Effect Of Relationship Marketing On Consumer Preferenc1 For Retail Stores In Aba, Abia State (A Study Of Selected Retail Stores In Aba, Abia State)

ABSTRACT

Relationship Marketing (RM) is a popular concept in current marketing research and practice. Relationship Marketing has the potential to increase customer retention by building long-term customer relationships. Relationship Marketing can increase marketing effectiveness and efficiency by reducing marketing costs, facilitating the targeting of high-profit customers, reducing price sensitivity, (Tynan, 2010). Since relationships marketing can become an important source of competitive advantage, a marketing paradigm shift from transactional to relationship marketing has been proposed (Buttle, 2013). Relationship Marketing was initially conceived as an approach in the business to-business environment. The adoption of the R.M concept to consumer research is relatively new and has gone through stages from obscurity, discovery, acceptance, to popularity (Malley and Tynan, 2010).