Relationship marketing and customer orientation of ...

Int. J. Financial Services Management, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2013

Relationship marketing and customer orientation of sales people: learning from banks Nalin Abeysekera* Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo, Colombo, 00300, Sri Lanka Email: [email protected] *Corresponding author

Ananda Wickramasinghe Sydney Business School, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia Email: [email protected] Abstract: Selling is supremely important in marketing and considered as the lifeblood of marketing. It is evident that selling based on customer orientation and relationship marketing will play a vital role in attracting, retaining and sustainable growth of customers. This study based on Sri Lankan banking sector aims to attempt such integration by conceptualising the concepts of customer orientation and relationship marketing in Sri Lankan corporate banking sector. Responses were gathered via a survey questionnaire to measure interaction and impact of customer orientation on relationship marketing. The results show that there is a significant relationship between customer orientation and relationship marketing. This has been highlighted in Sri Lankan banking context as it has a significant contribution to national economy as well as a non-price determinant to get competitive advantage in the market. Keywords: customer orientation; relationship marketing; corporate banking sector; salesperson; Sri Lanka. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Abeysekera, N. and Wickramasinghe, A. (2013) ‘Relationship marketing and customer orientation of sales people: learning from banks’, Int. J. Financial Services Management, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.79–91. Biographical notes: Nalin Abeysekera is a Senior Lecturer in Management in the Department of Management Studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Sri Lanka. Currently he is reading for his PhD at Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is an author/co-author of journal articles, conference papers and recipient of three gold medals for his performance in his degree of masters from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Ananda Wickramasinghe is a Senior Lecturer in Strategy and International Business, Sydney Business School, University of Wollongong, Australia. He obtained his PhD in Strategic Management from the University of Queensland. His PhD thesis was awarded as outstanding Research Higher Degree Award

Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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N. Abeysekera and A. Wickramasinghe from the University of Queensland. He was employed over 15 years in a Premier Sri Lankan university. Thereafter he worked for two years in the Institute of Technology, New Zealand in a permanent senior academic position. Also he gained a number of academic positions from Australian universities such as Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University and CQ University. He is an author/co-author of journal articles and conference papers in global forums.

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Introduction

The role of a salesperson is important in marketing arena. It cannot be downgraded in any means. In order to have a better service, it is useful to understand the buyer and his/her behaviour first to forecast the reflection of his/her action. According to Saxe and Weitz (1982), salespeople who are customer-oriented take actions aimed at increasing long-term customer relationship and avoid actions that increase the probability of an immediate sale at the expense of sacrificing customer interests. Hence selling is of paramount importance in marketing and considered as a lifeblood in marketing. Customer-oriented selling and relationship building marketing services will pay a vital role in this regard. According to Williams and Attaway (1996), the firm’s marketing success is largely dependent upon the sales force, because these individuals are the ones who have the most “immediate influence on customers”. The most important method by which the marketer may manage the “buying experience” is through the implementation of customer-oriented sales tactics (Sharma, 1997; Grewal and Sharma, 1991). Hence the function of customer-oriented salesperson is vital for effective and sustainable selling. In relationship building in selling, Weitz and Bradford (1999) emphasise the partnering role of sale representatives. They emphasis on building relationships rather than making short-term sales and the use of sales teams dictates changes in the way firms select, train, evaluate, and compensate salespeople and members of sales teams. Hence the importance of relationship marketing in selling can be understood and exploited in attracting, retaining and enhancing customers. Thus it is clear that relationship marketing and customer-oriented selling can be considered as critical pillars in selling.

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Conceptual foundations

2.1 Customer orientation Customer orientation on salesperson can be explained as a way of doing business on the part of salesperson (Saxe and Weitz, 1982). The term refers to the degree to which the salesperson practises the marketing concepts by trying to help their customers make purchase decisions that will satisfy customer needs. This concept is based on the principle that salesperson must understand a customer’s needs and wants in order to generate customer perceived value in sales interactions. A high level of customer orientation reflects a high level of concern for the customer’s long-term needs, while a low level of customer orientation reflects a selfish concern for the achievement of short-

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term sales targets. A salesperson’s concern for the customer is an emotional investment, which has been shown to act as a strong motivator that is associated with higher levels of performance (Brown et al., 1997). Highly customer-oriented salespeople engage in behaviours aimed at increasing longterm customer satisfaction. This has been discussed related to selling orientation – customer orientation (SOCO) which emphasises the customer oriented selling by salesperson (Saxe and Weitz, 1982). Salespeople can be the only representatives of the selling organisation that a customer sees, so the individual salesperson’s focus on satisfying customer needs is a crucial subject of inquiry (Crosby et al., 1990). Abeysekera and Wickramasinghe (2011) argue the importance of customer orientation in corporate banking sector and stress the importance of a salesperson as a necessity of this process.

2.2 Relationship marketing The term “Relationship Marketing (RM)” has become a popular concept among the practitioners of marketing as well as academics during the last decade. During the twentieth century, RM gained a wide recognition following discussion on RM began to dominate the marketing agenda. During this period RM was probably the major trend in marketing and certainly the major (and arguably the most controversial) discussion point in business management (Egan, 2003). The relative permanency of the view that the primary focus of marketing is exchange relationships and how well they are managed (Dwyer et al., 1987, Gummesson, 1994), is encapsulated in strategic statements such as ‘growth through excellent relationships’ (National Australia Bank, 2003). Various academic and professional organisations defined relationship marketing in different ways. Grönroos (1990) has proposed a customer-oriented definition of marketing, which highlights a number of essential elements in business relationships. According to him “Relationship Marketing is to establish, maintain and enhance (usually, but not necessarily, long-term) relationship with customers and other partners, at a profit, so that the objectives of the parties involved are met. This is achieved by a mutual exchange and fulfilment of promises” (Grönroos, 1990). Thus relationship marketing differs from traditional mass marketing since it does not seek short-term increase in sales, but attempts to create loyalty by building a permanent bond with the customer. The product-centric business has been transformed into customer-centric in a fierce competitive environment. Short-term, transaction based selling is rapidly being replaced by the relationship selling (Bauer et al., 1998). Many scholars have stressed the significance of relationship marketing such as how companies benefit from building long-term relationships (Parasuraman et al., 1991), to stave off customer defection for long-term success of the firm (Werner and Kumar, 2003) and lastly the relational benefits customers receive from service relationships (Gwinner et al., 1998). But the concept of relationship marketing has its own history as well. Tadajewski (2009) examined the history of marketing theory and concluded that the work of earlier marketing scholars, especially those publishing in the late 1920s, early 1930s, registered quite clearly the power relations that suffuse the marketplace. Accordingly they devoted attention to the benefits of forming long-term relationships, acknowledged the costs, and in bringing their work back to the attention of present day marketing academics have enabled us to

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N. Abeysekera and A. Wickramasinghe

revise the history of RM. Abeysekera and Wickramasinghe (2012) suggested RM as a challenge that is critical for businesses in order to enhance sustainable in marketing.

2.3 Alignment of customer orientation and relationship marketing It is worthwhile to discuss how better customer relationship can be built by having the quality of customer orientation among salespeople. Salespeople who are customeroriented take actions aimed at increasing long-term customer satisfaction and avoid behaviours that may lead to customer dissatisfaction. They avoid actions that increase the probability of an immediate sale at the expense of sacrificing customer interests (Saxe and Weitz, 1982). They suggested that selling behaviours of salesperson fall somewhere between high customer orientation (i.e. customer-oriented selling) and low customer orientation (i.e. selling orientation). Salespeople who are highly customer-oriented have high concern for others and themselves, whereas salespeople with low customer orientation show low concern for others and high concern for themselves. The study of Saxe and Weiz (1982) highlighted the fact that long-term satisfaction of the customer can be considered as important factor in customer orientation of salesperson. Customeroriented selling is a viable option for organisations seeking to improve long-term customer relationships. By definition, customer-oriented selling is the use of the marketing concept within the salesperson-customer relationship. This implementation is designed to enhance the customer satisfaction attributable individually to salespeople and overall to sales departments (Saxe and Weitz, 1982). Further Thurau and Thurau (2003) argued that customer orientation as a core element of the marketing concept and is especially crucial to the concept of RM. They claimed customer orientation as main condition for the better RM. As another important piece of information, Schwepker (2003) emphasised that customer-oriented selling attempts to satisfy customers and ultimately build relationships. Customer satisfaction and relationship development have been given attention when studying customer-oriented selling. Organisational buyers and consumers both experience higher levels of overall satisfaction with the selling firm (Goff et al., 1997) and salespeople (Goff et al., 1997) when dealing with customer-oriented salespeople. More importantly Schultz and Good (2000), and Williams (1998) are also in line with this argument and supported a view of positive relationship between customeroriented selling approach and long-term relationships among customers. It can be clearly argued that there is an impact on customer orientation of salesperson for better relationship. Hence following research objective emerged for the study. ‘To investigate the relationship between customer orientation of salesperson and Relationship Marketing behaviour of customers’. In order to achieve this objective, following research question has been formed to investigate this relationship. Is there a positive relationship between customer orientation of salesperson and relationship marketing behaviour of customers? So as to understand the theories and the relationships between concepts, variables and constructs, it is critical to review literature followed by a conceptual framework.


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2.4 Corporate banking sector This study concentrates on corporate banking sector in Sri Lanka. Banking is a service industry, and as such exhibits four major characteristics that affect the design of marketing strategies: intangibility, inseparability, variability and perishability (Kotler, 1997). Hence the difference between product and service marketing can be well understood by their unique characteristics by services. In the increasingly competitive global financial world, RM has been advocated as an excellent way for banks to establish a unique long-term relationship with their customers. Most of the core products in commercial banking are fairly generic, and it is difficult for most banks to compete purely on this core service. Thus, recognition of the importance of RM has grown in recent years. It is important to understand why services sector as well as corporate banking within this sector was selected in this study. In fact, the findings of several studies on services marketing have suggested that in order to acquire and maintain a competitive edge, service organisations should develop long-term relationships with their customers (Gummesson, 1987). It concluded that managers of service firms should discard old patterns of thinking and adopt new operational and strategic ways of doing business. Berry (1983) suggested that solidifying the relationship, transforming indifferent customers into loyal ones, and serving customers as clients should also be considered as the cornerstone of services marketing. Furthermore, corporate banking can be defined as a broad term given to the different banking services that large companies, governments, or other big institutions need in order to function from day to day business activities. More importantly corporate banking market is considerably more valuable and more complex in terms of frequency of multiple banking relationships than the more frequently examined retail banking market (Tyler and Stanley, 1999). As a result of the continuing deregulation, fragmentation and competition, banks are alerted to the importance of establishing long-term relationships with corporate clients in order to gain a moderate or greater share of the financial market and of the clients’ business (Zineldin, 1996). Furthermore, Raddon (1985) found that potential customers value having a single account manager for all their financial services; this is particularly true for corporate banking, where a relationship manager is conduit to take a customer into a bank (Allen, 2000). Hence it is significant to identify the importance of banking systems and processes in Sri Lanka as well. Despite the global and local macro economic problems the financial sector still maintains 8.8% as a share of Gross National Product (GNP) in 2011(Central Bank Report, 2011). In the financial sector Licensed Commercial Banks (LCB) always play a significant role as in 2011, 46.4% of the total assets of the financial sector (3575 LKR billion out of 7704 LKR billion total assets) owned by them. It was 1.2% increase from the previous financial year of 2010. Further in the recent economic downturn, banking sector is the foremost recipient and they are struggling because of their high outlay. Therefore this research would be a very momentous contribution for the Sri Lankan banking sector as well as banking sector of many developing countries. The competition and growth in banking industry always concern about “core competences” for competitive advantage.

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3


Research methodology

3.1 Conceptual framework Based on review of literature and previous empirical evidence (Saxe and Weitz, 1982; Thurau and Thurau, 2003; Schwepker, 2003; Goff et al., 1997; Schultz and Good, 2000; Williams, 1998), the following conceptual framework has been developed for the purpose of this study. Figure 1

Conceptual framework

Selling Orientation Customer Orientation of Sales Person

H1

Relationship marketing concern of customer

According to this conceptual framework the RM concern of customers can be considered as dependent variable and selling orientation – customer orientation of salesperson can be considered as an independent variable. As discussed in the section of literature, with the evidence of empirical work the following hypothesis has been formulated for the study: The higher the customer oriented selling of salesperson the higher will be the Relationship Marketing concern of the customers.

3.2 Definitions of key concepts Customer orientation of salesperson refers to the degree to which salespeople practice the marketing concept by trying to help their customers make purchase decisions that will satisfy customer needs (Saxe and Weitz, 1982). Modified selling orientation-customer orientation (SOCO) scale of Thomas et al. (2001) has been used to operationalise the customer orientation of salesperson. Relationship Marketing refers to the relationship commitment and trust (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Commitment refers to “an ongoing relationship with another that is so important as to warrant maximum efforts at maintaining it” (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Trust refers to “willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence” (Morgan and Hunt, 1994).

3.3 Operationalisation Relationship Marketing has been operationalised by using the variables of relationship commitment and trust. Endogenous constructs of Morgan and Hunt (1994), “the commitment-trust theory of Relationship Marketing”, used (with modifications) as indicators of trust and relationship commitment. Modified SOCO (Selling OrientationCustomer Orientation) scale of Thomas et al. (2001) was used to operationalise the Customer Orientation of salesperson.


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3.4 Data collection technique and sample Survey questionnaires were employed to collect data as the study focuses on to ascertain the relationship between two variables. Thus the questionnaire method is more appropriate to examine the hypothetico-deductive and objectivity of this study. Data for the study was drawn from two questionnaires targeting customers and customer relationship officers (CROs) who play the sales person’s role in corporate banking sector. The questionnaire for customers consisted of two sections, namely Nature of Customer’s Relationship with CRO and Personal Information of the respondents. The second questionnaire targeted for the CRO contained Selling orientation-Customer orientation among salesperson and Personal Information of the respondents. A pilot survey was conducted with five (5) customers and five (5) CROs before the major study to validate and contextualise the questionnaires. Further, this pilot survey was helpful to check understandability of the questionnaires. After the pilot survey certain modifications were carried out based on the findings of this preliminary survey. According to the industry experts, there are around 1200 CROs working in the corporate banking departments of 23 commercial banks operating in Sri Lanka. It was decided to limit the study to local banks. Thus the only two state banks and six private banks were selected. The reason for selecting the two state banks was due to the fact that largest proportion of CROs (will be called salespersons hereafter) is attached to these two banks. Six major private banks were selected to make the sample representative and also because of the growing competition in the sector According Central Bank (2011) out of 1700 branches of commercial banks operated, 746 branches operated in Western province (44%). And out of 746 branches 294 branches represented by two state banks (39%). By considering this two state banks were selected in Western province. To make the sample representative six major private banks also were selected. The sample unit was taken as the branch of the bank and from the list of branches of these eight banks available in Western province, a random sample of 600 respondents were selected consisting of 300 salespersons and 300 corporate customers assigned to the respective salesperson so as to explain the dyadic relationship depicted in the conceptual model. Questionnaires have been administered with the help of research assistants. Finally 208 (105 corporate customers and 103 salespersons) were responded. But only 100 corporate customers and 100 salespersons were selected due to incompleteness of their questionnaires. This means that the response rate was around 33%. This can be accepted as previous studies have demonstrated that many surveys with response rates below 25% have yielded similar or more accurate results than surveys with higher response rates (Curtin et al., 2000; Keeter et al., 2006; Visser et al., 1996). Furthermore, the analysis was performed by SPSS 13.0. Linear regression techniques have been employed to test the relationship between variables.

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Findings and analysis

4.1 Reliability analysis In this study, reliability was examined on all variables shown in Table 1. As a test of reliability, Cronbach’s alpha was adopted to represent internal consistency. Value of Cronbach’s alpha varies from 0 to 1 and a value of 0.6 or above indicates satisfactory internal consistency reliability (Walsh, 1995).

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Table 1

Results of reliability test

Variables

No. of items

Alpha

Customer Commitment

5

0.931

Customer Trust

5

0.920

Selling Orientation

5

0.844

Customer Orientation

5

0.822

Source: Survey data, 2012

4.2 Descriptive statistics Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics of RM (customer trust and customer commitment) and customer orientation (selling orientation and customer orientation). These variables have been measured by five point Likert scale ranging 5 for “strongly agree” to 1 for “strongly disagree”. Table 2

Mean and standard deviation of variables – questionnaire to customers N

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

Std. Dev.*

Relationship commitment

100

1

5

3.96

0.685

Trust

100

2

5

4.04

0.704

Selling Orientation

100

1

5

3.88

0.596

Customer Orientation

100

2

5

4.02

0.644

Source: Survey data, 2012

According to Table 2, mean value of relationship commitment is more than 3 (3.96). Hence, it can be stated that most customers fall in the category of “agreed”. Therefore, it can be concluded that most customers are committed to their salesperson. As Table 2 depicts there is no exception in customer trust in a salesperson as well. Mean value is 4.04 and the standard deviation is 0.704. The table thus reveals that most customers are in “agreed” category. Furthermore, variables of SOCO (selling orientation and customer orientation) namely selling orientation (3.88) and customer orientation (4.02) are in “agreed” category.

4.3 Correlation analysis With the purpose of exploring the possible association between independent and dependent variables, the correlation matrix has been formed. The reported correlation coefficients are presented in Table 3. Table 3

Pearson correlation of variables Inter-Item Correlation Matrix SOCO

SOCO

1.000**

RM

0.619**

Source: Survey data, 2012 Note: **Significance at 0.05.


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According to Table 3, Pearson correlation coefficient between marketing and SOCO (selling orientation and customer orientation) is 0.619. It suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between RM and SOCO (selling orientation and customer orientation). Hence there is a statistical evidence to claim that there is a significant positive relationship between RM and SOCO (selling orientation and customer orientation).

4.4 Testing hypotheses by using regression analysis A regression analysis was undertaken to test the hypothesis. Enter method has been performed. Figure 2 presents, the result of the regression analysis for the hypothesis test. Figure 2

Outcome of the regression analysis

Selling Orientation and Customer Orientation of Salesperson

Coefficient β=0.619

Relationship marketing concern of customer R2 =0.486

F=8.22

Source: Survey Data 2012

In testing the effect of the customer oriented selling of salesperson and relationship marketing of the customers, it is hypothesised that, H1: The higher the customer oriented selling of salesperson the higher will be the Relationship Marketing concern of the customers. Therefore the RM concern of the customers can be considered as a dependent variable and customer oriented selling of salesperson can be considered as an independent variable. As depicted in Figure 2 F-test is statistically significant at 5% level of significance whereas it indicated 8.22.This means that model is statistically significant. The adjusted R2 is 0.486 means there is a relationship between customer-oriented selling of salesperson and the RM concern of the customers. Hence coefficient beta is 0.619, which is significant at 5% level of significance, meaning that the higher the customer oriented selling of salesperson the higher will be the RM of the customers. Accordingly it can infer that there is a positive relationship between the customer-oriented selling of salesperson and the RM of the customers.

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Theoretical reflection on empirical evidences

The findings of the study align with the study of Saxe and Weiz (1982) which highlights the fact that long-term satisfaction of the customer can be considered as important factor in customer orientation of salesperson. Furthermore, Thurau and Thurau (2003) argued that customer orientation as a core element of the marketing concept and is specially crucial to the concept of RM. They claimed that customer orientation is a main condition for the better RM. Highly customer-oriented personnel emphasises and identifies better

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needs and wants of their customers (Kilic and Dursun, 2007). Salespersons who possess customer-oriented skills can also develop and maintain better relationships with buyers than salespeople who do not possess these skills (Kilic and Dursun, 2007; Williams and Attaway, 1996), because customer oriented salespeople affect positively in customer’s behaviour in the relationship. More precisely, to the extent to which customers use the salespeople as an information source, cooperate with salespeople in identifying needs, and trust salespeople (Saxe and Weitz, 1982). The concept of customer orientation has been highlighted even for distinguishing transactional marketing and RM. According to Chen (2003) transactional marketing only discussed about sales with less customer service, contact, and commitments but RM is customer oriented and pays more attention to customer service, commitments and contacts. Furthermore, Iglesias et al. (2011) discussed the way to achieve “full customer satisfaction”. In order to achieve “full customer satisfaction” by building and strengthening the relationships they proposed the importance of customer orientation to offer excellent personalised service. Hence it can be concluded that there is a positive relationship between customer orientation of salesperson and RM of the customers and the study conducted by Brady and Cronin (2001), Goff et al. (1997) and Humphreys and Williams (1996) also have demonstrated that a customer orientation has a positive effects on the building of buyer-seller relationships. This paper contributes to fill an important void in current marketing research in Sri Lankan context and is suggesting practical guidance to sales persons in terms of achieving better customer relationship. The customer orientation can be considered as key in order to have better relationship. A customer-oriented salesperson aims to uncover and satisfy long-term needs (Thakor and Joshi, 2005). Specially, when it comes to RM, salespeople need to focus on more longer-term and customer-oriented selling strategies rather than selling techniques directed towards immediate sales transactions (Williams and Attaway, 1996). When this comes to the banking sector in Sri Lanka, the competition in the sector is visible. Various authors have emphasised the rapidly changing competitive environment facing the banking industry throughout the world (Turnbull and Gibbs, 1987; Perrien et al., 1993). These studies referred that several significant factors which have increased competition and changed its nature. These include: increasingly competitive capital markets; a slowdown in the demand for loans from companies; the reduction in cheap retail deposits (mostly due to the removal of restrictions on deposit interest rates); deregulation allowing non-banking competition to enter traditional banking markets; technological innovation leading to reduced margins and to a further opening up of the banking system to outside competitors (Turnbull and Gibbs, 1989). In past decades all most all commercial banks are placing an increasing emphasis on establishing and maintaining relationships with their major customers, because of recent changes in competitive and market conditions. Most studies into banking address banking relationships as a managerial or competitive issue. When taking into consideration of the banking sector, Perrien et al. (1992) suggested that strong competitive pressure has forced financial institutions to revise their marketing strategies and to stress long-lasting relationship with customers. Most banks have tried to differentiate from other banks by offering supporting services, which is a first step towards RM. Many banks would also claim to have implemented RM more fully by developing more closer relations with their clients. Whereas recent research has shown that corporate banking customers still prefer personal relationships as the principal means of communication and exchange between bank and client firm (Tyler and Stanley, 2001).


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This research has further underlined the importance of the personal relationship by revealing that customers considered their banking relationship with their relationship officer. This study focused at RM and customer orientation at the level of Customer Relationship Officer. However, the research context has been limited to corporate banking sector in Sri Lanka. This can be expanded into other sectors such as insurance, leasing, and retail. Furthermore, R2 (0.486) has explained that there are other variables than customer orientation which affect customer’s RM concern. This also can be tested and identified in Sri Lankan context in future research.

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