Exploring the relationship intention concept in two South African service industries

Abstract

Identifying customers who have the intention to build long-term relationships is beneficial for banking and life insurance organisations as it will afford marketers the opportunity to segment customers according to their relationship preferences. This may prevent money and resources being spent with little effect trying to develop a relationship with customers who do not intend to build a long-term relationship with the organisation. However, it is difficult to understand the nature of relationship intention without understanding the constructs used to measure relationship intention, namely involvement, expectations, forgiveness, feedback and fear of relationship loss. The purpose of this study is to determine whether these five relationship intention constructs are applicable to the banking and life insurance industries in Gauteng, South Africa. Data was gathered from 401 banking (n=202) and life insurance (n=199) customers. Findings confirm that the five constructs to measure relationship intention are applicable to the selected services and identified an additional four factors that support some of the five constructs. However, no differences were found between respondents with different relationship lengths and their views pertaining to the identified factors.