Use of relationship marketing programs in building customer–salesperson and customer–firm relationships: Differential influences on financial outcomes

Abstract

Despite the conventional wisdom that relationship marketing will generate favorable financial results, extant marketing research provides inconsistent evidence for this effect. Here, we investigate this important question: Does a firm's relationship marketing truly pay off by enhancing financial outcomes? We examine the effects of relationship marketing on a buyer's concurrent person-to-firm relationship with the selling firm and his/her interpersonal relationship with the salesperson. Drawing on social judgment and attribution theories, we offer and test a theoretical model explicating (1) how a seller's social, structural, and financial relationship marketing programs affect buyer relationship quality with the salesperson and the selling firm and (2) how those relationship qualities ultimately generate seller financial outcomes. Relationship marketing programs indeed build buyer relationship quality, but whether those relationship-building effects reside with the salesperson or the selling firm depends on buyer perceptions regarding salesperson versus selling firm control of those programs. Buyer relationship quality with both salesperson and selling firm positively affect seller financial outcomes, but the effect of relationship quality with the selling firm is enhanced as perceived selling firm consistency increases. Employing triadic data from matched buyer, salesperson, and sales manager, this research presents an end-to-end empirical examination of how a seller's relationship marketing affects its financial outcomes through the buyer's relationships with the salesperson and selling firm.