Modeling Trust In Customer Relationships

The article proposes a customer relationship model with a view to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing efforts in developing customer relationships (brands) from the consumers’ perspective in the consumer goods context. It establishes the foundation for relationship research in consumer goods domain by conceptualizing consumption process as a series of direct and indirect consumer interactions with the entities in the customer relationship and the brand as a relationship partner in the relationship. It then, develops a framework outlining the development of trust in a customer relationship drawing from interdisciplinary trust research. The article further proposes a relationship model to examine the effects of customer trust and customer perceived value on consumer loyalty for existing customers and purchase intentions for potential customers. The proposed model is relevant to practice as it can possibly be employed to conduct brand audit of competing brands in a chosen market. It has the power to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of each of the competing brands. This can provide valuable insights in directing marketing efforts to enhance, establish and maintain customer relationships. The proposed model employs trust as a relationship evaluation construct in consumer goods context. The expectancy conceptualization of trust, separation of trust and trustworthiness constructs, modeling the effects of consumers’ trustworthiness evaluation of three trust facets on relationship outcomes incorporating the partial mediation effects of value for both existing and potential customers are theoretical contributions of the proposed model.