Customers’ Perception of Relationship Benefits at Different Stages of the Relationship Life Cycle

The present study seeks to answer this question: do customers at different stages of their relationship life cycle with the company perceive relationship benefits offered by companies equally? The customers of Keshavarzi Bank in Tabriz were selected as the statistical population of this study and 417 customers participated in the research by completing a questionnaire. Simple random sampling was used to select the samples. The validity of the measurement tools was confirmed by three methodscontent validity, convergent validity, and divergent validity. The reliability was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha, Composite Reliability (CR), and Average Variance Extracted (AVE). Statistical analysis of the data was performed by the confirmatory factor analysis and one-way analysis of variance. In order to ensure the adequacy of the data for conducting factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index and Bartlett’s test were used. The results of testing the hypotheses by one-way analysis of variance showed that the three types of the perceived relationship benefits at different levels of the customer relationship were not the same and their differences were statistically significant. The perceived benefits of relationship marketing financial programs had the greatest value in the relationship development phase.  The perceived benefits of social programs had the highest value at the maturity stage, and the perceived benefits of structural programs had the highest value in the development and maturity stages equally.