BRAND LOYALTY IN CREATING RELATIONSHIP MARKETING PRACTICES: A STUDY ON GSM OPERATORS

Relationship marketing is based on the efforts of businesses to attract potential customers and to establish and maintain long-term relationships with the customers they own. Applications such as gifts, discount applications, points, cards to strengthen customer relationships belong to relational marketing. The GSM sector has become synonymous with technology and is a large sector that realizes these applications. The aim of managers when using these applications is to create a customer base that is dependent on them and to gain brand loyalty. The thought guiding the study is that relationship marketing practices have an impact on brand loyalty. The data of the study are collected through a face-to-face questionnaire method with 323 participants from GSM users. The regression analysis was conducted on the data by using the SPSS 24.0 program and the results are interpreted in the light of the established hypotheses. According to the findings of the research, the perception of brand loyalty does not change depending on the type of GSM operator used by the participants, the duration of the participants' use of the GSM operators, age, profession, and income of the participants. However, brand loyalty perceptions differed significantly by 54% according to the education level of the participants. The hypotheses of the study are verified and it is concluded that relationship marketing practices have a significant and positive effect on both behavioral brand loyalty and attitudinal brand loyalty. The study is expected to contribute to both the academic marketing literature and managers.