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African Journal of Business Management Vol. 5(13), pp. 5199-5209, 4 July, 2011 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM ISSN 1993-8233 ©2011 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

The influences of relationship marketing strategy and transaction cost on customer satisfaction, perceived risk, and customer loyalty Cheng-Feng Cheng* and Ai-Hsuan Lee

Department of International Business, Asia University, Taiwan

Accepted 25 January, 2011

This study attempts to develop the conceptual model for explaining consumers’ preference toward retailers based on the relationship marketing strategy and transaction cost theory. Specifically, this study investigates the impacts of relationship marketing and transaction cost on customer satisfaction and perceived risk. In addition, the influences of customer satisfaction and perceived risk on customer loyalty deserve further consideration. To assess the applicability of this conceptual model, this study confined the research scope to shopping malls. The results show that relationship marketing significantly has positive effect on customer satisfaction and negative effect on perceived risk. As to influence of transaction cost, it significantly has negative effect on customer satisfaction and positive effect on perceived risk. Furthermore, both relationship marketing and transaction cost could influence customer loyalty through customer satisfaction or customer’s perceived risk.

Key words: Relationship marketing strategy, transaction cost, customer satisfaction, perceived risk, customer loyalty.

INTRODUCTION

Business strategies can play a critical role in consumer’s preference or choice of sales channel (Muthitachaoen, Gillenson, and Suwan, 2006). Thus, it is important for sales channels to become aware of the consequences of strategies as they face an increasingly challenging marketing environment (Pappu and Quester, 2006). Luo and Donthu (2007) indicated that exchange

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