Relationship Marketing and Switching Behavioural Intention Among the Customers of Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

Service rendering, including banking services, in the world over is becoming competitive, because customers expect higher service delivery, tailored towards meeting their individual needs. Thus, Deposit Money Banks are developing strategies to keep customer from defecting to other competitors so as to remain in the business. This precarious situation of banks led to re-thinking of corporates management to developing long lasting relationship with customers that will enhance sustainability. This was when relationship marketing, (RM) came into prominence in the banking industry, thereby attracting attention from researchers and marketing practitioners. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to investigate the influence of relationship marketing dimensions (communication, commitment, trust and conflict handling) on customers’ switching behavioural intention amongst selected Deposit Money Banks in Warri, Nigeria. A sample of 324 banks’ customers were selected using judgement sampling technique from a total of 61branches of 16 different Deposit Money Banks in Warri and its environs, and their responses were processed using the descriptive and inferential statistics of Ordinary Least Square regression technique. The study found out that there exists significant relationship between the dimensions of RM (commitment, communication, conflict handling and trust) and switching intentions of Deposit Money Banks’ customers in Warri and its environs in developing a good relationship. Based on the findings, we recommended that management of Deposit Money Banks should increase their commitment strategies (like ensuring flexibility in serving customers and personalising service to suit customers’ needs), communication strategies (like credit or debit alert messages, service failure and recovery messages), and intensify effort to improve conflict handling (like refraining from improper comments and never too-busy attitude of employees). All these strategies if adopted may lead to reduction of customer defection to other competitors’. Keywords : Relationship Marketing, Commitment, Communication, Trust, Conflict Handling Behavioural Switching Intention , Deposit Money Banks, Nigeria. DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/72-03 Publication date: October 31 st 2020