The Impact of Relationship Marketing Tactics on Customer Loyalty: Iranian Mobile Operators

Abstract: High competition, dynamic and complex environment, high consumer expectations and new innovation in service industry has changed the companies’ view about consumer concept. Nowadays they know more about customer importance and the benefits which have been
provided by loyal customers to companies. Retention and increase the number of loyal customers is one of the big challenges for many companies and they spend a lot to understand this concept and to find the solutions to achieve it.
One of the known solutions is relationship marketing which reduces unsatisfied customers and increases the loyalty among them. Usually companies in competitive market try to attract new customers and meanwhile keep the market share and existing customer. In recent years mobile technology shows the significant growth in global market including Iran and this market is getting really competitive as the number of service providers has increased and market is not exclusive anymore. Because of this, relationship marketing and related tactics are playing a big
role recently in mobile telecommunication industry. Different tactics are implemented to retain customers in order to decrease subscribers’ turnover and increase the company’s revenue.
This research conducts to study the impact of most popular relationship marketing tactics including service quality, price perception, perceived value and brand image on relationship quality (trust and satisfaction) which consequently increase customer loyalty, by focusing on Iranian mobile telecommunication industry.
This is descriptive study with quantitative method and deductive approach. The chosen strategy for this study is survey and data has been collected by an online questionnaire designed by using Google Docs tool. The questionnaire has been distributed through Viber, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and email between around 500 people who are using smartphones. The questionnaire has been closed when we reached to 384 respondents as it was the calculated sample size of this research according to Cochran formula for infinite population.
All relationship marketing tactics including service quality, price perception, perceived value and
brand image have positive impact on trust and atisfaction Iranian mobile operator’s customer but their impact is varied from small to medium. Consequently trust and satisfaction as two dimensions of relationship quality has medium to large positive effect on customer loyalty. Switching cost as push-back force has positive impact on customer loyalty as well.