of 165 reference descriptions gathered from the case companies' Web sites. The findings show that the case companies' reference descriptions tend to focus on describing individual product/project deliveries, and a certain structure and repetitive themes can be identified in the descriptions. Three discourses that the case companies use to present their customer references were identified: Discourse of Benefits, Discourse of Relationship Commitment, and Discourse of Technological Expertise. Implications of the findings for practitioners and for theory development are discussed. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The concept of relationship marketing as a set of marketing activities aiming at establishing, developing, and maintaining exchange relationships (Morgan & Hunt, 1994) has dominated the marketing discourse during the past decade. In industrial marketing, the philosophy of relationship marketing can be taken to the extreme in the form of reference utilization, where existing customer relation- ships have a key role in the supplier's marketing activities (Helm, 2003; Ryu & Feick, 2007; Salminen & Möller, 2006). In the process of customer reference utilization, existing customers typically work as important advocates and “enthusiasts” for the supplier company (Osarenkhoe & Bennani, 2007), by giving testimonials, hosting reference visits, and providing information about the delivered solutions and their performance. These kinds of reference customers are generally considered as powerful marketing tools for reducing the perceived risk of a potential buyer and increasing the supplier's credibility (e.g. Håkansson & Snehota, 1995; Helm, 2003; Kumar, Bohling, & Ladda, 2003; Mangold, Miller, & Brockway,1999; Money, 2004; Salminen & Möller, 2006). In industrial markets, the initial phases of a new business relationship development are typically characterized by low experi- ence, high distance, and the buyer's uncertainty regarding the supplier's ability to actually deliver its value proposition (Ford, 1980). In this context, an important form of marketing communica- tion for reducing potential buyers' concerns are descriptions of deliveries to current, satisfied customers (Long, Tellefsen, & Lich- tenthal, 2007). Potential buyers can use these reference descriptions as surrogate indicators to assess the supplier's performance (Day & Barksdale, 1994). This kind of material can be often found in suppliers' Web sites in the form of “case studies“, “success stories”, and “customer cases”. Typically these texts involve a description of the customer's problem and a description of the supplier's solution, as well as testimonials from the reference customer. Thus, these texts offer a fruitful data source for studying how industrial companies actually communicate about their customer references, and more specifically, how companies present themselves and their relation- ships with reference customers through these texts. In the case of customer references, academic research lags behind industry practice in many respects. Although various tasks and modes of reference utilization have been identified (Salminen & Möller, 2006), the understanding of the practices through which industrial companies actually use reference customers in their marketing activities is rather fragmented and undeveloped. These practices deserve more research attention, as the phenomenon of reference utilization is highly relevant in industrial markets. Large multinational companies operating in high technology markets, such as Siebel, J.D. Edwards, and Sun Microsystems have launched reference programs that include systematic efforts to capitalize on the company's reference portfolio (Arnold, 2003). It has been found that ‘best- practice’ suppliers, such as Rockwell Automation and the manufactur- ing firm Nijdra Groep gather data from reference customers and use Industrial Marketing Management 38 (2009) 825–837 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +358 5 621 6675; fax: +358 5 621 6699. E-mail addresses: anne.jalkala@lut.fi (A. Jalkala), risto.salminen@lut.fi (R.T. Salminen). 1 Tel.: +358 5 621 2645; fax: +358 5 621 2644. 0019-8501/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2008.04.009 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Marketing Management