Relationship Bonding Tactics, Relationship Quality and Customer Behavioral Loyalty-Behavioral Sequence in Taiwan's Information Services Industry

Summary

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This study develops and empirically tests a model examining the relation among relationship bonding tactics, customer satisfaction, trust, commitment and customer loyalty. Relationship duration and product involvement are used as controllable variables in a relationship marketing system. Based on samples collected from PC school, an information services institute in Taiwan, the results show that social bonding tactics can be further divided into unidirectional and interactive social bonding tactics. The results also show that structural bonding tactics are the most significant factor that influence relationship quality. In addition, results show that product involvement does have positively significant effects on the relationship quality model. Finally, relationship quality has a positive influence on customer loyalty, regardless of relationship duration type.

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Extract

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Relationship Bonding Tactics, Relationship Quality and Customer Behavioral Loyalty-Behavioral Sequence in Taiwan's Information Services Industry

INTRODUCTION

With the development of information technology and Internet infrastructure, communication among company and customers is greatly improved and quite convenient. Through the application of information technology, distance between company the and the retailers has reduced and this has resulted in support for the relationship between the two parties.

In the current retail environment, relationship bonding tactics play a predominant role because of the increased importance consumers attach to the quality of interactions with retailers (Crosby, Evans and Cowles, 1990; Dorsch, Swanson and Kelley, 1998). Although academics recognize the importance of relationship marketing practices (Berry, 1995; Goff, Boles, Bellenger and Stojack, 1997), empirical evidence on the nature and extent of the impact of relationship bonding tactics on relationship quality is scarce (Gwinner, Gremler and Bitner, 1998). Specifically, despite the fact that relationship marketing has had a strong theoretical base in industrial and channel marketing (Doney and Cannon, 1997), systematic research on relationship marketing in a consumer environment is lacking (Beatty, Coleman, Reynolds and Lee, 1996). Furthermore, relationship marketing research has been mostly focused on the relation among relationship marketing, customer loyalty, and relationship quality. The research that is integrative, stressing various customer characteristics and discussing the effectiveness of the way relationship bonding tactics work is scarce, too. With that in mind, our objectives are five-fold:

1. To summarize existing evidence about the behavioral sequences of relationship marketing at the individual customer level.

2. To offer a conceptual model of the impact of particular behaviors that signal whether customers remain with or defect from the company.

3. To report the results of an empirical study examining the relation between relationship bonding tactics and customers' behavioral intentions (i.e., relationship quality and loyalty).

4. To suggest a research agenda fo...

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