An Exploratory Study of Consumerʼs Perception about Relational Benefits in Retailing

In recent years there has been lot of emphasis on customer-marketer relationship and specifically on the nature and dynamics of these relationships. Relational benefits are strategically important for profitability and competitive advantage of service and retail firms and are mutually beneficial for the customers and service providers/retailers in the long run. Initial researches in the area of relationship marketing studied the derived benefits of relational exchanges from marketers view only. Major work has been done in recent years to discuss various benefits which the consumer receives from this relationship in the form of functional, relational and social benefits. In the present study the findings from the work of Gwinner et al., (1998) were tested in Indian context to understand the perception of Indian consumers with reference to relational benefits: confidence, social and special treatments. The findings of the study reveal interesting facets of the insights of consumer psychology.