Relationship marketing : a customer's perspective

In recent years Relationship Marketing (RM) has been widely promoted as a means of retaining customers. The aim of this study was to gain retail customers’ perspective on RM. Particularly; the study was designed to identify types of goods and services with whom retail customers see value in building relationship. Findings are based on results of structured interviews with 180 retail customers. The study reveals that retail customers see most value in building relationships with intangible service marketers, particularly, ones with high credence quality, such as medical and legal services. They see moderate value in such relationships with marketers of products with high experience quality, such as vacation and restaurant and low value in relationships with providers of tangible products with high search quality, such as clothing and furniture. However, retail customers do see value in building relationships with marketers of some tangible products with high search quality that has ongoing post sale service requirements, such as motor vehicles. Overall, the findings of the study show that retail customers see value of RM selectively and predictions can be made about relational value from customers’ perspective on the basis of the type of service