Relational marketing factors in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty at participation banking

Competitiveness through the superiority of production until the 1960s was replaced by competitiveness through cost advantage in the 1970s. Two important economic opinions that explain the development of relational marketing emerged between 1980 and 1990: the first one refers to the fact that efforts to maintain the current customers have a cost-reducing effect in comparison with efforts to gain new customers, and the second one is about the fact that quality of the buyer-seller relationship appears to be a sustainable competitive edge. The competition in all sectors around the world has begun to intensify, and the competition among enterprises has necessitated the rediscovery of the customer. The change in conditions and the increase in competition have led to the development of a relational marketing approach that advocates the need to establish a relationship with the customer and to maintain the continuity of the established relationship. The importance of the relational marketing has increased with the change in consumption habits, the change in the demand for needs and requests in favor of comfort and quality over time. This study was carried out to identify the effects of relational marketing elements on participation banking, which has a market share of about 6% in Turkey yet, and the strength of these effects. The question of Islamic sensibilities which is most asked about in the sector was investigated under the element of relational marketing in our study. Customer's levels of loyalty and satisfaction were individually considered dependent variables, and it was aimed to determine the direction of the elements' effects. Results of the 34-question survey applied to male and female participants from four branches of a participation bank in Samsun province were subjected to single and multiple regression in the SPSS software. While the strongest relationship depends on the service quality of the bank, the weakest relationship is with the qualification of the participation bank in customer satisfaction. This finding suggests that the quality of service of the bank is the most important variable for the participation bank's customers to be satisfied with the bank. According to the results of multiple regression analysis conducted between customer loyalty and relational marketing items, the most important independent variable in the bank loyalty of the participation bank's customers is the personnel expertise. How the bank's qualification is poorly relational in customer loyalty indicates that potentially loyal customers of participation banks are not those who are sensitive in terms of qualification but those who expect personnel expertise. The personnel expertise variable is more strongly relational than the trust in the bank in customer loyalty.