The role of Relationship Marketing for Customer satisfaction in the banking sector

Abstract: More and more companies are faced with fierce competition; ergo, companies are consistently trying to build a long term relationships with their customer. In addition, a decade ago, relationship marketing gained more and more credibility among the companies and is still a topic of discussion today. Therefore, this study is aimed to describe how service firms can use relationship marketing as a strategy to develop customer satisfaction.   A theoretical framework has been developed derived from a review of the existing literature in order to describe how service firms can use relationship marketing as a strategy to develop customer satisfaction. Five different tactics have been empirically investigated, namely the service quality, brand image, price perception, value offers and communication. A qualitative method has been chosen for this study. Three different companies have been studied within the banking sector and have been led by an inductive and deductive approach which will aim to investigate the aforementioned theoretical framework.   The analysis of the empirical findings exposed and discovered some relevant findings. Indeed, empirical evidence suggests that four main customer relationship tactics have a role on customer satisfaction and trust; namely the service quality, the brand image, the price perception and the human capital. These tactics have been identified as having a crucial role on gaining customer satisfaction.