RELATIONSHIP MARKETING OF SERVICES: AN ANALYSIS OF SERVICE QUALITY AND SERVICE ENCOUNTERS THROUGH RELATIONAL NORMS -A DYADIC APPROACH BETWEEN BANK ACCOUNT MANAGERS AND SMES -

The combined pressures of desintermediation, deregulation, and industrial restructuring have helped to redefine the nature and importance of bank-client relationships (Schell, 1996). Directors or treasurers of companies often recognize that their relationship is with the bank account manager, rather than with the bank (Wood & al., 1995). This is the reason why the role played by the service provider as the individual who manages the relationship between the firm and the buyer is of special importance (Czepiel, 1990). The essentially social nature of service encounters, a short-term phenomenon, provides the occasions in which buyer and seller negotiate the terms of their exchange relationship, a long-term phenomenon. Defined as the mutual recognition of special status between exchange partners, exchange relationships ensure efficiency for the buyer, as they mitigate market volatility for the seller. Understanding how economic exchange is played out against a background of social exchange can yield important insights, which can then be implemented by undertaking specific actions. One implication is that research must include both customer and provider perceptions and perspectives as the focal unit (Czepiel, 1990). Moreover, each purchase decision takes into account not only the immediate cost/benefit analysis but also the relationship past history and the possible future as well (Dwyer et al. 1987; Macneil, 1980). This paper aims, through exploratory research, (conducted on 13 dyads, 13 SMEs and their account managers) to analyze long-term relationships through a new framework to get a better understanding of how customers evaluate service quality, service encounters, and on how they decide whether or not to repatronize. It also aims to extend and develop the understanding of service quality perceptions and development. More specifically, this exploratory research has focused on four different objectives: • the author wanted to get a better in-depth knowledge of the banks' SME market; • there was a need to identify the main components of the creation and development of the relationship between a bank and its clients; • there was a need to confirm the reality of the relational norms as defined by Macneil; • finally, the author needed to get some verbatim for an upcoming questionnaire as well as identifying some potential difficulties for future research implementation. After a brief review of the theoretical background, this article presents the methodology used for this study. Then, there will be a presentation of the results of the two content analyses we have conducted. Finally the conclusion will present the limits of this work and research avenues will be drawn.relationship marketing; service quality; service encounters; relational norms; Macneil

LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP TERMINATION MODEL: A STUDY OF THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE SERVICE ENCOUNTER EVALUATION AND OF THE MAINTENANCE/TERMINATION DECISION

This paper describes the objectives, the marketing issues, the methodology and the anticipated contribution of our doctoral research. The main focus is on identifying and understanding the antecedents of long term relationship dissolutionbusiness relationship termination; dissolution; service encounter evaluation

«FRIENDLY» COMPLAINING BEHAVIORS: TOWARD A RELATIONAL APPROACH

The relational approach is often presented as a strategy to retain customers, but it may also be an appropriate approach to encourage customers to complain, as a review of literature shows. Using information contained in complaints and giving the right answers (distributive, procedural and interactional) to such complaints is essential. Relational marketing may also be used to induce customers (but not all of them) to complain about the attributes of certain products/services. This article focuses on these issues and should stimulate further research in this new field.Relationship Marketing; Complaining Behavior; Friendly Complaints, Justice Theory

THE RELEVANCE OF MACNEIL'S RELATIONAL NORMS TO UNDERSTAND THE EXIT OF A INTERORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Relationship marketing has been gaining an increasing interest in the marketing community for the past ten years. Some authors define relationship building and management as the core of the marketing process (Grönroos, 1994), others view it as a way to build up effective competitive advantages especially when potential for differentiation is weak, such as in services (e.g., Day, 2000). Although the volume of conceptual and empirical researches on relationship marketing is impressive, few attempts have been made to explain the dissolution of a relationship (Dwyer et al., 1987; Stewart, 1998; Tähtinen, 1999). Unfortunately a marketing relationship cannot be defined as an ever-ending love story! The objective of this paper is to test the relevance of a conceptual framework to understand this dissolution process: the relational norms. It has been originally developed by Macneil to understand legal contracts (Macneil, 1980). According to Macneil, there exists a set of transactional as well as relational norms to understand an economic exchange between two partners. The former include nine contractual norms, the latter encompasses four relational norms, namely role integrity, solidarity, flexibility and supra contractual norms. This set of relational norms has been successfully used to explain the effectiveness of marketing relationships (e.g., Paulin, Perrien & Ferguson, 1997). In this research we intended to test if these relational norms can be applied to explain a dissolution process. Thirteen dyads of account managers and managers of businesses in the mid-market were interviewed. These interviews showed the contingency of Macneil's norms. They also demonstrated the major role played by relational norms both in developing and maintaining and in deteriorating and ending a relationship. Based on this qualitative phase, a questionnaire was developed. Doing so, we empirically test the relevance of relational norms in explaining relationship termination on a sample of 98 small businesses.Macneil; relational norms; relationship dissolution

Transactional versus Relational Customer Orientation: Developing a Segmentation Tool in the French Banking Industry An exploratory study

The authors conduct an exploratory study in order to develop a measurement scale of customers' transactional/ relational orientation. The study is implemented in the context of French industry in both B.-to-C. and B.-to-B. environments. They show that transactional/ relational orientation can be measured following four dimensions: affective, technical, short-term and long-term dimensions. This scale is the first in this field and further research is necessary in order to improve its applications and functions. Moreover, this work remains limited in application to the French banking industry.Transactional orientation; Relational Orientation; Segmentation Tool; French Banking Industry

Potential effects of psychological reactant consumers on relationships marketing programmes

This conceptual article presents the current criticisms to relationship marketing and important concepts developed in the psychology to understand consumer reactance toward services packaged as formal contracts. A first part presents the numerous questions that researches are raising about the willingness of people to commit to services. A second part shows that psychological reactance, already studied in the context of non product choice, is an interesting concept to revisit the relationship marketing paradigm: are all customers willing to commit to a service or are they forced against their own freedom? The last section develops an integrative conceptual framework of the different concepts introduced in this research.Psychological reactance; relationship marketing; long term commitment; relationship orientation

Auditory frequency threshold comparisons of humans and pre-adolescent chimpanzees

Auditory frequency threshold comparisons of humans and pre-adolescent chimpanzee