Mediating Role of Perceived Switching Costs between Relationship Marketing Practices and Customer Loyalty: Evidence from Banks

AbstractRelationship marketing together with perceived switching costs are seen as a distinguished strategic approach to customer loyalty. Relationship marketing practices enable the firms to comprehend and satisfy the customer needs, while the perceived switching costs raise the bar for rivals to grab the gullible customers and helps the firms to ensure the loyalty of low satisfied customers. In view of this, present study aims to investigate the impact of relationship marketing practices on customer loyalty with a mediating role of perceived switching costs. The study utilized 736 complete questionnaires collected from the bank customers, by using one-stage cluster sampling, to validate the measurement and structural models through partial least-square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results revealed that there is significant positive effect of relationship marketing practices on customer loyalty. Furthermore, perceived switching costs have significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Bootstrapping approach to mediation analysis revealed that perceived switching costs, in unison, partially mediate the relationship between relationship marketing practices and customer loyalty. The study suggests that banks should invest more in relationship marketing practices to strengthen the perceived switching costs to keep the customers loyal to the organization.Keywords: Relationship marketingretention marketing strategiesrelational bondsperceived switching costscustomer loyalty AcknowledgementTawseef Ahmad Ganaie is a recipient of Indian Council of Social Science Research Doctoral Fellowship. This article is largely an outcome of the doctoral work sponsored by ICSSR.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)