The impact of marketing communications on customer relationships : an investigation into the UK banking sector

The PhD research is concerned with investigating the communication aspect of relationships. In particular, the research focuses on the impact of marketing communications on customer relationships. The communication aspect of customer relationships is an empirically under-researched area. Two disciplines which are relationship marketing research and marketing communications research were drawn together in order to present insight into the investigation, and hence to build on the limited existing knowledge. The banking sector was used as the context of the investigation.

The context of the research is the UK banking sector. Adopting a primarily qualitative approach, data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with bank customers. Research participants were recruited through advertising and snowballing methods. The analysis was guided by the principles of content analysis.

This research offers three main contributions. Firstly, the current research has extended the work on service provider and customer relationships by presenting an insight into the nature of customer relationships and their underlying dimensions. In particular, four relationship types were identified which can represent various types of relationships customers may establish with financial institutions: (1) faltering, (2) functional, (3) interactive and (4) affective. Secondly, the research presented empirical evidence on the potential of advertising, corporate sponsorship and direct marketing to promote various types of relationships. Thirdly, this research provides an enhanced understanding about the aspects of service encounters, that are likely to promote (or threaten) the development of certain relationship types.