Investigating the Impact of Relationship Marketing (RM) Strategies on Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty of Ansar Bank Clients

Nowadays companies with superior performance in various industries are moving towards retaining customers and building customer loyalty. In fact, they have found that attracting a new customer can be very costly and that today they need loyal customers in order to be able to maintain their positions in a highly competitive environment. Thus, the identification of factors affecting customer loyalty is a matter of prime importance. Therefore, the present study investigates the impact of relationship marketing (RM) strategies on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty of Ansar Bank clients. This study was conducted by implementing a descriptive, correlational research design. For this purpose, Ansar Bank clients in Tabriz Metropolis were considered as the population, and the questionnaire was used to collect customer feedback. The reliability of all variables was within acceptable range. Furthermore, the model was tested using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method supported by PLS-Graph software. The results indicated that the explained variance of customer satisfaction by the major dimensions of relationship marketing (RM) strategies is 94%; and that “communication development” with a path coefficient of 0.596 and “conflict management” with a path coefficient of 0.580 have the greatest impact among the major dimensions of relationship marketing (RM) strategies. Therefore, organizations are required to go beyond fulfilling customers’ basic needs, meet customer expectations and redirect their attention from merely providing customer satisfaction to building loyalty and trust by establishing long-term, bilateral communication that can be profitable for both sides.