A study of the relationship marketing effect in banks: The case of an emerging market

Abstract

This study aims to provide an alternative model for understanding customers’ loyalty behavior by examining the effect of relationship marketing (RM) and service quality on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty moderated with switching costs. A laboratory experiment was carried out to ascertain the controlled variables based on factorial design: 2 (RM: high vs low) x 2 (service quality: high vs low) x 2 (the switching costs: high vs low). The study was based on bank clients as participants, and multiple linear regression was chosen to examine the causal relationship between the variables that are hypothesized. The results indicate that loyalty of banking customers is significantly influenced by RM, service quality and customer satisfaction. In addition, switching costs have a role in moderating customer loyalty. The implications of this study were discussed to give insight into contributions of theoretical and practical aspects, and for future studies