Abstract

The focus on ongoing customer relationships is the most distinctive aspect ofrelationship marketing. To date we still have a poor understanding of the role played byinterpersonal-related factors in gaining and developing customer loyalty. This paper explores theimpact of interpersonal relationships (both with a firm employee and with another customer) oncustomer satisfaction and loyalty towards the firm. Based on a review of different streams ofresearch, the paper develops and empirically tests an original multi-level and multi-subject model.The findings show that customer-to-employee and customer-to-customer relationships contributedifferently to the development of customer loyalty. Finally, the paper discusses managerialimplications and directions for future research.

Introduction

The relationship approach is an emerging perspective in marketing literature (Shethand Parvatiyar, 1995). Relationship marketing can be interpreted and defined as amarketing philosophy aimed at maintaining and strengthening relations with currentclients, rather than identifying and acquiring new customers (Gro¨nroos, 1991, p. 11;Peck et al., 1999, p. 44). In this perspective, the fundamental goal of the relationshipmarketing approach is gaining and fostering customer loyalty (Gremler and Brown,1999). As “understanding how and why a sense of loyalty develops in customersremains one of the crucial management issue of our days” (Pritchard et al., 1999, p. 333),the general goal of this article is to explore the role played by interpersonal-relatedfactors in gaining and developing customer loyalty to the company.In fact that the firm’s relational intent and ability are, to a great extent, personifiedand expressed in practice by the front-line employees, whose characteristics andbehaviours can exert considerable impact on the functioning and results of interactionswith customers (Price and Arnould, 1999).Although aware of the strong interdependence between inter-organisational andinterpersonal relations (Doney and Cannon, 1997; Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1996;Zemanek, 1997), we direct our attention mainly to the latter stream of research whichemphasises the importance of the development of social bonds among the subjectsinvolved (Iacobucci and Hibbard, 1999).In fact, Oliver (1997) pointed out that interpersonal loyalty is often more importantthan loyalty towards brands, companies, or points of sale. This opinion is supported bymany contributions in different research streams.For example, with regard to service literature, Gummesson (1987) underlined that inservice companies the quality of the relationships between customers and front-lineemployees, which incorporates both a professional and a social dimension, canstrongly contribute to the customer’s overall perception of quality of the serviceprovider.In the context of business-to-business industrial relationships, it has been pointedout that “relationships require strong elements of interpersonal obligation, and areundertaken between individuals or networks of individuals rather than betweenorganized corporate groups” (Yau et al., 1999, p. 1114). With regard to this aspect,Mavondo and Rodrigo (2001) showed that in business markets the “social bonding” (i.e.the degree of reciprocal friendship and personal liking between the buyer and thesalesperson) is the main antecedent (both directly and indirectly) of importantrelational outputs for the selling company, such as customer commitment, trust andco-operation.Finally, in personal selling literature it has been pointed out that “the essence of asalesmanship is the development of a social exchange relationship with buyers, suchthat economic and social benefits of mutual value can be traded” (Tam and Wong,2001, p. 382).Based on these foundations, it seems appropriate to focus our attention oninterpersonal friendship relationships and on their impact on customer satisfaction andloyalty towards a firm.

Theoretical background

Constructs definition and hypothesis development

Methodology

Discussion

Managerial implications

Contributions, limitations and suggestions for future research

References

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