The effects of relationship marketing applications on customer loyalty in service sector

The roots of modern relationship marketing philosophy has started to grow in services marketing research area. The term of ?relationship marketing? has appeared in the services marketing literature for the first time in a 1983 paper by Berry. According to Berry (1995), ?relationship marketing is an old idea but a new focus now at the forefront of services marketing practice and academic research.? Berry defined relationship marketing as ?an understanding of attracting, maintaining and enhancing customer relationships in multi-service organizations context?. Relationship marketing provides benefits both for the customer and the firm. Providing customer satisfaction, creating customer loyalty and motivating for retention are the most important long term goals of relationship marketing. On the other hand these consumer oriented goals meet important needs of consumers as risk reduction, trust building, cognitive consistency maintenance and simplify decision making simplification. The theoretical background of this dissertation has been defined as the links between relationship marketing and consumer behavior.In this study, some causal relationships between relationship marketing applications of small service firms and consumer evaluations and evaluation outcomes were investigated through a proposed behavioral model. In order to achieve research goals, both qualitative and quantitative research designs such as exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) were used. According to the results of the field work in the context of a hairdressing/barber service, it was found that consumer?s perceptions about the hair stylist?s expertise have the largest effect on interpersonal trust and overall satisfaction. Furthermore, the findings indicate that service quality, relationship marketing tactics and interpersonal communication affects the customer satisfaction, whereas customer trust to service provider is driven by satisfaction, interpersonal communication and service quality perceptions. Finally, satisfaction, trust and interpersonal trust were found significantly related with loyalty. Supporting the literature, satisfaction was found to be the strongest predictor of loyalty to the service provider. According to overall results and goodness of fit indicators hypothesized model was accepted. Managerial implications and areas for future research were discussed in conclusion.Keywords: Relationship Marketing, Relational Mediators, Relationship Quality, Post Purchase Consumer Evaluations, Loyalty, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Structural Equations Modeling (SEM).