THE ROLE OF RELATIONSHIP MARKETING ON MAINTAINING CUSTOMER LOYALITY IN THE CASE OF COMMERICAL BANK OF ETHIOPIA, IN EMDIBER BRANCH

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of relationship marketing on maintaining sustainable customer loyalty in the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) at Emdiber branch. Six dimension relationship marketing namely Trust, Satisfaction, Communication, Conflict handling, Commitment and Service efficiency were considered as predictor factors for the analysis of this study. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed to customers of Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) at Emdibir branch, based on convenience sampling method and 189 (94.5%) were returned for analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to give general observation of the data and existing relationship marketing practice of the banks. Result of the study showed that 48.9% of customer loyalty was found to be explained by relationship marketing factors. Commitment, Trust and Conflict handling were found to be the major and significant contributing factors on customer loyalty while contributions of Communication and Empathy are found to be statistically insignificant. Based on the findings, it was recommended that the banks management to focus on the statistically significant factors in order to make customers more loyal. In addition, the study recommends the banks to focus on some relationship marketing factors such as empathy since such factors exhibited lesser mean value in the study.