Abstract:
This study aims to provide a picture of how relationship quality can influence customer loyalty or
loyalty in the business-to-business context. Building on prior research, we propose relationship quality
as a higher construct comprising trust, commitment, satisfaction and service quality. These
dimensions of relationship quality can reasonably explain the influence of relationship quality on
customer loyalty.
This study follows the composite loyalty approach providing both behavioural aspects (purchase
intentions) and attitudinal loyalty in order to fully explain the concept of customer loyalty. A literature
search is undertaken in the areas of customer loyalty, relationship quality, perceived service quality,
trust, commitment and satisfaction. This study then seeks to address the following research issues:
Does relationship quality influence both aspects of customer loyalty? Which relationship quality
dimensions influence each of the components of customer loyalty?
This study was conducted in a business-to-business setting of the courier and freight delivery service
industry in Australia. The survey was targeted to Australian Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Two
methods were chosen for data collection: mail survey and online survey. The total number of usable
respondents who completed both survey was 306.
In this study, a two step approach (Anderson and Gerbing 1988) was selected for measurement model
and structural model. The results also show that all measurement models of relationship dimensions
achieved a satisfactory level of fit to the data. The hypothesized relationships were estimated using
structural equation modeling. The overall goodness of fit statistics shows that the structural model fits
the data well.
As the results show, to maintain customer loyalty to the supplier, a supplier may enhance all four
aspects of relationship quality which are trust, commitment, satisfaction and service quality.
Specifically, in order to enhance customer's trust, a supplier should promote the customer's trust in the
supplier. In efforts to emphasize commitment, a supplier should focus on building affective aspects of
commitment rather than calculative aspects. Satisfaction appears to be a crucial factor in maintaining
purchase intentions whereas service quality will strongly enhance both purchase intentions and
attitudinal loyalty.
