Relationship Strength in Service Industries: A Measurement Model

Abstract

Although one of the key objectives of relationship marketing is to build a strong relationship with customers, the construct of relationship strength is recent and there is little research into its measurement and validation. Based on an intensive literature review, relationship strength is conceptualised and a tridimensional measurement model is proposed that comprises affective strength, cognitive strength and conative strength. Then, a measurement scale of relationship strength in the context of selling services is developed and validated. The empirical results indicate that the measurement scale has acceptable levels of reliability, unidimensionality, convergent validity, discriminant validity and nomological validity.

The role of tie strength on consumer dissatisfaction responses

“…Such positive priors should make the customers more forgiving and attribute the service failure to chance (Fornell and Didow, 1980;Nicholson et al, 2001). According to Shi et al (2009), emotional attachment in a strong tie stems from liking another person intrinsically and having positive feelings toward the organization. After a service failure, a strong emotional attachment could ease the negative feelings caused by the failure and further reduce the likelihood of spreading negative WOM.…”

“…Shi et al (2009) proposed two dimensions of tie strength: cognitive and affective and it would be fruitful to closely examine the differential impact of these two dimensions on consumers' complaint behavior. Mattila and Ro (2008) established the relationship between discrete emotions and different complaint behaviors.…”

“…Tie strength refers to the strength of a relationship between the firm and the consumer, and this concept has received increasing attention in the consumer behavior and marketing literature (Mittal et al, 2008;Shi et al, 2009). The existence of a strong tie between the consumer and the firm can lead to several positive outcome behaviors.…”

The role of renqing in mediating customer relationship investment and relationship commitment in China

“…Most of the items addressing the related concepts were adapted from measures used by Doney and Cannon (1997), Morgan and Hunt (1994), Shi et al (2009), andWulf et al (2001). The final measures for the other four constructs are shown in Appendix A.…”

“…Relationship marketing, in managerial practice and academic research, has experienced "explosive growth" in the past decades (Palmatier, 2008;Shi, Shi, Chan, & Wang, 2009;Srinivasan & Moorman, 2005). Morgan and Hunt (1994) defined relationship marketing as "all marketing activities directed towards establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges."…”