Examining Customer Perceptions of Relationship Quality Over Time

Abstract

Relationship quality is important as it is a strong indicator of long-term relationships (Bejou, Wray and Ingram 1996; Crosby, Evans and Cowles 1990), and an important driver for loyalty and profitability (Athanasopoulou 2009). Customer’s perceptions of the quality of the relationship they have with their service providers are built over time. Yet, researches often examine customer’s perceptions of relationship quality statically. This prevents the meaningful understanding of how customers form their perceptions of relationship quality and subsequent outcomes. Prior research has revealed little about the variation in the salience of service quality – technical and functional quality, relationship management and relational switching costs between novice and experienced customers in terms of contribution to relationship quality perceptions and subsequent loyalty. This study examines these issues using AMOS multi-group analyses across experiential services such as a travel agency, hairdressing salon, general banking and airline services. Results indicate that technical and functional quality and switching costs differs across novice and experienced customer groups. Specifically, the impact of technical quality on relationship quality perceptions was significantly more in the experienced group and the impact of functional quality and switching costs was found to be a significant driver of relationship quality for the experienced group only. The impact of relationship management on relationship quality and the effect of relationship quality on loyalty are both significant and were found to be relatively consistent across both groups. These findings have implications for managing relationship quality perceptions, improving service provider performance and enhancing customer relations.