Understanding the Role of Customers' Perceived Service Quality in Accomplishing Relationship Marketing in the Context of Pakistan Tourism Industry

Abstract

This new century has witnessed a change in the focus of business i.e. to fully understand and maintain customers at best. Relationship Marketing therefore, as a paradigm shift which originates from Service Marketing has been put more and more importance to in recent years. Most of the literatures have educed that as a new concept its fundamental breakthrough is to position customer as the principal start for every kind of business action which evokes an organizational wide mobilization among different functions. Also literatures acclaim that there should be an intimate correlation between Relationship Marketing and Service Quality, with the latter the main issue in Service Marketing, but there are not enough researches to support such a relationship especially in tourism industry. Again, there is no consensus on what create a “good relationship”, say the dimensions of relationship or relationship quality so that it makes the investigation on the relationship between Relationship Marketing and Service Quality more difficult. Therefore, based on previous works, the main aim of this study is to separately find whether there are relationships between customers’ perceived service quality and 3 other elements assumed as relationship dimensions namely customer satisfaction, customer intention to re-contact an agent for the next trip and their intention to keep a long term relationship with the same travel agency in the context of Pakistan tourism industry. Survey was conducted among 100 Pakistani people who had ever experienced service offered by a Pakistan travel agent. Results go along with 3 hypotheses in showing that customers’ perceived service quality is the antecedent of good customer-supplier relationship (in terms of customers’ satisfaction, intention to re-contact a travel agent and the intention to keep the relationship for long). Comparison with previous researches is included in the discussion part in which a recommended way to construct relationship is offered. Other recommendations drawing from the findings and the limitations of the research are discussed at the end.