THE STRATEGIES OF RELATIONSHIP MARKETING AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the relationship marketing strategies, namely: competence; communication; conflict handling and relationship duration on customer satisfaction. Research methodology: Public Bank customers in Aleppo, Syria were surveyed using a questionnaire. A total of 447 customers provided the data for the study. Multiple regression analysis was used to measure the relationships. Findings: The results showed that relationship marketing strategies, namely: communication; competence; conflict handling and relationship duration are associated with customer satisfaction. Research limitations: The study focuses on only the banking industry especially public banks in Syria. This limitation creates an opportunity for future research to make a comparative study between public and private banks and to apply this study in other service sectors. Practical implication: This study viewed how organizations can benefit from relationship marketing (RM) strategies to get close enough to the customers in order to correctly sense their needs and then create and deliver superior value and how to keep customer satisfaction. Originality/value: The contribution of this research is to recognize the actual influences of the strategies of relationship marketing on customer satisfaction from empirical evidence in Syria.