Managing customer relationships in emerging markets

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of relationship comfort and relationship proneness on the ability of service firms to build and maintain customer relationships in emerging markets (EMs). Design/methodology/approach: A field-survey was conducted with retail-banking customers in India (n=300) using a structured self-administered questionnaire with well-established scales. Findings: Relationship comfort positively affects key relationship marketing (RM) constructs (e.g. customer satisfaction, trust, commitment and loyalty) and relationship proneness positively moderates (strengthens) the impact of relationship comfort on customer commitment and loyalty. Research limitations/implications: The findings may not be generalizable to all customer types using bank services as well as other types of services and in other EMs. Practical implications: Service firms in EMs can build and maintain robust customer relationships by using relationship comfort and relationship proneness to strengthen key RM constructs, such as customer satisfaction, trust, commitment and loyalty. Originality/value: The paper highlights the importance of maintaining RM as a tool to build valuable customer relationships but also reveals the importance of relationship comfort and relationship proneness in building trust-based customer relationships in the EMs.