Investigate the Impact of Relationship Marketing Orientation on Customer Loyalty: The Customer's Perspective

In today's high competitive and globalize banking context, increasing Customer loyalty emerges as the mostimportant challenges faced by marketers. Cultivating loyal customers is frequently argued to be the single mostimportant driver of organizations’ long-term financial performance, which can lead to increased sales andcustomer share, lower costs, and higher prices. Therefore marketing scholars emphasize the influence ofrelationship marketing as a strategically important tool from which customer loyalty can be secured and, as aresult, the attainment of higher competitiveness and enhanced customer satisfaction can be achieved. Thepurpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of relationship marketing orientation on customerloyalty. The study also aims to test the impact of demographic variables, in association with relationshipmarketing dimensions, on customer loyalty. The study was carried out in 2008 on a convenience sample of 450respondents through the distribution of structured questionnaires to bank customers within the area of Amman,Jordan. The data were factor analyzed to determine the key dimensions of relationship marketing orientationmeasurement scale. Results confirm that the five dimensions scale (Bonding, trust, communication, satisfactionand commitment) possess adequate reliability and internal consistency as well as convergent validity. Results ofregression analysis show that relationship marketing orientation is significant in explaining the variation incustomer loyalty. In addition, sex and income displayed a significant impact on the relationshipmarketing-customer loyalty relationship. The findings contribute to understanding the relationships betweendifferent dimensions of relationship marketing orientation, customer loyalty and demographic variables; providecritical implications for bank managers; and highlight directions for future research.