Inter-Actor Collaboration and Final Customer Loyalty in the Moroccan Automotive Ecosystem

Abstract

The Moroccan automotive ecosystem is undergoing a profound transformation driven by digitalization, electrification, and evolving customer expectations. Prior work on this same sector showed that this transformation largely depends on the involvement of ecosystem partners (El Kharraz & Baki Senhaji, 2023). This article extends that finding by examining, not technology adoption as such, but how inter-actor collaboration translates, through their innovation and adaptation capability, into final customer loyalty. The theoretical framework combines the relational view of resources, absorptive capacity, open innovation, and relationship marketing, to propose an integrative sequential model linking collaboration, innovation, and loyalty, still scarcely articulated in the literature applied to industrial ecosystems in emerging countries. The study relies on an exploratory qualitative approach based on responses from eight actors occupying varied positions within the Moroccan automotive ecosystem to an open-ended questionnaire, analyzed through thematic analysis combining deductive and inductive coding, conducted manually and independently by both authors prior to resolution by argued consensus. Results show that inter-actor collaboration, although broadly acknowledged, remains incomplete, due to organizational resistance to change and digital maturity gaps between partners. Actors' innovation and adaptation capability draws on both internal and collaboration-based resources. Despite these limitations, the quality of this collaboration is associated by all respondents with final customer loyalty, through several complementary relational mechanisms. This loyalty is however assessed as perceived by ecosystem actors, rather than measured directly from final customers' attitudes or behaviors. The article discusses the theoretical contributions of these findings as well as their managerial implications for the management of industrial ecosystems in emerging countries.

JEL Classification :  L14, O32, M31

Type du papier : Empirical Research