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The purpose of this paper is to describe and conceptualize customer relationships in the financial service sector, focussing on three aspects of customer-bank relationships: the financial service provider perspective, the customer-provider dyad, and the customer context.

Through a short review of the eight papers included in this special issue, this paper illustrates different aspects of customer relationships. It explores customer value formation in the context of banking services, the dynamics and strength of customer relationships, and strategies for financial service provision and consumer trust.

Customer relationships in the financial service sector are increasingly dynamic and unpredictable. This may be due to both activities within the control of financial service providers, such as strategies for service provision, but is more often attributable to factors beyond the control of providers. What empowered customers are doing in their own settings influences their attitudes toward and evaluations of financial services.

The paper is conceptual. It challenges the firm-centric approach to customer relationships and compares different perspectives of customer relationships. The significance of the customer-centric perspective is emphasized.

Awareness of uncontrollable and idiosyncratic aspects of customer relationships will offer financial service providers new opportunities for being present in the customers’ lives and business.

This paper illustrates the importance of extending the focus from what financial service providers are doing to what customers are doing within their own domains. Financial service providers need to understand more about their customers than their perceptions of service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty in different distribution channels, such as internet and mobile banking. The focus should be instead on how customers integrate their financial activities and experiences in their own life or business.

This study aims to analyze the mediating effect of brand love (BRL) on the relationship between service quality and brand addiction (BRA) among Islamic banks. Past studies have noted that customer satisfaction as the primary means of studying customer behaviour needs to be reconsidered because even satisfied customer switch brands, and the dissatisfied customer have repurchasing intentions. Therefore, considering BRL and BRA can be a new way of studying customer behaviour in Islamic banking.

This study used a structured questionnaire administered to 380 customers of Islamic banks. The study used structural equation modelling and Process Macro test in the analysis.

The empirical findings of this study suggest that service quality is positively and significantly related to BRL and that BRL positively and significantly relates to BRA. Furthermore, the findings indicate that BRL mediates the relationship between service quality and BRA.

The findings of this study have revealed that the triangular theory of love and expectation-confirmation theory can be combined to explain the relationship between service quality and loving relationships among customers of Islamic banks.

The study provides ways in which service providers can use service qualities to manage BRL and addiction. Based on the positive and significant relationships, managers of Islamic banks can build service qualities that are vital for creating BRL and BRA.

The link between service quality, BRL and BRA is not adequately established, especially in Islamic banking. This is important to be established because studying consumer psychology is currently considered a vital strategy for customer repurchasing and switching barriers in the modern banking business. Furthermore, integrating two theories, the triangular theory of love and expectation-confirmation theory, provide a new way of combining two theoretical aspects from different disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of customer switching and the reasons that underlie customer‐switching intentions. The paper aims to focus on the various factors on account of which a customer may or may not switch a particular bank.

A total of 800 bank customers were selected randomly from a total population of 71,600 and were contacted personally to gather the requisite data.

The paper finds that the model reveals significant effect of quality, satisfaction and trust on predicting switching barriers. Of these relationships, satisfaction emerged as the strongest factor which influences switching barriers.

The study is limited to Indian banks; a larger empirical study would be useful to replicate the results in the banking as well as other services.

In order to ensure loyalty among bank customers, increased value addition in the banking services and wide‐ranging relationships with customers can make the switching process more complex.

The preliminary work in this paper demonstrates the impact of various relationship marketing factors, namely, service quality, customer value, satisfaction, trust, commitment, loyalty, switching costs and barriers on customers' switching intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to specify and test factors surrounding relationship strength between buyers and suppliers in a global, business‐to‐business (B2B) services context. In so doing, the paper helps extend relationship marketing theories to this under‐researched domain.

A literature review, along with results of field interviews and surveys, provide a conceptual framework for the relationship strength formation process in the context of multi‐cultures. The research then tests a model of hypothesized relationships using structural equation modeling.

The paper confirms the influence of perceived value, switching costs and relationship quality (satisfaction, trust and affective commitment) on relationship strength. As predicted, relationship quality mediates the influence that perceived value has on relationship strength. Switching costs further mediate the influence that relationship quality has on relationship strength which, in turn, influences substitution scarcity. No support, however, was offered for the proposed moderating influence that national culture (as measured by a buyer's country masculinity and individualism) has on quality/strength linkages and value/strength linkages.

The sample of buyers in 42 countries includes a higher share of buyers from individualist than collective countries. Consequently, a more balanced cultural sample may have supported the otherwise rejected proposition that culture has a moderating impact on relationship building.

The study provides managerially relevant (“actionable”) results which may help buyers execute customer retention strategies that lead to higher customer profitability.

This study adds to the limited literature on building B2B service relationships in a global context. The paper seeks to provide a balanced account of the social and economic aspects of relationship strength formation.

This research attempts to understand why – or why not – customers resist switching service providers when a critical incident occurs. The paper examines how service relationship perceptions, such as perceived equity, trust (perceived reliability and benevolence) and relationship commitment (affective and calculative), enhance relationship maintenance and CSR in many critical situations.

A survey was conducted in the financial service industry on a sample of 1,999 consumers (retail banking) and then conceptualized and measured CSR in several critical situations.

The paper demonstrates that perceived equity, perceived reliability, perceived benevolence, affective commitment, and calculative commitment do not influence CSR the same way. CSR mainly depends on the type of critical incident which occurs. For instance, calculative commitment, which is an evaluation of the costs associated with leaving the service provider, enhances CSR in three critical situations (service encounter failures, employee responses to service failures, pricing problems), whereas it leads to relationship disengagement in two other critical situations (inconvenience, changes in the consumer or service provider situation).

This research highlights the need to better take into account the different types of critical incident discussed in the relationship marketing literature and to better consider the complementary roles of perceived equity, trust and relationship commitment in the service switching literature.

This research implies that service companies have to anticipate the critical incidents and to develop specific “shock absorbers” to continue doing business with their current customers.

To investigate the determinants of behavioural brand loyalty amongst dissatisfied customers in the business‐to‐business (B2B) services sector.

A qualitative study was conducted, with 28 personal interviews undertaken with managers who are involved in the choice of service providers. The respondents belonged to 24 organisations located in Australia. Template analysis and eyeballing were techniques used to analyse the data collected.

Assessment of the reasons why dissatisfied customers stayed with the service providers resulted in six categories. The categories were found to be, in order of decreasing frequency, impact of alternative providers, switching costs (18), others (17), inertia (14), investment in relationships (13), and service recovery (13). The results not only confirmed factors found in the literature, but also uncovered 11 other factors.

The sample size, whilst appropriate for qualitative research, should be considered adequate only for exploratory analysis and a further quantitative study is needed to validate the study.

This study is important for those firms who have many prospective switchers because it is important to understand why these customers stay, and to what extent such firms can discourage such customers from leaving in both positive and negative ways. For those service firms that are attempting to attract these prospective switchers, an understanding of why they do not switch is important, as it will enable them to develop strategies to overcome these switching barriers and gain market share.

This research is the first study to investigate in a single model a range of barriers to switching in a B2B services context. The results that confirmed categories found in the literature also discovered 11 other factors not evident in the extant literature.

Assesses whether consumer segments based on relational aspects, service aspects, or price aspects have different preferences concerning these three key decision‐making variables when buying a car. In addition, assesses consumer segments resulting from simultaneously incorporating relationships, service package, and price. Investigates a large sample of Mitsubishi drivers in The Netherlands emphasizing consumers’ trade‐off between dealer relationship, service package and price. Conjoint analysis showed that dealer relationships (as opposed to price) represent a very important decision‐making variable when buying a car and consumer preferences concerning relationships provide a useful instrument for segmenting markets. Cluster analyses on the basis of three aspects simultaneously revealed that some consumers do value relationships, while others emphasize the service package in their purchase, both opposed to the third segment that is most probably not inclined to be loyal to a car dealer at all. Clearly indicates that different consumer segments can be distinguished on the basis of preferences for relationships and service packages rather than on the basis of price. This knowledge enables car dealers to use their resources more effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to address two important gaps in the brand love and consumer‐brand relationships literatures. First, this study aims to investigate several interpersonal antecedents of brand love in a services setting. Second, this study also aims to examine the differential influence of the valence of the service delivery process and the way that brand love develops under qualitatively varied conditions.

A between‐subjects experiment that varied the valence of the service delivery process (positive/negative) in a relational context was designed to examine the influence of interpersonal antecedents across service delivery levels on brand love.

This study provides empirical support for the importance of interpersonal antecedents in driving brand love in service relationships. The results also reveal an asymmetrical pattern of effects between study variables across service delivery levels.

These findings can help service firms to better understand the role of interpersonal influences in development of emotional bonds with current customers and to develop strategies to nurture brand love under positive and negative circumstances.

This research helps to establish the transferability of interpersonal love into the services domain and brings service employees and the social aspects of exchange into the discussion of brand love. The research findings suggest consumers have the propensity to perceive and respond to service firms as active participants in relational exchanges and to use their interaction with frontline employees as a basis for developing brand love.

The purposes of this paper is to first explore, and describe positive discretionary risky-service behaviour (DRSB) of customer-contact service providers in relational context and second to model the antecedents of such actions.

Employed an exploratory qualitative approach and purposive sampling. The authors gather data from field interview of 35 relationship managers in private and public banks in India. Grounded theory method using analytic induction approach was employed.

Existing studies and field interviews are used to forward the notion of “DRS behaviour” denoting employee service behaviour that is discretionary as it is work beyond what could reasonably be expected from an employee's job role and risky in a sense that it is outside the specific rules and processes incorporated in the formal service process document. Data reveal the existence of DRS behaviour in banks. A definition of DRS behaviour is forwarded and a range of antecedents proposed.

To explore the generalizability of results replications among bank employees (relationship managers) in other countries (with more regulatory banking environments) required. While the exploratory data suggest the general antecedents of DRS, the specific propositions have not been tested.

The paper includes implications for the management and advancement of employee-customer relationship such as employee's traits, reward structure, and system for monitoring employee-customer relationship strength.

The main contribution of the study is relationship antecedent, which may be taken as a starting point for relationship advancement research.

This study aims to elucidate how different relationship investment efforts by a service firm affect its customers’ perceived relationship investment; to determine how perceived relationship investment influences various dimensions of relationship strength; and to explore the moderating effects of customer innovativeness and complaint propensity on the relationship between the perceived relationship investment and relationship strength.

To minimize common method variance, data were collected from pairs of life insurance agents in China and their clients using self-report questionnaires. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that customers value financial effort most followed by social effort and structural effort. Perceived relationship investment influences the affective strength most strongly, followed by cognitive strength and conative strength. Customer innovativeness and complaint propensity both moderate the effectiveness of perceived relationship investment in influencing two of the three dimensions of relationship strength.

This study is among the first to specify how service employees can guide consumer perceptions of relationship investment by applying three types of relationship investment effort. The impact of perceived relationship investment on different dimensions of relationship strength was assessed to demonstrate how service providers can benefit from investing in building consumer relationships. The moderating impact of consumer innovativeness and of complaint propensity was quantified. The research findings have important implications for managing different relationship investment as well as recruiting and training service employees.