Abstract
The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of relationship marketing factors on customer retention through relationship quality in the Jordanian’s pharmaceutical business sector. This study adopted the customers' views, the retail pharmacists who are dealing directly with the pharmaceutical companies' suppliers. The conceptual framework of this study was tested using data gathered from the questionnaires directed to a total sample of 500 retail pharmacies located in Amman and Zarqa. The statistical results indicated that communication significantly and negatively affects relationship quality. While seller expertise, which is the most influential factor within relationship marketing factors that affects relationship quality, has a positive and significant effect on relationship quality. The results of the comparison level of alternatives showed that it has a positive and significant effect on trust, no effect on satisfaction and positive but insignificant effect on commitment, while the dependence on seller indicated a positive but insignificant effect on commitment and satisfaction, while it has a positive and significant effect on trust. Regarding the results of cooperation, it affects trust and commitment significantly and negatively while it has a negative insignificant effect on satisfaction. The results of the effect of relationship quality on customer retention, showed a positive and significant effect of satisfaction and commitment on customer retention, while trust has insignificant effect on customer retention. Accordingly, research marketing implications, recommendations, and directions for future research are also discussed.
Highlights
Retaining customers is an important goal for many business firms in today’s extremely competitive market environment, as many competing business firms are spending massive time and money on developing long-term, cooperative relationships with their targeted segments; to facilitate achieving a superior performance in the market place
The four hypotheses of the study have been analyzed, the results shown that relationship marketing has an effect on relationship quality which leads to customer retention
There was a varying effect among the relationship marketing factors on relationship quality constructs as follows: The results of this study indicated that communication as a relationship marketing factor has a reverse or negative effect on RQ; and that consistent with (Goodman & Dion 2001) study which indicated that effective communication in channel relationships enhances the channel members' coordination, satisfaction, commitment, and performance
Summary
Retaining customers is an important goal for many business firms in today’s extremely competitive market environment, as many competing business firms are spending massive time and money on developing long-term, cooperative relationships with their targeted segments; to facilitate achieving a superior performance in the market place. The importance of relationship marketing has aroused from focusing on the customer lifetime value (CLV), and not the value of only a single transaction. The concept of relationship marketing concerns about finding, developing and maintaining customer relationships through establishing long-term successful relationships. According to Lin and Wu (2011) the main concern in relationship marketing was the impact of relationship quality on customer’s retention; they found a significant impact of customer’s satisfaction, trust and commitment on retaining customers and increasing the opportunity of more product usage in the future
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