Purpose – Building and maintaining strong customer relationships has been suggested as a means for gaining a competitive advantage. Despite this, few studies have examined the link between written communication and relationship perceptions. Yet understanding the establishment of this link is a...

Purpose – This study aims to present a taxonomic framework that categorizes hotel loyalty program members on the basis of involvement and a mix of behavioral outcome variables. Design/methodology/approach – The taxonomy is derived through mixture modeling from a sample of 1,395 loyalty...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of consumer sociability and service provider perceived expertise on service relationship success. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 281 consumers in the USA, randomly selected with the assistance of a commercial list...

Purpose – While service quality, trust and commitment are frequently cited as critical to achieving important firm outcomes, the role of service differentiation in this framework is largely unknown. Yet, differentiation is important because a firm's distinctiveness is linked to...

Purpose – Relationship marketing is now commonly acknowledged as an alternative marketing paradigm. However, despite the use of the relationship metaphor in marketing contexts for many years, recently there have been criticisms of this cross‐fertilization of theory into consumer marketing...

Purpose – The paper aims to consider the neglected area of customer relationship management (CRM) and customer management's “dark side”; and identify the key types of dark side behaviours of service providers as well as integrated approaches to CRM that will assist in overcoming dark side...

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the central role that commitment plays in driving customer loyalty and to identify the effect that confidence, social and special treatment benefits as well as relationship investment, communication and management have on the development of commitment, and...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore benefits customers expect from a long‐term relationship with their bank and the costs associated with such a relationship; it further tests these relational benefits and costs as segmentation variables. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative study...

Purpose – To the extent that customer relationships with service providers provide value to service firms suggests that these relationships can be viewed as social capital. This paper seeks to use social capital as a theoretical framework to examine the effect of these relationships on...

Purpose – The author aims to examine how customer voice contributes to service provider relationships as a relationship driver by assessing its linkages to distinct relationship outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modeling is used to test the study's hypotheses with...