Examination of the relation between consumer's trust – loyalty within relationship marketing in industrial markets

The aim of this study is to investigate the trust and loyalty relation between buyer and seller in industrial markets. In literature, the trust-loyalty relation has been examined in banking, retail and service sectors. However, it was observed that there is either restricted information or very few scientific studies regarding this subject. This study examines the correlation between trust and customer loyalty, considering relationship commitment, relationship strength, relationship quality and antecedents of trust as communication, shared values and opportunistic behavior variables. The pipe sector of Turkey has been selected as research universe, 250 people working in this sector have been selected as study universe by simple random sampling technique. Data have been collected by way of online survey and analyzed using reliability, factor, correlation and regression analysis methods. According to the results of analyses; it was observed that, as antecedents of trust, communication and shared values have positive and significant impact and opportunistic behavior has negative impact on trust. Relationship commitment, strength and quality variables, which have been analyzed between trust and loyalty, all have positive impact on each other. It has been observed that the relationship quality is the mediating variable between relationship strength and customer loyalty. The results of this study indicate that companies need to build trust and commitment based customer relationships in order to gain loyal customers in Turkey's industrial markets. This study also provides an extensive infrastructure for future studies on trust-loyalty correlation in industrial markets. Keywords: Business to business marketing, relationship marketing, industrial marketing, trust, loyalty, steel pipe industry, glass reinforced plastic pipe industry