Relationship Marketing in a Self-Service Context: No Longer Applicable?

摘要

To explore the impact of the use of self-service technologies on in-terfirm relationships, a grounded theory study was conducted. This article reviews the results and implications of an exploratory study conducted with a sample of Australian business hank customers and interviews with 6 Australian financial institutions. Findings indicate that 2 customer segments exist—a transaction-oriented segment and a relationship-oriented segment. Unlike existing literature that states that bank customers prefer relationships (K. Eriksson & R. Marquardt, 2001), the present findings indicate that this is only the case for 1 segment of business customers.