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This study aims to examine the impact of customer brand value dimensions on relationship marketing dimensions through consumer hope in the context of digital payment applications (apps) services. The study considers the role of consumer engagement using a moderated mediation, and applies customer perceived value, affect theory of social exchange and relationship marketing theories.

The study is based on data collected from 301 digital payment app users. Structural equation modeling results were analyzed using Smart PLS. The authors performed moderated mediation, with different levels of customer engagement as a moderating variable, using Model 8 of PROCESS. The authors considered customer perceived value dimensions, digital quality value, perceived value, hedonic value and social value as antecedents to consumer hope and explored the role of trust, commitment and continued usage as a consequence of consumer hope.

Three levels of perceived consumer value, digital quality, price value and social value, positively influenced consumer hope, which has positively influenced trust, commitment and continuance usage. Using moderated mediation analysis, consumer hope influenced continuance usage through trust at different levels of engagement, but consumer hope did not influence continuance usage through commitment at different levels of engagement.

The study highlights the role of consumer hope in linking customer value dimensions with relationship marketing dimensions. The study can guide managers to ensure continued usage of digital payment apps, which is a strategic objective. The results are relevant for the digital setting.

Relationship marketing (RM) was conceived as an approach to industrial and service markets, and was considered inappropriate in other marketing contexts. Recently, however, the domain of RM has been extended to incorporate innovative applications in mass consumer markets. Much has changed in a few short years. Recent applications of RM in consumer markets have been facilitated by developments in direct and database marketing within an increasingly competitive and fragmented marketplace. This paper presents a critical review of the history of RM in consumer markets, and incorporates important conceptual, practical, empirical and popular contributions. A number of critical issues which remain unresolved are identified in the paper. These form the basis of ten research propositions which are crucial to justifying and advancing the domain extension into consumer markets.

Given the ways in which the research pressures on university staff are becoming seemingly ever greater, an issue of the European Journal of Marketing that is given over to a survey of the kinds of research initiatives which are currently being carried out is timely. The study which provides the basis for this was conducted between December 1994 and February 1995, with questionnaires being sent to staff in universities throughout Europe. At the time the final selection was made, a total of 150 responses had been received from 18 countries.

This paper aims to explore relationship marketing and the existence of relationships in mass consumer markets from the consumers' perspective, with the focus on the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector.

Ten focus groups were conducted with consumers from a broad range of demographic and socio‐economic backgrounds to enable in‐depth exploration of the research issue.

The study highlights the dominant negative attitudes that exist among consumers to relationship marketing as it is operationalised in FMCG markets. It is found that from the consumers' perspective relationships do not and cannot exist in these markets and that the nature of exchange in such markets is not relationship based. Consequently, the research concludes that there is a necessity to move away from relationship rhetoric in FMCG markets, and to explore the true nature of exchange in the quest for effective marketing strategies. The research also suggests that further research on relationship marketing should focus on situations where relationships do and can exist and consequently the boundaries of relationship marketing should be limited to only these situations.

By offering the consumer perspective on relationships and relationship marketing this study broadens understanding of the phenomenon and makes an important contribution to the relationship marketing debate.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of corporate image and relationship marketing on trust, the impact of trust on consumer purchase intention, and the moderating effects of word‐of‐mouth between the influence of trust on consumer purchase intention.

Consumers of an online travel agency in Taiwan aged over 18 were taken as the research sample. Primary data were collected through convenience sampling. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The main findings are: corporate image has a significantly positive influence on trust, and commodity image has the most significant influence on trust, followed by functional image and institution image; structural and financial relationship marketing has significantly positive influence on trust, and structural relationship marketing has greater influence on trust compared with financial relationship marketing; trust has a significantly positive influence on consumer purchase intention; and positive word‐of‐mouth has a moderating effect between the influences of trust on consumer purchase intention.

Limitations of this study include: the data obtained in this study only reflected the correlations and cause and effect among the variables studied during a specific period of time; this paper only focused on tour agencies; consumers who used only the most popular online tour agencies were selected. Therefore, the samples might involve some bias. The implications of this study include: different types of corporate image will have different levels of influence on consumer trust. There is a need to support the previous study that relationship marketing has a significantly positive influence on consumer trust. The moderating effects of positive word‐of‐mouth between the influences of trust on consumer purchase intention must be examined. The influence of trust on purchase intention must be considered.

The study findings reveal the need and importance for a company to improve corporate image continuously. The study indicates the need to emphasize the use of critical relationship marketing and to realize the nature and importance of the moderating effect of word‐of‐mouth.

The value of this study is combined theory and practical and finding four management implications and three practical implications.

Relationship marketing is now commonly acknowledged as an alternative marketing paradigm. However, despite the use of the relationship metaphor in marketing contexts for many years, recently there have been criticisms of this cross‐fertilization of theory into consumer marketing contexts. The objectives of this paper are twofold. First, it attempts to explore and elucidate how consumers' assessments of the extent of intimacy between themselves and their service providers affect their interpretation of relational ties. A second aim is that it will generate insights into consumer attitudes towards relationship marketing.

Taking an exploratory approach and using qualitative methods to allow for depth of research, this paper uses 30 semi‐structured interviews with consumers to investigate the role of intimacy in service relationships.

The findings reveal five forms of intimacy; no relationship, social intimacy, physical intimacy, emotional/psychological intimacy and sexual intimacy.

This is a qualitative study, now that some insight of the relevance of intimacy in relationship marketing has been gained, testing a model of the framework using quantitative analysis in order to make wider assertions would be beneficial.

This paper demonstrates that organizations need to be able to facilitate multiple approaches to customers. They need to be able to allow customers to engage with them, should the customers wish to do so but also allow the customers to opt out of relational interactions.

Scant research has explored the role of intimacy in service relationships; this study addresses that gap in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to study how relationship marketing can reduce cognitive dissonance in post-purchase stage and, thereby, increase customer satisfaction and encourage loyalty under mediating roles of trust and cognitive dissonance.

Based on a survey on consumers of cell phones, the authors tested the effects of relationship marketing on cognitive dissonance and then customer satisfaction, behavioural, and attitudinal loyalty, using structural equation modelling.

The results indicate that, thanks to relationship marketing, consumers undertook less cognitive dissonance in post-purchase stage. Thus, as consumers faced less cognitive dissonance, they represented more satisfaction and thereby behavioural and attitudinal loyalty. Additionally, the study confirmed the mediating role of trust and cognitive dissonance.

The results show that when brands and retailers make their ties with their customers stronger and encourage trust, they can discourage cognitive dissonance in post-purchase stage and thereby encourage customer satisfaction and behavioural and attitudinal loyalty.

Literature on post-purchase behaviour and cognitive dissonance shows how cognitive dissonance can reduce post-purchase satisfaction. Our research adds to the literature of both relationship marketing and post-purchase behaviour.

Relationship marketing is not effective in every situation or context. This study investigates the impact of three categories of potential contingency factors on the effectiveness of relationship marketing efforts in a retail services context: demographic characteristics of the consumer (age and gender), personal values of the consumer (social affiliation), and shopping-related consumer characteristics (product category involvement, consumer relationship proneness, and shopping enjoyment). The data relate to more than 1,700 mall intercept personal interviews conducted in the United States, and in two western European countries (the Netherlands and Belgium), covering a wide variety of food and apparel retailers. The found moderating influences were inconsistent across samples, stressing the need for an adapted relationship marketing strategy per country and industry. The results do provide a first indication that relationship marketing efforts are relatively more effective if they are directed at consumers who are young and female, have a high need for social affiliation, and show high levels of product category involvement, consumer relationship proneness, and shopping enjoyment. The results provide a preliminary framework for retailers to optimize the allocation of their relationship marketing budgets.

The purpose of this study is to explore consumers’ overall attitude toward relationship marketing and to determine the influence of consumers’ overall attitude on consumers’ intentions and behaviors. Many services companies practice relationship marketing and customer relationship management. Although the benefits and drawbacks of relationship marketing for consumers have been established, little is known about whether consumers have a relatively positive or negative attitude toward relationship marketing practices.

This research investigates consumers’ attitudes toward relationship marketing using a national survey of 245 consumers and a survey of 417 consumers living in the southern region of the USA.

Although approximately 70 per cent of our national consumer sample had a somewhat positive attitude toward relationship marketing, about 30 per cent had a somewhat negative or neutral attitude. Furthermore, approximately 39 per cent of consumers in the study would choose a company that does not engage in relationship marketing over a company that does. The results also indicate that consumers’ overall attitude toward relationship marketing impacts their likelihood to respond favorably to specific relationship marketing tactics.

Some limitations should be noted. First and not uncommon to most survey research in marketing, the relationships between constructs in this study may be inflated because of common methods bias. Second, this research reports the results from two studies. Although one of the studies represents a national sample, additional research using the scales developed in this research is needed.

This research indicates that consumers’ attitudes toward relationship marketing impacts their willingness to engage in relationships with service companies and their response to specific relationship marketing tactics. Because consumer attitudes toward relationship marketing vary, companies should consider segmenting their customer base using this information.

This study extends previous research by using quantitative techniques to measure consumers’ overall attitudes toward relationship marketing and assessing the influence of those attitudes on intentions and behaviors.

The current work aims to analyze the role of commitment perceived by the consumer in the maintenance of long‐term relationships. The context of analysis chosen is the tourism sector, more specifically the relationships that retail travel agencies establish with their consumers. The study tests a conceptual model via a system of structural equations using the statistics package EQS 6.1 for Windows. The results corroborate the importance of the consumer’s trust in the travel agency and the consumer’s perception of the firm’s commitment, because this commitment acts as an antecedent of trust and creates the conditions for the firm to achieve a stable portfolio of customers.